It's right after Proverbs. We're starting a new series today for Sunday mornings. By the way, when those guys are preaching tonight, you know what will help encourage them? It's to give them an amen once in a while. Can we do that? We can do that. I mean, it won't be painful, will it, if we just say amen once in a while? I mean, yeah, there you go. We can squeak one out even if it hurts. Amen.
You know, we might have to try a little bit harder. And, uh, ladies, if you have a hanky, just wave that thing.
All right, we're starting a new series, and we're going to call it "The Search for Meaning." The Search for Meaning. This will consist of the whole book of Ecclesiastes on Sunday mornings.
People are looking for meaning in life today. You understand? People do drugs and alcohol and all sorts of addictions and involve themselves with a lot of outlandish things, as well as some things that are not illegal or immoral, but they're still looking for satisfaction. Sometimes they just come up empty after having tried it all, and they don't really have that meaning in their life. They feel empty.
So today we're going to ask this question: We'll title the message today, "Does Life Really Have Value?" Do you know of anybody that's committed suicide? I wonder if they thought their life had value. Do you know of anybody that has done outlandish things to try to get attention, maybe to draw attention to themselves? I think that's why a lot of the crazy fads that are going on today, and, uh, clothing and the things that they wear, and the color they dye their hair, and the hardware they have in their face, and the markings on their body sometimes can just say, "Hey, would somebody notice me? I need to be validated."
Well, there might be something lacking in life that some of those folks are missing. So today we're going to read the first three verses of Ecclesiastes and just zero in on these first three. This will kind of be an introductory message.
Beginning in verse number one, it says, "The words of the preacher, the son of David, King in Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun?"
Our Father, we pray that you'd bless us today. Fill us with the Spirit of God. Lord, give us understanding. Give us the desire to be able to fall in line with your will so we might discover what real meaning is in life. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
Living life backwards may seem like a strange phrase, but it's what I want to shoot for in this series of messages. Living life backwards. What does that mean? It's about letting the end determine the beginning instead of starting out and not knowing where we're going to end.
Ever hear somebody say, "If I could go back in time, there are a few things I would change"? Have you ever said that or heard somebody say it? If I could just go back in time, I'd change some things. Well, if we could do things all over again with the knowledge we have now, there are some things we would probably do differently. If we had to do over again, is that not true?
In the old book, before the age of TV and movies and videos and such, Mark Twain wrote "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court," and it kind of addresses the issue of going back in time to try to change some things. The protagonist in "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" by Twain, and it's fictional, of course, but his name was Hank Morgan. He finds himself transported back in time to the time of King Arthur's Court.
He becomes determined, having gone back from the 19th century, which was modern to him, to help those people in some way with his knowledge of what would come in the future where he had been. So he takes his knowledge of agriculture and revolutionizes those people's ability to raise productive crops to feed the hungry and to relieve suffering, to increase productivity. He does that, and they're all amazed that he knows this stuff and he's able to show them this stuff.
The change not only alleviated immediate suffering, but it also empowered the people with a newfound knowledge and prosperity. Now, while that might be fiction, Ecclesiastes is true.
What I want to attempt to do is to go back in time in Ecclesiastes and learn from Solomon's struggles through life at finding meaning in life and use that so that we take the end of his life, where he finally comes to these conclusions that we'll see later on, and how we can take the end of his life and apply it to the beginning stages of our life.
Wherever you are, whether you're young or old, you're still at the beginning of the rest of your life, isn't that true? If we can learn from King Solomon how he struggled and he learned things not to do and come to the right conclusion about what we ought to do, then you and I don't have to struggle and suffer the things that Solomon did.
He said, "Now look in your Bible there," and he says, "Vanity of vanities" 38 times in Ecclesiastes. He used that phrase, "Vanity of vanities." The term "under the sun" means emptiness, futility, vapor, that which vanishes quickly and leaves nothing.
So Solomon is saying at the beginning of the book of Ecclesiastes, "Man, it looked like vanity. Everything's empty. Man, I did everything I knew to do. I did this and I did that and I did the other thing, and I was rich. I was able to just do whatever I wanted to do, and yet vanity of vanities," he says, "it's all just empty, a vapor that appears for a short time and vanishes away and leaves nothing behind."
From the human point of view, which is how Ecclesiastes approaches from the very beginning, he's approaching life under the sun. In other words, not a heavenly approach, but under the sun, man's point of view, human point of view. When man lives according to his own will apart from God's will, life can actually look pretty futile.
You can become pessimistic and cynical, where you think, "Man, it don't matter what I do. Everything falls apart. Nothing turns out the way that I want it to. I've tried all these things, and I still feel empty. What is the meaning of life anyway?"
The Jewish writer Shalom Aleichem once described life as a blister on top of a tumor and a boil on top of that. That's how he looked at life. That's pretty sad. The American poet Carl Sandburg compared life to an onion. He said, "You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep." That's pretty negative.
Maybe you've read the poem by Matthew Arnold, "Rugby Chapel," and he includes this dark description of life. He says, "Most men eddy about here and there, eat and drink, chatter and love and hate, gather and squander, are raised aloft and hurled in the dust, striving blindly, achieving nothing, and then they die." That's pretty pessimistic, isn't it? Cynical.
Man, it's a relief to turn in your Bible and look at the words of Jesus, where he says, "I came that you might have life and that you might have it more abundantly." So there is another side to the coin.
While we look at life from man's point of view, we say, "Yeah, well, maybe the Bible's true, maybe it's not, but anyway, I've got my own view about the way things ought to be." So we go about living life according to our will instead of God's will. Sooner or later, we're going to look around and say, "Boy, that was a big zero. What have I got to account for it?"
Even if you have a bank full of money and you still feel empty, what did it matter? I like Paul's declaration in 1 Corinthians 15:58. He said, "Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, for as much as you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord."
Remember what Solomon said? He said, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." And Paul said, "If you're working for the Lord, your life's not in vain. It's not empty. It's not worthless, and it won't vanish away."
This is what Solomon had encountered in his life. He had approached life in such a way that he wanted to do what he wanted to do. As that singer from the last century said, "I did it my way."
Well, the only problem is when you do it your way instead of God's way, it's going to end up empty. That's what Solomon tried. Here's the key I want to give you right up front, because you might be saying, "Now, man, if we're going to study a whole book about Solomon failing over and over again and coming up empty, that's just depressing."
But Solomon discovered the truth at the end of his life, at the end of this book, and you will see it for sure when we get there. There is hope, there is help, there are answers, there are solutions to the problems, and there are good descriptions that work when we come to determining the meaning of life.
I've not been able to help every person in my ministry who needed help emotionally or spiritually. I've tried a lot. Sometimes it's been helpful, and sometimes it seemed like I wasn't able to help. But pastors are generally not called to be clinical counselors but rather spiritual helpers.
While we're not educated in this in the universities about caring for people's emotional needs from the psychology standpoint, we do have a book that's true, and it does help without fail when it's followed completely.
If you're thinking in your mind, "Well, what does it matter if I get depressed? If I stay depressed? Or if I just don't enjoy life?" Well, because if it's not helped, and that's what God wants to do. Remember what we said about Jesus? He said, "I come that you might have life and might have it more abundantly."
He doesn't want you to get stuck and stay stuck. When people get stuck in this gloominess, this depression, this darkness, then one thing leads to another, and it can affect your relationships. If you're married, I mean, your marriage is going to suffer if you're always cynical, pessimistic, discouraged. Your children will suffer.
So we want to get out of it, and the way we get out of it is to do like Barney Fife said: "Nip it in the bud." That's what we try to do with the book of Ecclesiastes.
Let's look at it as an overview today, and then we'll get into more specifics as we go through, and I believe it will be a very helpful series of messages.
Notice we'll call it the writing origination. Who was this writer? Well, we've said that it's Solomon, but nowhere in the book did the author give his name. But he did say this: he called himself the son of David, and he said he was the king of Jerusalem. Well, duh, it gets pretty close, doesn't it?
In verses one and then also in verse twelve of the first chapter, he claimed to have great wealth and wisdom in chapter two. Then we notice that Solomon starts off, when we look at his life as a whole, we see he starts off a very humble man. He prays, and you can read about it in First Kings. He prays and asks God for wisdom and wealth. Did God keep his promise? He did.
So we see all that pointing to King Solomon. He began his reign as a great humble servant, and somewhere along the line, not too long after he got started off as this humble servant, he began to squander things away that he had come in his way, that heritage that he had in his life from his father, King David, and from the other spiritual counselors around him.
He began to squander it. He married wives from this nation and that nation, and it's usually political moves so he could form alliances with those nations and he could increase his wealth and his wisdom—not necessarily his wisdom, but his reign, his kingdom.
As he married those wives from foreign nations, which was forbidden of God, and he took on those wives that worshiped pagan gods, they affected Solomon. And listen to me, friend, you cannot associate yourself closely day after day after day with those who worship false gods, with those who have a false view of life, with those who live a sinful, ungodly life.
If you continually associate and attach yourself to them, you will begin to think like them. That's what happened to Solomon. He didn't have enough wisdom concerning his own life. He could tell other people what they ought to do, but he didn't have enough wisdom to protect his own life.
When you get married, you're forming as close of an alliance as you can have. When you marry wrong, you're going to be in for trouble for the long haul. That's what happened to Solomon. A lot of the things he did actually were contrary to the word of God after God had blessed him so much in the beginning.
Then his heart got drawn away from God, and he began to love the things of the world. Are you listening? As we love the things of the world, when we begin to love the world and disobey God, and we ignore his will and go in the ways of the world, we're going to come up empty.
Ecclesiastes appears to be the kind of a book written by a person close to the end of his life as he looks back, as he looks back and sees where he's been, where he started, what happened in the middle, and now he's at the conclusion of his life.
It appears to be that kind of a book. Solomon is saying, "Boy, I have experienced this, that, and the other thing. Now let me tell you the conclusion." Let me tell you the conclusion of the whole matter. When he walked faithfully with God, things were going well.
But most of his life was spent chasing rainbows. There's no record that explicitly states that Solomon repented at the end of his life, but the conclusions he comes to at the end of the book of Ecclesiastes certainly indicate that he must have and that he had a whole different conclusion.
When we read the first part of Ecclesiastes, we say, "Boy, Solomon sounds like a reprobate man. He sounds like somebody that doesn't even love to live. He sounds like somebody who's a complete failure, somebody who doesn't love God at all."
But then when you come to the end of the book, and we'll get there and we'll talk about it as we go, you'll see his conclusion at the end was a lot different than what it looks like here at the beginning.
He wrote Proverbs from the viewpoint of a wise man, probably earlier in life, and the Song of Solomon. But then at the end of his life, he wrote Ecclesiastes, and he looks back and says, "Man, in between those two things in life, those decades intervening, boy, was that a tragedy."
Oh, how many times people waste a good deal of their lives chasing after things that won't bring fulfillment, and they end up having to seek some sort of outlet and answers to their life. You and I can find those answers right away if we just look.
He describes himself. Does your Bible at the top of the page there in Ecclesiastes have the word "preacher" in bold print? Does it say "Ecclesiastes and the preacher"? Yeah, Solomon. See, he's at the end of his life when he wrote this. Now he sees himself as the preacher.
The preacher—the Hebrew word tends to mean someone who is a public orator. But this public orator would draw an assembly. Well, the Greek word in the New Testament for church or assembly is "eklesia."
So we've got the preacher of the eklesia, the preacher. The orator does more than just say stuff; he draws together an assembly, an eklesia. Therefore, we have the name Ecclesiastes. He draws people together. Solomon has a job that he intends to do under the inspiration of God.
He's writing Ecclesiastes to say, "Look, folks, here's what I've done, and boy, have I messed up. Let me help you so you don't make the mistakes I have." Don't you wish your kids and grandkids would just believe what you tell them about sometimes?
Moms and dads, especially if you had one of those testimonies that Aaron was talking about earlier, where you got saved out of drugs, you got saved out of alcohol, you got saved out of sex addictions and moral failures. You got saved out of that. A lot of times, then once you get saved and have children, your kids will say, "But Mom and Dad, didn't you used to...?"
"Yeah, maybe so, but we would like for them to know we learned better." Isn't that true?
Solomon is the writer of origination. Then let's notice the keys of notation. He says, "Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun?"
He put the keys to understanding the book of Ecclesiastes right at the very beginning, and these are key words, key terms, key phrases that we need to learn upfront so we know what we're dealing with all the way through the book of Ecclesiastes.
He says, first of all, "Vanity of vanities." We mentioned that he said that 38 times in the book of Ecclesiastes. It has the meaning of emptiness and futility and just vapor. It's like if you have ever blown a soap bubble, and that bubble looks so pretty and glowing, and then it bursts. What do you have left when that bubble bursts?
I mean, you got a big old bubble that burst. What's left? That's kind of what that word means: "Vanity of vanities." Man, I had something so pretty. I thought I was having fun, but boom, it bursts, and it's gone. It's empty, futile, nothing left.
Whatever is left after you break the soap bubble is wealth. Think about Solomon. He had wealth, he had works, he had wisdom, he had it all, and yet his conclusion here at the beginning of the book of Ecclesiastes says, "Even though I had all these things, it's vanity."
Now, thank God that's not his final conclusion that we'll see at the end of the book. We'll discover more about that later as we learn to live life backwards. We see how Solomon ended up, and we incorporate that into the beginning of our life, and we don't have to end up regretful like he did.
This "vanity of vanities" describes the outlook of the writer of Ecclesiastes—very pessimistic, discouraged. That's living life from the human standpoint instead of God's.
Then the word "profit." Notice that he said, "What profit is it?" He said, "I've done all these things. I've tried. I've tried having everything." He said, "I had vineyards. I had all of these scientific experiments. I built ponds, and I had men singers and women singers, and I had armies, and I had money, and I had all this stuff. But what profit is it?"
Profit means what you got left when it's all over. As we go through the book of Proverbs, Solomon again and again is saying, "Man, I've done all this stuff, but what did it profit? What good is it?"
You ever wonder why so many wealthy people commit suicide? It must mean that the answer is not in the wealth, and Solomon decided that as well.
Surplus the profit. What is the profit of life? What good? He's saying, "What good did it do me to live? What good is life? Is there any meaning to life? Is life worth living?"
What profit is there if you buy an apple for 50 cents and sell it for a dollar? You made a 50% profit, right? That's the way life can be looked at when it's all over. What good has it been? Did I profit anything?
Money was not Solomon's profit. Then he talks about labor. He says, "What profit is there in men's labor anyway?" This laboring in life—remember that verse I mentioned earlier? Jesus said, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
Labor—the word labor gives forth the idea of struggling to the point of exhaustion. I mean, there are people last night, I guarantee you, last night and Friday night, there are people who stayed up all night long and were deprived of sleep in order to drink and to drug themselves, trying to look for some profit in their life.
What did they have the next morning when they woke up? A hangover and regret for the things they said and did the night before. What profit is there in labor to the point of exhaustion to have fun, to have meaning in life?
Then we ask ourselves, with little or no fulfillment, what good was it anyway?
The third thing: the analysis of the experimentation. Solomon experimented with life. He's doing all these experiments. "I'll try this over here and see how this works. Maybe this will bring me joy. Maybe this will bring me satisfaction. Maybe it's in illicit sex. Maybe it's in drugs. Maybe it's in alcohol. Maybe it's in being at the top of the corporate ladder. Maybe it's having that perfect job. Maybe it's having that perfect girlfriend, boyfriend, or spouse. I'll try these different things. Maybe if I've got more power and I can tell people what to do, and I'm the one in charge, I'm the one in command, maybe that's what will make me happy and make me feel filled inside."
So he experimented. Solomon experimented. But the places where he experimented left him thinking at the end of life, "What good was it? I didn't find it."
Asking himself, "Is life really worth living?"
And people, listen, people who are unfulfilled, whether they admit it or not, are continually asking themselves, "Is life really worth living?"
Well, Solomon at last discovered what didn't work, and he passes those lessons on to you and me. The point must be mentioned again that he did understand at the end of life what he had missed by not following the will of God.
The last thing: the personal application. What does this boil down to for you and me? Well, Solomon learned from his mistakes, and when we learn from other people's mistakes, that can save us from having to make the same mistakes.
Like the, uh, well, dads are always trying to teach their sons, you know, how to do things and how to be successful and how to have happiness in life.
A little Jewish boy was looking one night around Christmas time through his neighbor's window next door. They were Christians, and he could see a beautiful Christmas tree in their window. So the Jewish boy asked his Jewish father, "Dad, I know we don't celebrate Christmas, but could we have a Hanukkah tree?"
His dad said, "Absolutely not."
The little boy said, "But why, Dad?"
He said, "The last time our people had anything to do with a lighted bush, it cost us wandering in the desert for 40 years."
So we want to save our kids, our grandkids, and those around us. We want to save them the problems that we went through, and that's what Solomon is doing with the book of Ecclesiastes.
But wait, even above and higher than Solomon is the true author of Ecclesiastes—God himself. You see, God never made Solomon mess up in all these areas so he could learn these lessons. God allowed him to mess up in those areas, and then God used it in the writing of Ecclesiastes to teach us these lessons.
Did Solomon learn? Yeah, he learned a little bit late for him. But what about you and me? Perhaps it's not too late for us.
Solomon saw in his day, he saw the injustices. He saw crooked politics. Are you thinking about things around you? He saw guilty people who were allowed to go on being criminals without just punishment. He saw materialism and what it meant.
He knew what it was like to desire the good old days. You ever think about that? Boy, if I could just go back to those good old days, like it was in the 50s or the 60s for those of you who are ancient like me. You wonder, wouldn't things be better if we could go back like it used to be?
It seems like every generation has said, "Boy, things are worse than it was when I was growing up." But I think it's like, you ever see when you flush a toilet? You know, it starts swirling slowly at the top, and the closer to the bottom it gets, it gets faster as it goes out.
I think that's the way times are as we lead up to the coming of Christ. Yeah, things have always been swirling downward because of the fall of man, but the closer we get to the coming of Christ—listen, the closer we are to the appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ, the faster it's going.
We wonder, can our nation, can our world even survive another few years at the rate it's going? It doesn't seem like it.
While we don't have any control much over what's swirling around us, we have control over the way we perceive it. We don't want to perceive things in this continual gloomy, depressed, cynical attitude that life's not worth living.
I've heard Christians who mean well say, "You know, I don't think people ought to—even Christians ought to even have babies anymore. Things are so bad. Their kids are going to grow up to have to go through all of this."
Well, I say if Christians don't have babies and Christians don't raise up children to be some sort of salt to this culture, then we're just turning it all over to the devil.
So if anybody ought to be having kids, it ought to be Christians.
If you've never trusted Christ as your Savior—and I may be talking to people on video or audio—if you've never trusted Christ as your Savior, studying the book of Ecclesiastes would certainly push you in the direction of receiving Christ because life is futile apart from God.
Jesus Christ is the only way to be closer to God today. He is the mediator. He is the one. He is God incarnate. Without God, life is futile.
I mean, do you remember what Jesus said to one of the guys asking him questions in his day? He said, "For what shall it profit a man if he should gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"
You see, if somebody was as rich as Solomon or had the wisdom of Solomon and had not the Savior, when life is over, everything's over except eternal suffering.
Solomon experimented with his life to no satisfaction, and there's no need for us to do the same. You see, when you belong to the family of God through faith in the Son of God, there is a reason to live. Life does have meaning, and everything that we do will either earn us rewards with him or the loss of them.
So there is profit in the labor that we do for the Lord.
As for those who have trusted Christ as Savior, we have to ask ourselves this question. As we peer into this time machine of Ecclesiastes, we have to ask ourselves this question: Since Solomon was a believer and yet he did all the things wrong that he did, and he became very pessimistic about life and even asked himself, "Is life even worth living?"
Christians can fall into that same degree of thinking if we're not living according to the will of God.
I've talked to Christians, even in the past week, several who have not said those very words, "Is life even worth living?" But they said it not knowing that they were saying it.
When I offered spiritual help, it's kind of like, "Yeah, yeah, okay, but here's what I want to know." I'm thinking, "Please, this is what you need to know. You have questions, and you think the answers are over there somewhere. The answers are here."
Yet so many times, people who have problems don't want to hear this religious matter. They want to hear something new, something different, something this world has to offer.
This world, dear friend, has nothing to offer that's greater than this. There will be no lasting peace.
Some people are trying to enjoy their Christian life by saying, "Yeah, I gave my heart to Jesus, and yeah, I talked to Jesus, and yeah, I even read his Bible, and I even go to a church." But their actions don't show any repentance towards God. Their actions don't show any adherence to the will of God.
Friend, when you are a believer, even if you say, "I love the Lord," but your life is going this way instead of the Bible way, there's not going to be any peace.
No peace to the wicked, saith my God. Christians can be as wicked as anybody else when we neglect the will of God. When we say, "Yeah, I know the Bible says that, but here's what I intend to do," then we have just bought ourselves a bunch of heartache that's going to end up in futility, depression, and asking, "When it fails, is life even worth living?"
Well, yes, it is if it's lived according to the word of God and the will of God. But if we try to live under the sun according to the human will, we come up empty every time.
The Bible says in Psalm 90:12, "So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom."
Solomon's offering us some wisdom in Ecclesiastes that we need to know.
Imagine with me that somebody goes to the doctor, and the doctor says, "You have an incurable disease, and it results in death very soon. But the good news is I do have one pill that will cure that disease, and you can go on living."
That person says, "Yeah, yeah, I know, Doc, but give me some other doctors. I want a second opinion. I want to go, Doc. I've got the pill. This one will do it."
"No, I don't want to hear about that. Tell me something else that'll tickle my ears."
So many times when people resist this, they're resisting the pill that will save their life.
If you're a Christian who's struggling with issues that are dragging you down, the word, especially this series from Ecclesiastes, can give you relief and peace.
If your emotional and spiritual energy is drained, stay tuned and don't miss any of the messages from Ecclesiastes. It may sound pessimistic at the beginning, and there may be a lot of pessimism from Solomon throughout that part of his life, but, oh friends, stick with it because it gets better before it's over.
Let's pray together.
Father, I pray that you'd bless us. Lord, help us to love you and to love your will. Lord, so many people are looking for happiness and joy and pleasure in all the wrong places, as did Solomon. Even Christians, Lord, are looking in places that just don't work, and they come up empty and asking themselves, "After doing all of this, why do I still feel so empty?"
Lord, help us to realize that you have the answers. Help us to begin by just saying on our knees with tears in our eyes, "Dear Lord, forgive me for going my own way."
And, "Dear Lord, I'm admitting now that I've been wrong, and I'm refocusing my GPS on heaven, and Lord, I want to know your will, and I'm going to do your will with your help."
Making that decision now, our heads are bowed and eyes are closed. If you'd stand with...
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on Nov 13, 2023
