Solomon's Submarine - Ecclesiastes 1:1-11
Ecclesiastes: The Heart of the Matter • Sermon • Submitted
0 ratings
· 21 viewsNotes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
<<READ 1-3>>
<<PRAY>>
Ecclesiastes. What sort of book is this, anyway?
Wisdom literature, like Proverbs & Job.
It’s practical. Realistic. Challenging.
In some ways, the “other side” of Proverbs, but not contradictory:
24 The discerning sets his face toward wisdom, but the eyes of a fool are on the ends of the earth.
14 The wise person has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet I perceived that the same event happens to all of them.
or
26 A worker’s appetite works for him; his mouth urges him on.
7 All the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied.
“The Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem”
“Preacher” here translates the word “Qohelet,” which literally means “assembler” or “collector.” May refer to his role in speaking to those assembled or to his role in assembling wise sayings (see Ecclesiastes 12:9).
“The Preacher” is never given a name in the book, but King Solomon is the implied author:
He’s referred to as “Son of David” (1:1)
He’s referred to as “king in Jerusalem” (1:2)
He claims wisdom greater than all before him (1:16; cf. 1 Kings 3, 4:29-34)
His wealth (2:4-9) is described like Solomon’s
And the LORD made Solomon very great in the sight of all Israel and bestowed on him such royal majesty as had not been on any king before him in Israel. (1 Chronicles 29:25 ESV)
Like Solomon, he collected proverbs (Ecc 12:9-12; Proverbs 1:1)
He is never named
There is a “narrator” who seems to be the one quoting “the Preacher”:
1 The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
27 Behold, this is what I found, says the Preacher, while adding one thing to another to find the scheme of things—
9 Besides being wise, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care. 10 The Preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth. 11 The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one Shepherd.
In other words, the Preacher’s words have been compiled by someone else. Much like:
1 These also are proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah king of Judah copied.
So, I will refer to the Preacher as Solomon, but there are good, godly Christians who disagree about the identity of the Preacher. And that’s fine.
Solomon dives as deep as he can go, hits bottom, resurfaces & puts up his periscope. Can just see the distant shore, but can’t put the pieces together.
Ecc 2:24-26, 3:9-15, 12:1-14 - Final one has urgency not found in earlier ones, comes closest to the shore
As we seek the wisdom of God in this book, you’ll start to notice some patterns. He dives, and surfaces, and pauses for breath. Then he repeats. And in chapter 1, he invites us to ask with him:
Q. Is there any real, lasting gain in all our pursuits?
I. Under the sun, all things are just a succession of breaths (vv1-3)
I. Under the sun, all things are just a succession of breaths (vv1-3)
Explain:
“Vanity” - lit. a breath, a vapor, a mist. Hebrew “HEVEL”
A multi-layered metaphor. Used in different ways in the book, occurs 30-something times.
Something ephemeral - here now, but gone before you know it. Like a vapor evaporates.
Or something elusive - it’s real, but you can’t capture it. "Vanity and a striving after wind” in v14 - no matter how hard you try, you can’t catch the wind, and if you could catch up to it, what would you capture it in? It would slip through your fingers.
To put it another way, chasing the wind means you get winded, and instead of gaining the wind, you have less of it than you started with.
Or something enigmatic - what’s the point? What’s the nature?
Sometimes, focus on brevity. Sometimes, focus on mystery. Sometimes, despair/apparent meaninglessness or the confusion that we experience in life.
Diff translations: Vanity, meaningless, futility.
Problem is that sometimes, the emphasis is on one part of the metaphor, and other times, it’s focusing on another. No single word in English captures it all. <<READ ESV TEXT NOTE>>
Margin: “mist/vapor/breath”, orange colored pencil each time in book
“Vanity of vanities”- Hebrew - “utter vanity,” “absolute futility.”
Holy of holies = most holy place; Song of Songs = best song
“Vanity of Vanities! All is vanity” = the most elusive enigma is that everything is a vapor.
Another, more literal meaning: A breath of breaths, all is a breath. Just a succession of breaths.
Solomon’s father, David, wrote a mini-version of Ecclesiastes in:
4 “O Lord, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am! 5 Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath! Selah 6 Surely a man goes about as a shadow! Surely for nothing they are in turmoil; man heaps up wealth and does not know who will gather!
V3 - the “central question” - <<READ>>
“Gain” - profit - after the accounts are all reconciled, what are you left with?
Rest of the book - Solomon is going to demonstrate how he came to the conclusion that the answer is “nothing.” Nothing at all.
In ch 2, relates what he discovered when throwing himself entirely into self-aggrandizement. He calls it a test “to see what is good for the children of man to to do under heaven during the few days of their life.”
9 So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me.
But he concludes that it’s a vapor, a mere breath. The greatest building projects are insubstantial in the end.
One more piece to unlock the book - “Under the sun” - Solomon is trying to figure out the meaning, purpose, profit, answer to what we do apart from God. “Under the sun” is his shorthand for this.
This is where the great wisdom of the book lies. It’s a memoir of a man who knew God, and had everything he could want, and still often went astray. And in the end, he found out that no matter how much he gained, without God, it was just so many puffs of air under a baking sun.
Throughout the book, Solomon takes a deep breath and dives as deep as he can go. And he hits some pretty bleak depths. Like a submarine, he dives, dives, and at moments he even admits that he reached despair.
You can divide the book into six DIVES, and each one of them ends with a glimpse of life not under the sun, but under God’s promises. Solomon remembers, but he doesn’t have all the pieces.
Like a submarine surfacing, he puts up the periscope and trains it on the far shore of all God’s promises. For example:
11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. 12 I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live;
Each glimpse is a little closer, but Solomon's submarine never reaches the shore. The closest he gets is chapter 12 - remember your Creator when you’re still young, fear God and keep His commandments, and remember that judgment is coming.
Ecclesiastes can’t be properly understood by itself. We have to see it in the context of the rest of Scripture.
Under the sun, all is vanity. But the Bible ends with a vision of eternity in Revelation 21-22 where there is no need of sun or moon, because everything will be lit by the glory of Christ.
Here, when we forget that eternal perspective, we fall into the same deep waters that Solomon delved. The things we chase, the things we vest with deep meaning, they’re HEVEL, they’re vapor.
II. Under the sun, death shatters the illusion of progress (vv4-7)
II. Under the sun, death shatters the illusion of progress (vv4-7)
Solomon illustrates his lament with a poem in verses 4-11 <<READ 4-11>>.
vv4-7 - Introduces the problem of death in a fallen world.
Earth / sun / wind / water - All in constant motion
Imagines the sun rising in the east & setting in the west, then racing back to the east to start over again, out of breath but right back where it started.
The wind blows around and around without end. And the rivers & streams all run downhill, but the seas don’t get full.
Constant motion, but what is accomplished?
And verse 4 - <<READ 4>>
We expect it to say, “A generation comes and a generation goes,” but the focus here is on the going. Every generation passes into history and then into oblivion without the sun or the sea taking any notice.
Add up all the lives of all the people of all generations, and you get a mere succession of breaths that’s here for a moment, and then gone.
A generation goes and a generation comes, and the world wears them all out, and outlasts them all. Death shatters the illusion of progress under the sun.
ILLUST:
ILLUST: “Generation X” already on the way “out.” // “Slacker generation” - Keanu Reeves saying “Whoa.” Next thing you know, plucking gray hairs & thinking, “Wasn’t I planning to change the world?”
There’s another word in verse 6 that is very important in the rest of the book. Just like “vanity” means “a breath,” the word “wind” is also the Hebrew word for “spirit.” When God breathed life into Adam, it’s this word, Ruach - wind or spirit or breath.
Think about that - the wind blows around and around, and <<v14>>. Everything we do, he says, is a mere breath chasing wind.
Stop and catch your breath - you can’t! If you tried to bottle your spirit, you’d just suffocate.
III. Under the sun, time erases everything (vv8-11)
III. Under the sun, time erases everything (vv8-11)
And Solomon raises the intensity in the rest of the poem, in verses 8-11.
Verse 8 says <<READ 8>>
the center of the poem, the “point” - What do you get for all the toil you toil at under the sun? What’s your net gain? Exhaustion.
If you chase the wind, you get winded, but you don’t get the wind.
The eye and ear are like the sea - never full, never satiated.
We exhaust ourselves and can’t find rest, labor to attain but can’t keep
Introduces the problem of weariness. Comes up again (2:23) - vivid picture - heart never rests. Even when you try to lay down and rest, your heart keeps beating. How’s that for a vivid picture? You’ve got a finite number of breaths and heartbeats, but you can’t save them up for when you’re awake, because if you shut it down for the night, it won’t start back up in the morning.
And imagine trying to minimize the number of so-called “wasted” heartbeats by sleeping as little as possible. Even that would be vanity under the sun.
Stay up all night and the eye would still be unsatisfied; the ear would still be unfilled, and the net gain would still be weariness.
And in verses 9-11, Solomon says, every generation is caught up in the same weary pursuit, and in the end, the procession of generations wipes away every meaningful legacy.
<<READ vv9-11>>
Some wise guy will look at this and say, “Oh yeah, wise man? Nothing new in any generation? What generation of iPhone did you have? I have an iPad, your tablet was a block of stone bruh.”
But that’s a silly way to read. A wiser person will look and see the point - the most innovative moments in human history are still just advances in the same pursuits - exploration, transportation, communication.
Things are faster than they’ve ever been, but people are just as exhausted.
And consider how much knowledge is lost with every passing generation. In the 1960s, NASA sent men to the moon on a rocket with a reliable, complex computer called the Apollo Guidance Computer or AGC. If you have a USB-c charger that can charge two smartphones at once, you probably have more raw computing power than the Apollo Guidance Computer… in just the charger.
And yet, the scientists that design rockets today do so by building on what their predecessors came up with, and by rebuilding it.
Verse 11 is getting at something that nags at our consciousness -
Every generation has to learn what the previous generations already learned. Calculus was developed by Newton and Leibniz, but students still have to learn it three hundred fifty years later.
ILLUST: Moving rocks, every step taking 5 times longer than it should b/c we don’t know what we’re doing. A thousand people in Greeley probably know how to do it, but that didn’t help us. ((ROTO-TILLER RODEO))
Trying to separate rocks from dirt - Put in wheelbarrow & rinse (didn’t work); Rake (took too long); Drilled holes in bucket to make a sort of sieve & rinsed, still took forever
“No remembrance of former things” - if you read about the Peloponnesian War in Ancient Greece - will you remember the war? Of course not. You weren’t there. Memory dies with the generation that lived it.
And in the end, even the people are not remembered. Look at verse 11 again - there’s a difference between being forgotten and not being remembered.
Solomon’s story is in the Bible. But do you remember him? Who does?
Think about the men who are vying to conquer commercial space travel. Bezos, Musk, and that other guy. They’ve conquered industry, Twitter, firing satellites into orbit, and now they’re sending themselves into orbit, too.
Their names are not likely to be forgotten anytime soon. Biographies will be written and filmed. But a hundred years from now, not one single human being will remember them, anymore than any human alive today remembers Abraham Lincoln.
And this is the problem that death introduces into everything we do. What is it for? Who is it for? What will the gain, the profit be for Jeff Bezos in eternity?
What will the difference be between the people huffing and puffing after power and the people huffing and puffing after money, and the people just breathing in and out for no apparent ambition under the sun?
Solomon says the sun won’t care. Under the sun, is it different for you and me?
And yet, we keep chasing with unsatisfied eyes and ears - <<READ v8 again>>
Hevel. It’s a harsh word, all’s hevel
Hevel. It’s a harsh word, all’s hevel
If all we have is life under the sun,
What difference will it make how we spend . our . breaths?
The spirit of human ingenuity’s just a mist
a morning fog extinguished by the sun
Distinguished men and women have their hour, then they’re done
Seek power, fun, or wealth, it doesn’t matter,
Accomplishments?
Maybe they’ll read a book about you, or by you, and then be done.
They’ll move on.
What’s new? they’ll say, but even the news is just reruns.
All we do is respire while we perspire
Till we retire and then we expire
What’s life without God? Just a succession of breaths.
And the procession of the generations is just a succession of deaths.
And after the funeral choir, after the memorial pyre,
The fire goes out, and who’s left to remember?
And if you say, “Who cares? I’ll be gone, I’ll just grab what I can while I can,”
Someone already said that before you. Who? Do you remember?
And the wind… keeps blowin’, and I’m runnin’ outta breath
To gain the world, in pain and vanity?
Is loss, and worse, insanity
So how should we spend our breath?
When death will close the eyes of everyone who knew us?
Chase the sun in haste - it’s a waste!
A Millennial’s just a Boomer born thirty years late.
And what’s life under the sun? Just a succession of breaths.
So for hope, we need a different kind of life, a different kind of spirit. And we turn with Solomon to the One who will remember, to the One greater than Solomon.
IV. But in Christ, nothing will be lost
IV. But in Christ, nothing will be lost
See, Jesus says the same thing about life under the sun, life without God.
<<READ Luke 12:13-21>>
But Jesus also gives us the answer. The problem of toil, death, weariness, and vanity can’t be resolved by a vague hope for an afterlife - the kind of generalities that world religions use to put your fear of death back to sleep.
Death is the most concrete thing in the world, it makes men inanimate. Wishful thinking is useless. And Jesus says that God demands your spirit back when you die, not for kudos but for judgment.
if God hasn’t spoken a clear word to humanity about salvation, then we might as well pack it in.
But the Gospel says that God remembers us. That He has spoken a clear word. That every puff of hevel under the sun becomes a Hallelujah in light of the Resurrection for those who are born again by His Holy Spirit.
What does a man gain for all the toil at which he toils under the sun? Jesus says in:
24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? 27 For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done. 28 Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”
See, Solomon asked the question, but Jesus had the answer. The answer to death is an indestructible life.
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
And this is why His answer is this, in:
25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
See, the answer to the problem of death, toil, weariness, and vanity is Resurrection. Because there is a kind of toil that will outlive the sun. To be remembered by Jesus, to find rest from weariness in Jesus, to belong not just to a generation but to be a child of God by regeneration,
This is a real, lasting legacy. Jesus says in:
8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
He has given an inheritance that death can’t steal to all who believe in Him.
What is life under the sun? Just a succession of breaths.
But how does eternal life in Jesus Christ change all that? Listen to how a disciple of Jesus answered that
7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
To gain Christ, to be found in Him, to have His righteousness by faith, to know Him and the power of His resurrection. That is true gain. And it transforms our life here, too.
The Resurrection is the answer. This is the shore that Solomon only glimpsed:
51 Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. 53 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54 When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” 55 “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” 56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 58 Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
And friends, next week we will take the first dive with Solomon, but we will not forget that God has promised to remember those who belong to Him.