Sermon Tone Analysis

The Good News Is the Bad News Is Wrong

 

*April, 23, 2006*

*Ecclesiastes 3:1-14**, **1 Corinthians 15:17-20*

 

*/Focus:/*/ Jesus’ resurrection broke the bounds of this life, and it enables us to do the same./

*Introduction: Life in a Terrarium*

I’d like you to use your imagination this morning and picture our world, your world, as a terrarium.

You know what a terrarium is.

My version of it, in my mind, is a ten-gallon water bottle that belongs in your office water cooler.

Some hippie liberated it long ago, and now you have it in your house.

Into that ten-gallon glass water bottle you pour gravel as a base.

Then you put some sand, and then some soil, and then with tweezers you plant seeds of special kinds of plants in that terrarium.

Then you put in just the right amount of moisture, and you put a cork in the top.

There’s a perfectly balanced little ecosystem inside that terrarium.

You set it in the right place in the sun where it gets just the right amount of daylight, and inside that little capsule everything is perfect.

The plants grow just right, the water rises to the top and condenses, and it rains inside of there.

Everything is just fine and well ordered.

Now I want you to picture your life as lived in a terrarium like that.

Picture yourself as living in a predictable, closed environment where laws are predictable.

You can look outside and forecast to a certain extent what the weather will be like.

For the most part this world is a pleasant, predictable, law-abiding type of place in which to live.

Now there does happen to be a cork in the top, but that doesn’t bother us right now, because as we look around us there are so many things to do, so many places in this world to explore, so many issues to uncover.

In fact, we could take lifetimes—dozens of lifetimes—just to explore what’s inside our world, our earth, this terrarium in which we live.

Just think about it—Jacques Cousteau has spent a whole lifetime exploring the ocean, and he hasn’t even started.

Think of Van Cliburn—he’s lived his whole life pursuing excellence on the piano.

Chris Evert lives and explores the world of tennis.

As we look out on this world, there’s no limit of things we could explore and adventures we could have.

Here inside this bottled world is fascination in every way.

Now wouldn’t that be an ideal environment in which to live?

Couldn’t life be lived to the full inside a capsule where everything is governed by certain laws and we know that it’s a predictable environment?

If I could have life in this world to the full, couldn’t I say, “Enough.

I’ve lived as I want to live”?

 

*I.

The Bad News: Life Is Meaningless*

Today I’d like to take us on a guided tour to explore that question.

I’d like for us to use as a guide a man who’s very famous, a man who wrote a book, in fact, about his exploration of this terrarium that he walked through called Earth.

And that guidebook that he left behind is the Book of Ecclesiastes.

He introduces himself in Ecclesiastes, chapter 1, verse 12.

He says, /“I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem.”/

His name is Solomon, the man who was the richest, most powerful king ever in the history of Israel and Judah.

He rose to the throne after his father, David, when it reached its zenith of world influence—the world power in the Middle East at that time.

Solomon was rich and handsome and famous, young, intellectually gifted, and inquisitive.

Above all that he had the power to do whatever he wanted.

With those credentials and advantages, he decides to go on a journey through the whole broad range of this earth—this terrarium, we’re calling it this morning—and document what he finds.

Let’s read the first eight verses of this text: /“ ‘Meaningless!

Meaningless!’ says the Teacher.

‘Utterly meaningless!

Everything is meaningless.

What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun?

Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.

The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.

The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course.

All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full.

To the place the streams come from, there they return again.

All things are wearisome, more than one can say.

The eye never has enough of seeing or the ear its fill of hearing.’

”/

/ /

Solomon begins his book with his conclusion.

His conclusion to his generation, his conclusion to us by means of God’s inspired Word, is that life is meaningless.

It is nothing but bad news.

He doesn’t have anything good to say about life in the terrarium.

I want to ask you this morning not to resist that message for a few moments but to listen to what Solomon has to say, because I am confident that some of us here this morning are making the assumption (and we may not even be aware of the assumption) that, /If all I could have were a good life on this earth, that would be enough.

I would be satisfied./

Solomon is saying, “Listen to me.

It’s not enough.

I’ve been there; you won’t be satisfied.”

He says he’s the man “under the sun.”

He’s looking at life as if this were all there is.

And he uses the special terminology of the man “under the sun”— the man whose whole world is encompassed in a capsule, without any outside intervention.

His answer is, “What you’ll find is a meaningless existence.”

How does he know that, anyway?

What right does Solomon have to write off 2006 and tell me that would be meaningless?

If you’ll look with me, it’s because he tried it all.

He says in chapter 2, verse 1, “I thought in my heart, ‘Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good.’

But that also proved to be meaningless.

‘Laughter,’ I said, ‘is foolish.

And what does pleasure accomplish?’

I tried cheering myself with wine and embracing folly—my mind still guiding me with wisdom.

I wanted to see what was worthwhile for men to do under heaven during the few days of their lives.

I undertook great projects” and, Solomon says, “I built houses; I planted vineyards for the future.

I built ships.

I had gold and silver.

I built parks and gardens.

I had slaves; I had a harem.

I gave myself to music and comedy and laughter.

I did it all.”

Today his resume might read as varied as this: “I flew helicopters in Vietnam.

I’ve built my own solar house.

I financed the Ronald McDonald House out of my philanthropy.

I saved the whale.

I developed hotel property on the Gold Coast of Florida.

I’ve owned an NFL championship franchise.

I’ve performed in the nightclubs.

I’ve lived with the movie stars.

I’ve done it my way.”

“And,” he says, “don’t think I’m some pallid, little, wheezy killjoy.”

He says in chapter 2, verse 10, “I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure.”

And he says, “I loved it all.”

He’s saying, “I wasn’t setting out to prove that it was meaningless.

I set out to enjoy it, and I enjoyed it.”

So this is not someone who is ready to take all of our joy away.

This is a tuned-in person of 2,900 years ago.