Living a Good Life : Ecclesiastes

Welcome to Delight in Grace, the teaching ministry of Rich Powell, pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. Today is the first message in a series on the book of Ecclesiastes titled, Living a Good Life, Making Sense of the Journey. In his latter years, King Solomon reflects on the meaninglessness of life under the sun. The first 11 verses of Ecclesiastes are anything but encouraging, pointing out life's brevity and boredom, its instability and inability to satisfy. This is a picture of life under the sun, life when we seek purpose without Christ.

Let's listen in. Ecclesiastes chapter 1, the title of this series is, Live a Good Life, Making Sense of the Journey. The words of the preacher, son of David, the king of Israel, that word preacher is the word kohalef. It means a collector of sentences. I used to not like the title preacher.

Somebody would introduce me and say, this is my preacher, and I didn't like the stigma that came with that. Now that I know what it means, collector of sentences, here we are. And what does this preacher have to say? Vanity of vanity, says the preacher, vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? See, I told you this was not going to be a feel-good self-help seminar. And it's not. What is he saying? He begins, I mean, this is the theme of it. And Ed brought it out well as he read the scriptures, as he prayed to the Lord. What is he telling us in this? First of all, what he is doing in giving us this writing is he is being honest with the reality of life.

And that's what we need to do, that's what we need to be. As we studied Psalm 73 last time, the psalmist Asaph was perplexed about those who would utterly ignore God, and yet they seemed to be prospering in their lives. And he says eventually they wake up like waking up from a dream. And that's what we tend to do in our humanity, is when all we do is we live with earthbound thinking, and we have no thought, no acknowledgement of God, then what we are doing is we are living pretend lives. And this author believes that if that's the case, life without any acknowledgement of God is vanity.

It's utter vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? He is being honest with the reality of life. Two realities. Number one, it's fleeting. It's fleeting. Life is fleeting. It comes and then it goes. It comes and then it goes.

Just last night I received word on messenger from a young man, well, he used to be young, he's younger than I am, but he was in my youth group when I was a youth pastor in Virginia back in the 90s. And he says, Nicole, 38 years old, she married one of the boys that was in my youth group, Jimmy Smith. She had a, 38 years old, she had a massive heart attack. And she's gone. Life comes and it goes. Now we need to understand what we mean by life.

And we studied that last time. There is life where the soul and the body are together. But there is a whole different level of life. And that is the life where Jesus said, whoever believes in me shall never die. That is essential life. There is a death that is incidental where the soul is separated from the body. There is an essential death where you are separated from the very source of life.

Life comes and it goes. And it is also repetitive. Look what he says in these verses. Verse 5, the sun rises and goes down. He says to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north and around and around goes the wind. And on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run to the sea but the sea is not full to the place where the streams flow and they flow again. All things are full of weariness and man cannot utter it, the eye cannot be satisfied seeing it.

Nor the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be and what has been done is what will be done and there is nothing new under the sun. It's repetitive. Life is like a machine.

And it has been set up and it goes around and around and around. You know what we do as we are a part of this machine called life? We are looking for novelty. We are looking for the next new shiny new thing, aren't we? And yet as we are looking for novelty we are also desiring permanence.

That's why death is such an enemy. Because we desire permanence. And yet we are looking for novelty. And yet we must understand that novelty is not an end in itself any more than eating is. We are desiring change and that desire is balanced by the desire for permanence. Franz Kafka is a book that my daughter is reading for school and it's a book Metamorphosis.

It's quite a picture of humanity. He wrote in the early part of the 20th century and one of his well-known statements is this. The meaning of life is that it stops.

That's it. The meaning of life is that it stops. What are the biblical metaphors for the transience of this life? It is a vapor. It is like a plant. It sprouts. It grows. It blooms and then it dies and it's gone. Psalm 103 and its place remembers it no more. Dust to dust. We are made from dust and we return to dust.

Life comes and life goes. We're familiar with the Moravians around here. One of the bishops of the Moravian church in the early 18th century.

Nicholas Ludwig von Zimzendorf. Preach the gospel. Die. Be forgotten. Life is fleeting. Not only is life fleeting but life is frustrating. Look what he says again in verse 8. All these are full of weariness man cannot utter it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor the ear filled with hearing.

Weariness, being unsatisfied. Because he says, why is that in verses 9 and 10. In verse 9 and 10 there is nothing new under the sun. In other words there is nothing new to bring meaning and satisfaction.

Not even new ideas. When Paul was preaching in Athens in Acts chapter 17. It says of the people of Athens they were always looking for something new to be taught. Because the old ideas were tried and they're no longer good so now they're looking for something new. And that is the pattern of humanity. Always looking for something new to bring a sense of satisfaction to the question of meaning of life. But that which is new soon becomes old and we go on to the next new thing.

And life is continually frustrating that way. You might say, Rich what do you mean there is nothing new under the sun. Look at all that technology today. And those are just things. I mean you look at today, you look at that device you hold in your hand. Remember all the technology of the 80's.

That one device can do the things that 10 devices used to be able to do. You see, and that new thing becomes an old thing. It ends up where?

In the recycle bin. It does, doesn't it? Even technology is a different form of something that used to be.

And social media is a new thing and that's why so many people are living Facebook in droves. Right? It is, it's happening. And people would say, well you know we have political answers and we need, we need, oh that's the line isn't it? In a year of an election. We need change.

It's the same message every year. We need change. And we expect some minor form of revolution to come along and Franz Kafka, again I'm quoting him, he says every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.

Answers aren't there are they? We're continually frustrated. We're continually looking for something new. We're continually looking for novelty, for change and yet deep down we desire permanence. So why is life so fleeting and why is it so frustrating?

Because we need to back up here for a minute and look at the whole council of God and the context of it. What are the foundations of life as we know it? This, this fleeting, frustrating life.

How did we get here? What is the reason for this? Number one is separation. Separation. Look at, this is Genesis 3 19. The Lord is speaking to Adam, by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground. For out of it you are taken for you are dust and to dust you shall return. There it is. That's a fleeting life. It's a fleeting and frustrating life.

Why is this? Because man thought he knew better. Adam and Eve thought they knew better and that's why they believed a lie. And thought God was holding out on them and so they believed a lie to seek meeting and satisfaction and pleasure apart from what God had for them.

They walked away from God thinking they knew better and that separated them from God. And you know what that's like? It's like a kite being flown in the wind and a kite can be a beautiful, very graceful thing. But here's the thing about a kite. It needs somebody holding the string. Because if that kite decides I'm going to cut this string. I don't want somebody holding my string. I'm going to cut it and I'm going to fly on my own. I want liberty.

I want freedom to do what I want to do. And so the kite cuts the string and then what happens to the kite? Very frustrated and it gets tangled up and it will plummet.

And you see that's the life of humanity. At the beginning Adam and Eve decided we're going to cut that string. And then that kite realizes it needs something holding the string. And so it's discovering, it's looking after something to hold the string. And we're looking for all the wrong things to hold the string. The next shiny new thing is going to hold my string. It will bring me pleasure. It will bring me satisfaction. And it doesn't work.

We've got all the wrong things holding the string. And I'm a perfect example of that. We're so glad you've joined us for Delight in Grace, the teaching ministry of Rich Powell, pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. You can hear this message and others anytime by visiting our website, www.delightingrace.com. You can also check out Pastor Rich's book, 7 Words That Can Change Your Life, where he unpacks from God's Word the very purpose for which you were designed. 7 Words That Can Change Your Life is available wherever books are sold. As always, tune in to Delight in Grace, weekdays at 10 a.m. .