In a World of Smoke and Mirrors

Life under the sun says creation is redundant. It's the same old thing over and over and over again. Same old wind and earth and sky and seasons and cycles.

They don't change. Creation is redundant. But for those who believe the opening, staggering lines of this book in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

For you creation is not redundant. Creation is resplendent. Have you ever felt like you're living in a world of smoke and mirrors, chasing after things that seem real but leave you empty?

Solomon certainly thought so. In Ecclesiastes, he describes life as one big illusion where things appear meaningful yet fail to satisfy. Solomon points out that if your perspective is limited to the things that are here on earth, you'll be deceived by life's illusions.

But when you shift your focus to God, you find lasting satisfaction, true meaning, and the promise of a life that's anything but pointless. Here's Stephen Davey with today's message. In the early 1600s, a Dutch scientist invented the prototype of what we would call today a slide projector. Originally, it was light projected through images painted on glass, casting an image up on a wall or a screen to make it larger than life. It was called in the early years a magic lantern. It wasn't long before the Globe Theatre in London became the first to use the magic lantern to create special effects. They projected the image off a mirror, which reflected back into a smoky air that they had allowed on stage. The image appeared to be alive as it moved and shifted in the smoke. It created quite a sensation.

It was used for all sorts of dramatic events and effects. In fact, about a hundred years later in 1770, a charlatan by the name of Johann Strohfer became famous using the magic lantern. He portrayed images in smoky settings, claiming that he was conjuring up the spirits of the dead. He successfully deceived audiences. He made a fortune.

He in fact did this before heads of state and royalty. They were convinced that they were in the presence of the deceased. In the 19th century, to become popular, it was used by fortune tellers.

It's used in amusement parks all around the world today. It created an expression for tricking, deceiving people. We simply call it today smoke and mirrors.

It's interesting that the Cambridge dictionary treats that phrase today as one noun. It's defined as an illusion which makes you believe what you are experiencing is true or real when it is neither true nor real. 3,000 years ago, a king by the name of Solomon had come to the conclusion that he and everyone else lived in a world of smoke and mirrors. What seemed satisfying wasn't. What appeared to be meaningful isn't. Life tricks you with illusions of significance and satisfaction. Now as an old man, Solomon is owning up to the fact that he'd been duped. He'd been willingly deceived. He'd spent his life chasing after what turned out to be nothing more than an illusion. He publishes it all in his private journal where the Spirit of God through Solomon gives us the reality of life. We call his journal the Book of Ecclesiastes. We've just begun exploring it.

Turn there if you haven't already. Solomon begins by describing the futility and brevity and meaninglessness of life bound up in that word vanity. It is life under the sun.

Keep that in mind if you're here for the first time in this series. That's one of Solomon's favorite expressions. This is an expression for life on earth without any perspective of godly wisdom, which Solomon has abandoned for decades. Apart from God, apart from the gospel, he's going to describe the truth about life under the sun. For starters, in chapter 1, Solomon is going to prove that life under the sun, if that's all we're ever going to get, leads to despair and discouragement and disillusionment. To prove his point, he takes us on a field trip.

We began that in our last session. By way of a really fast review, Solomon has referred to the world of nature by showing us that we can't sidestep the funeral procession in verse 4. A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. In other words, we come and go and earth seems to stick around.

That doesn't seem right. We can't get out of the funeral procession. A person dies about every second. We can't slow down the sun, verse 5. The sun rises and the sun goes down and hastens to the place where it rises. No matter what you do, no matter how you live, what you accomplish, you don't affect the rising and the setting of the sun. You can't slow down the rotation of earth.

You impacted not one iota. Not only that, thirdly, you can't steer the wind. The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north.

Around and around goes the wind. On its circuits, the wind returns. I mean, you can turn on the weather channel. You can watch weather on the ones. You can find out they can measure the size of that hurricane wind tunnel. They can determine its speed.

They can tell you when it's going to hit landfall. You can't do anything about it. You can't alter it. You can't steer it away. Solomon is saying, if all you have is the perspective of life down here under the sun, that's all you're going to get and you're going to very quickly come to the conclusion that humanity is at the mercy of ecology. You can't stop the earth from evolving, verse 4. You can't stop the sun from shining, verse 5. You can't stop the wind from blowing, verse 6. You can't stop the oceans from flowing, verse 7. I mean, you thought you were something.

You thought you had power and prestige and that you were making an impact. No, that's just smoke and mirrors. Now, Solomon shifts gears from the world of nature and shows us human nature, and that's our study for today. He delivers four more observations about life under the sun.

The first one's this. We get tired of the repetitions of life. Notice verse 8, just the first phrase. All things are full of weariness. A man cannot utter it. You could translate Solomon to be saying, life is so wearisome and so toilsome, it's hard to put into words. One man paraphrases it, life is more tedious and boring than words could ever say.

And you think, ah, we're not supposed to talk like that, especially in church. Some Hebrew scholars I research believe that this first phrase is really an introduction to the observations that follow. In other words, we grow restless and we grow bored so easily with life.

Let me show you why. Here's the second observation. We are not satisfied with the experiences of life. Verse 8, the eye is not satisfied with seeing nor the ear filled with hearing. It isn't fulfilled, you could render it, with hearing.

Solomon is alluded here to the senses of sight and sound. In other words, we've experienced things in life but there are things we still want to experience. We've seen some things but we want to see more things. We want to hear more, we want to taste more, we want to do more, we want to go more. We're restless.

We're unsatisfied. Have you ever driven the Blue Ridge Parkway? But have you ever taken a cruise to the Caribbean? Have you ever hiked the Appalachian Trail? Have you ever canted Yellowstone? Have you ever climbed Mount Everest? Have you ever taken a helicopter and ridden over the Grand Canyon? Have you ever four wheeled on the sand dunes of the Pacific? Yeah, you've done some things but there are probably things you haven't done. I'd kind of like to do that. I'd like to skydive once.

Successfully. I had this thought in my mind as I'm reading this and I googled, which means I researched, places to visit in North Carolina to see how much I'd seen. Came up with a site with 17 most beautiful places to visit in North Carolina and I read the list and I've only seen three of them. That's it. There was a fourth, it's a lake near Charlotte and I remember I've seen the sign.

Does that count? I've passed the sign to the lake. There's so much more to see and experience and we forget the thrill of what we've already seen.

We're done. You remember your first car? You may have repressed the memory, I don't know. I remember mine. It's a hand-me-down. My brother went to college so I got the car. Baby blue Volkswagen bug. That wasn't cool then and it isn't cool now but I had shag carpet I cut out, those floor mats.

I could get up to 65 miles an hour and a big gust of wind if I had some help. I've forgotten that. I kind of remember a little bit but you know, that was exciting. How about the second car?

You might be in here going I can't wait to get the next one. How about your first paycheck? Your first job? Your first home?

Your first kiss? Human experience grows bored having experienced and is never satisfied. That breathtaking sunset you might have seen the other evening, that was so beautiful you got over it. You might walk down the street this evening and not even look up, not even notice it. Yeah, that's another one. You heard that river cascading over rocks, you heard that music playing, you stopped and barely breathed.

Isn't that magnificent? Solomon is making an observation here about the truth of our fallen nature as human beings, that what once was breathtaking very quickly becomes background. You thought that if you got to do that or see that or hear that or own that or taste that or experience that, well you would find lasting satisfaction and you've discovered it's just, it's just smoke and mirrors, it's illusion. I'm not satisfied after all. We grow tired of the repetitions of life.

We aren't satisfied with the experiences of life. Solomon makes a third observation. We don't create anything new in life, verse 10. Is there a thing of which it is said see this is new? It has been already in the ages before us. Solomon is asking a rhetorical question here. Can anybody say hey look, this is new.

Then he answers it. No, it's not. It's been around for ages. Now the packaging might change. We are driving cars and not chariots. We've got technologies that Solomon could never conceive of, but we're just working with stuff that already existed. We're just repackaging. We're harnessing.

We're utilizing. Even Thomas Edison, the famous inventor, perhaps one of the greatest, inventing everything from the carbon microphone to the light bulb to the nickel iron battery to the phonograph, record player, plays around plastic things in my generation. Listen to this. Edison said my inventions are only bringing out the secrets that already exist.

I'm just packaging it. Now keep in mind that Solomon here is observing human nature in this immediate context. He's not thinking of invention or technology. You could understand him to be saying there is nothing new about human beings that hasn't already been observed for ages past.

Does this sound familiar to you? One author writes young people of today have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint.

They talk as if they know everything. I was a church leader writing a thousand years ago. Another author wrote children have bad manners contempt for authority. They disrespect their elders.

Socrates wrote that 2,400 years ago. So what does this mean? It means it's about time for young people to straighten up. Now what it means is that young people are still critical of old people and old people are still complaining about young people.

Even the generational issues. Nothing's new. Nothing about fallen human nature lived out here under the sun is new.

It's been around. We still get tired of the repetitions in life. We still aren't satisfied. We quickly get over the rush of the experiences of life. We still really don't create anything new in life.

One more observation, number four on our list for today. We won't be remembered after the end of life. Verse 11, there is no remembrance of former things nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after.

The word things in that text could just as easily be translated people. Both are true in this context. You're not going to remember former things, former experiences, former people who lived earlier than you. He's not talking about deceased family members, which leave a lifelong memory. Solomon is speaking in general terms about former generations being forgotten by later generations.

Here's what he's doing. He's cutting to the heart of the human desire to make some kind of difference. If our lives are a pebble and we're thrown out onto the pond of human existence, how long will those ripples go?

Solomon is saying, not very long, not very far. He's cutting right to the heart of our desire to not be forgotten. Can we build a monument, a statue? Can we get listed somewhere? Now somebody might brag, hey, nobody's going to forget me. John Lennon, who made news back in 1966 when he was the leader of the Beatles.

Do you remember them? He made this prediction and I quote, Christianity will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that. I'm right and I will be proved right. We are more popular now than Jesus. Fifty years later, can you imagine somebody saying, they're never going to forget me, that Jesus guy, they'll probably forget him.

Talk about the ultimate illusion being deceived by smoke and mirrors. One man wrote perceptively, today's celebrities are tomorrow's obituaries. Solomon would heartily agree with that and that's the point.

Here's the other point related to that. If that's true of celebrities, if that's true of people, you know who they are, you know their name, their household names, you buy everything they say and they sing and you know them, everybody knows them. If celebrities, athletes, famous people, whatever, politicians, if they become tomorrow's obituaries, what will become of you and me? Who's going to remember us?

Are we depressed yet or what? We're not even out of chapter one. Remember, this journal needs to be understood backwards.

You have to go to the back of the journal where he ties it all up. Let's bring that forward now where he says, remember your creator in the days of your youth. Don't forget your creator. If you do, all you get is life under the sun. Better yet, develop a relationship of trust and faith in the sun, S-O-N. What a difference that's going to make as you fill out the pages of your own personal journal.

Let me show you a little bit of the difference. Here's life under the sun compared to life alongside the sun. Life under the sun says creation is redundant. It's the same old thing over and over and over again. Same old wind and earth and sky and seasons and cycles. They don't change.

We can't do anything to change them. Creation is redundant. For those who believe the opening staggering lines of this book, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. For you, creation is not redundant. Creation is resplendent.

It's marvelous. The heavens declare the glory of God. The firmament is simply the result of his handiwork, those clouds. That sunset designed by the creator. That sunrise isn't just a boring repetition. It happens to be a testimony of the predictable faithfulness of God.

You can set your clock by. How do we know that? Because we're told his mercies are new every morning.

It's a reminder of his faithfulness. Life under the sun says life is pointless. It's pointless. Bertrand Russell, the atheistic philosopher, expressed this despair when he wrote, we stand on the shore of an ocean crying to the night and the emptiness. Sometimes a voice answers out of the darkness, but it is the voice of one drowning.

And in a moment, the silence returns. There is no creator beyond our awareness, no significance to our existence. Then there is simply no point in life. And Solomon writes with that perspective, why toil?

Why sweat it out under the sun? What's the point to anything but for the believer who walks alongside the sun, S-O-N? Life isn't pointless. Life has divine purpose.

Life is an expression of trust and assurance and obedience and anticipation. We're not gerbils running around on a wheel. Have you ever thought about the fact that God creates history as linear on into the future? We happen to be heading somewhere. We're not stuck in the cycle of life. The Lion King is not good theology. Make sure you tell your kids that after they get mesmerized by it. You're not stuck in a cycle.

You're heading home. It's linear, if you remember the Creator. If you're stuck down here with life under the sun, Solomon says, here's another brutal truth. Nothing is new. Life is just a repackaging and redesigning and reselling of faster and shinier and newer and more complicated things that become hand-me-downs.

None of it lasts. But for the One who has come by faith to God, the Son, here's the difference. Everything is new. We have a new name, Isaiah 62. We have a new heart, Ezekiel 36. We're new creations in Christ. Old things are passing away. Behold, all things are becoming what?

New. Paul writes to the Corinthian church. The Lord is going to create for his redeemed a new heaven and a new earth, Revelation 21. In the meantime, God has given us a new song to sing with a new perspective and a new joy, Psalm 33.

In fact, God makes this really incredible promise to the believer in Revelation 21 verse 5. Behold, I will make all things new. What's that going to be like? Paul says, oh, here's what it's going to be like. Your eyes have never seen. Your ears have never heard. Your heart has never imagined the glory of what God has prepared for those who love Him.

First Corinthians 2, 9. One day we're going to be perfected. One day our fallen nature is going to be done away, perfected in holiness. But get this, perfected in perspective will never grow bored ever again, will never grow tired. It will always be new and fresh. In fact, our senses redeemed one day will be saturated by the glorious creative handiwork of God. Life under the sun says you will not be remembered.

And that's true. A hundred years after you die, chances are no one will be alive on the planet who even remembers you live. Give me the name of the most famous football player in 1919. A hundred years ago.

Give me the name of the most famous mover and shaker on the planet in 1919. You will never be remembered if all you have is life under the sun. But God's word tells us you will never be forgotten. Your name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life, Revelation 21, 27. Your life is engraved upon the palm of His hand, Isaiah 49. In other words, you're part of His body. Even the smallest action, an attitude of obedience and worship and trust and service. The writer of Hebrews tells us that God will never forget your work and the love you've shown to those who belong to Him, Hebrews 6-10.

He's not going to forget anything. Life under the sun says whatever you're chasing after, I got to tell you, here's the reality. It's smoke and mirrors. But life walking alongside the Son of God as Lord and Savior, creation isn't redundant. It's resplendent. So go enjoy it. Life isn't pointless. It has divine purpose. So live it.

Give it everything you've got no matter how mundane. It's on a linear path and it's taking you somewhere as you give God glory. Nothing is new. Oh, in Christ, everything is new.

And by the way, it's about to get newer. I think that's bad grammar, but you get the point. So anticipate it. We can't even imagine it, but anticipate it. You won't be remembered?

No. You will never be forgotten. So which life do you want? Life under the sun or life walking alongside the Son of God.

That was Steven Davey and this is Wisdom for the Heart. Today's message is called In a World of Smoke and Mirrors. Life under the sun may seem redundant and fleeting, but with faith in the sun, you're given a new lens. The beauty of creation, the daily routines and the desire for purpose all find their meaning in God's eternal plan. Live with divine purpose, heading toward your eternal home. While you're traveling home, is there anything you need prayer for? We'd love to pray for you. Visit wisdomonline.org forward slash prayer. Fill out the form and our team will pray for you by name. If you want, we can also call you and pray with you over the phone. Submit your request at wisdomonline.org forward slash prayer. Do that today or any day and then join us back here next time.