Vain Repetition (Pt 1)

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

Well, take out your copy of God’s word and turn to Ecclesiastes chapter 1 verse 1. Yeah. First I want to say thank you again. Seems like I do this on a somewhat regular basis, but perhaps that’s because I’m thinking it on a regular basis. I want to say thank you again to all those who are part of the worship team from the guys who set up and run the sound to everybody up here who helps lead us in that worship. I greatly appreciate that. And my own heart was encouraged by being able to participate with that. And many times when I’m sitting right in front of the speaker, I can’t necessarily hear everybody else because my ears are pretty well dominated by something that’s almost as big as I am giving sound out.

But even standing in the back this morning, which is behind everybody’s mouths, it seemed like many of you were singing and and worshiping God through that this morning. So, and I just want to say thank you. I am benefited by doing that with you all. Thank you to the worship team who led us in that. This has been for me at least a great and a directly, immediately applicable passage this week.

The one that I’m going to share with you this morning, the one that I have studied throughout the week, has been beneficial for me to be studying and thinking about throughout the week because it seems like much of my week has been one exercise in futility after another. And I don’t always feel that way. I know not all of you are feeling that way about your weeks, however they went. Some of you probably got a lot of things done and a lot of things that you wanted to get done done and you’re really excited about it and you’re like walking on top of the world. Others of you maybe are more like I am right now this morning as you’re sitting here looking back over your past week thinking where did I go? What did I do? Do I remember what I did?

Did I do what I was supposed to? I don’t know. Nothing worked and it’s not very fun. Some of you may be sitting here like that. Last Sunday night my wife and I were laying in bed. We were watching some TV and Sunday night is great. A great night for watching that religious broadcasting that Pastor Z is always talking about. And Kevin Gerald, Kevin Gerald dot com. You can go and buy his books or whatever. But I forget what the name of his church is. It’s somewhere in Tacoma. He’s actually on one of the stations.

we were watching him and he’s in a series on the funk on the funk. That is when you’re living in the funk and both my wife and I kind of chuckled behind the verses when he would talk about a verse down at the bottom. There was like this eerie kind of blue cloudy you know something behind it that we both figured out was was intended to be picturing funk. And then when it would show like what CD cover or book cover, I forget what it was, but some logo or emblem they had for this series was half of a cartoon person’s face with their mouth open like this. And coming out of their mouth was more of this blue funk, like you’re just living in the funk. You’re down, discouraged, depressed, whatever, whatever the funk exactly means. And it was sometime during the middle of the week when my wife observed and concluded that I was in the funk, which she kind of laughed at and smiled because we had watched that program together. I probably denied that, at least for a while.

I don’t know if I would use that term to describe it, but I can say that for whatever reason, And I had the sense of my week like it was one exercise in futility after another. The list of things I need to do is getting bigger. The list of things I tried to do but didn’t finish isn’t better. I was actually kind of pleased with that sentence. I thought that sounded kind of cool. Yeah, I mean, maybe that’s the only thing I got done all week, so I’m going to give that to you again. The list of things I need to do is getting bigger. The list of things I tried to do but didn’t finish isn’t better than little Lambsy Di-V’s.

I worked on a lot of things that probably don’t really matter and yet I didn’t do as much as I wanted on some of the things that I know matter and that I know matter the most. I think all week long I worked hard but it was one of those kind of working hard like the squirrel in the cage, you know, running around in the circle, like running on a treadmill, which somehow I actually enjoy that. I got up early almost every day and I went to bed late almost every day and all I got out of that was being tired. I mean, that really, that was the case this week. And this is kind of what it seemed like day after day, day after day, and you know what it seemed like?

It seemed like vain repetition. I’ll tell you why, even if you think your week went great, can I tell you something? You’re just blind to the vain repetition. You’re just blind to it. Whether you had that experience, you sensed that this week or not, it is actually the case that we are all in a from one perspective we are all in that big circle cage running around vain repetition. And that brings us to Ecclesiastes chapter 1 verses 1 through 11.

The entire section, this introduction section, is an introduction to the vanity of life, In particular, the vain repetitions that we find throughout life. This is the prologue. It frames the body of this book, which really starts in chapter 1 verse 12 and goes through chapter 12, probably verse 8. We’ll talk about that again in the moment. Then there’s the epilogue at the end, chapter 12 verses 9 through 14. So those are at least three big sections, this prologue, the beginning, chapter 1 verses 1 through 11, then the body, the majority of the book, chapter 1 verse 12 through chapter 12 verse 8, and then the very end, the conclusion or the epilogue, chapter 12 verses 9 through 14. There are three key features that I want to point out to you this morning in this intro section. A couple of them will move relatively quickly through. The title is in verse one. The title of Ecclesiastes is in verse one. The motto of Ecclesiastes is in verse two, and then there is a poem on vanity. And all the things you’re gonna write a poem on, write a poem about how life

stinks and then you die. But that’s what we got verses three through eleven. The title verse one, the motto verse two, a poem on vanity, verses three through eleven. The whole thing is about the meaningless monotony of life. And so we begin the title of Ecclesiastes, chapter 1, verse 1. Here it is, verse by verse, line by line. Verse 1, the words of the preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. Now I say this is the title of the book of Ecclesiastes. In fact, verse 1 is a lot like the title page in a modern book. On the title page in a modern book you would find out various things about the book that you were about ready to read. You might find out the obviously the title, you would find out who wrote it. Perhaps you might find out a subtitle, you know some more information about what is coming in it. Maybe on some title pages you find some other information.

And remember that when this book was originally written, that is when Solomon wrote it, didn’t have the title at the top of it, Ecclesiastes. There’s a couple reasons for that. Number one is Ecclesiastes is the English title and he spoke Hebrew. He would have put over the top of it if he was going to give that kind of superscription at the very top, Koholeth, which is the name that is above it now in Hebrew, but that was given to it by somebody else. So when Solomon wrote this, Verse 1 was what you had to introduce you to the book. So that’s why I’m calling it the title. It introduces us to some key elements about the book, namely the author himself. This verse is remarkably close to Proverbs chapter 1 verse 1. In fact, it’s so close flip over to Proverbs 1 verse 1. The Proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel. Obviously there are a couple couple differences between Proverbs 1-1 and Ecclesiastes 1-1, but they’re so close it’s almost like it’s the same person.

Wow! And that is actually remarkable to people who don’t think Solomon was the writer of Ecclesiastes. And if you were here for that message, I talked about the fact that a lot of people don’t think Solomon is the writer of Ecclesiastes.

think somebody after Solomon, maybe even 800 years after Solomon, wrote this book and acted like they were Solomon. And again I mentioned that there are a number of reasons why that is just not… we don’t need to believe that. It’s wrong to believe that. It damages our understanding of some of the other parts of Scripture if we accept that kind of argument. And so the similarity between Ecclesiastes 1 and 1, and Proverbs 1 and 1 is remarkable to, I mean it’s such a coincidence to the people who deny that Solomon wrote it, but it actually makes a lot of sense when you realize that Solomon was the author of both. Now these credentials, the words of the preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem, these credentials place Ecclesiastes in the writings section of the Old Testament. Maybe you’ve heard these divisions before. In the Old Testament we have the law, then we have the what? Prophets, and third, the third section is the writings. I already told you that one. So the law, which are the first five books of the Old Testament,

that is the books of Moses. Moses 1, Moses 2, Moses 3, Moses 4, and Moses 5 in your German Bible, if you brought that with you today. We call them Genesis Exodus Leviticus Numbers Deuteronomy, the Torah, the books of the law, written by Moses. That’s one section. The other section is the prophets. We’ve got the major and the minor prophets. And then the other section are what’s called the writings.

And the writings include things like the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes is included in that, Song of Solomon is included in that. And then there are some other some other things, it depends on who you ask, whether they include some of the the histories or the biographies, if you will, whether they include those in the writings or whether they make them their own separate category or whether they include those in the prophets. We’re not studying those, so we’re not going to get into that. But the wisdom literature in the Old Testament is intended to give us wisdom, right? The writings primarily give us wisdom, so whether you call it the writings genre or the wisdom literature, both of those are interchangeable.

For example, the Psalms give us instruction on worship. Proverbs give us instruction on wise living and decision-making. Job is included in the writings. Job gives us instruction on things like evil and the sovereignty of God. A song of Solomon gives us instruction on passion and purity, and here Ecclesiastes gives us wisdom for life under the sun. So in this title, we get the the feeling that this is one of those writings, some of the wisdom literature, and obviously written by Solomon. I won’t take time going through all the arguments that this is referring to Solomon the preacher, Cohaleth is the Hebrew word for preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. Solomon is the only one who fits those kind of categories, fits that description, and whose life, based on what we know from first kings, is consistent with the biography and the message of Ecclesiastes. So again, the title tells us who wrote it, it places it in the wisdom literature of the Old Testament, and that moves us to verse number two, and the motto of Ecclesiastes.

Hebel, hebelim, hakol, hebel. Vanity of vanities all is vanity. It’s actually repeated even more than that here in verse two. Vanity of vanity, says the preacher. Vanity of vanities all is vanity. Now, I have gone to school to learn how to do this. I paid thousands of dollars to try to figure it out, but I believe even you here this morning can tell me what the key word in verse two is. It would be the word vanity. Perhaps your translation has something else, but whatever your translation has, it has that word repeated multiple times. Meaningless, meaningless. Really, if they want to translate that accurately, they need to have meaningless of meaninglessness.

All is meaningless. You know, I’ll mention why that would be the case. Anybody have anything else other than vanity or emptiness, meaninglessness, fluff? Well, you’re looking at the ESV, so I know that’s probably not what that is. Any other translation that you have, have another word for that. So we covered them all, meaningless. That’s included in the translation. That’s the notes. That’s not the same as the translation.

All right. Well, we’re gonna stick with the word vanity, though there are other possible translations. What did you say? Were there other possibilities? Absurdity, frustration, futility, and nonsense, all those are good possible translations of this word, habel. You remember we talked about this word, habel, During the introduction, Habel occurs 38 times in ecclesiastes. And it is the recurrence of Habel is not vain repetition. It is, however, often repeated to get our point. In its literal usage, the word Habel refers to a breath or to a vapor. I mean, a breath is something that is, I mean, once it comes out, right, the vapor, the breath out of your mouth, it’s pretty pointless.

You can do almost nothing with your breath. I mean, you can offend people with your breath. If you happen to have an invisible map that you’re trying to figure out, you know, and you put lemon juice on it and you need heat, maybe, I mean, maybe, if you don’t have the secret decoder some other way. But for the most part, your breath is here and there. It’s gone. It’s pointless, useless. You can’t really control it. It’s not helpful. And so this idea of breath or vapor figuratively then describes things that are transient or temporary, things that just disappear, things that are unsubstantial, Things that are useless and things then that are vanity, meaningless, empty.

The Latin translation is vanitas. Doesn’t really do you any good other than, because when you say Latin you sound smart. So vanitas, vanity, emptiness, meaningless, vanity of vanities, all is vanity. And I say that verse two is the motto of Ecclesiastes rather than just the theme. This is the motto and I say it’s the motto because a motto, I look this up, a motto is a short sentence or phrase that encapsulates someone’s beliefs or ideals.

That’s what a motto is. And it’s not just the idea that is repeated here in Ecclesiastes. We have the specific word and even the specific phrase repeated for us numerous times. The phrase Vanity of vanities is more than just the theme. It is the motto, the dominant subject and the motto of the entire book. The function of verse two and then the poem that’s going to describe this motto to follow in verses 3 through 11 is like a haunting chorus. The chorus is something to refrain that keeps being repeated. So you sing a verse, you have the chorus, a verse and then a chorus, a new verse. Of course, chorus is always the same.

This motto, this chorus is kind of haunting. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Now the construction, vanity of vanities, is actually a pattern that we’re familiar with. I didn’t realize this until I was actually looking at some commentaries this week. Vanity of vanities. You know, there’s actually that pattern is followed with other things throughout scripture and it means something and I’ll point that out to you. It’s supposed to be an exclamation. It’s a superlative that is to talk about something in the highest degree. You’re like, well, what does that mean? Well, how about these kinds of phrases like the God of gods in Deuteronomy chapter 10 verse 17.

Lord of Lords and King of Kings. Revelation chapter 19 verse 16. How about the Song of Songs? Now our English Bibles most of them have it as the Song of Solomon but the beginning chapter 1 verse 1 of the Song of Solomon actually starts out with this same construction the Song of Songs. Ironic that again Solomon was the author of that, and maybe then using another construction that same way in Ecclesiastes, but maybe that’s just too obvious. I don’t know. And then lastly, the holy of holies.

Exodus chapter 29 verse 37, and what do all those phrases communicate? The holy of holies is what? The most holy place. The God of gods, the Lord of lords, the King of kings is the ultimate, the supreme Lord and God and King. And so you know what the subject, the motto of this book is? The highest degree of vanity and meaningless you can think of. All of it, all of life under the Sun is meaningless. Life is the ultimate, the supreme, the highest degree of meaninglessness you can imagine. Now that’s kind of depressing, or at least it could be depressing. We’ll see. If he just left us with vanity of vanities, says the preacher, vanity of vanities, maybe we could do better, but then he ends verse 2 with, all is vanity. You You mean everything?

Like everything, like all. All. Everything, each and every thing is vanity. Meaningless, empty. Well, can I suggest to you that if he actually meant all like as in there were no exceptions, then wouldn’t his very statement be meaningless too? That’s one of those, you know, logical kind of question, connection things. It’s like a person who says there is no truth. Well, is that true? Yeah. Are you telling me the truth that there is no truth? What? No. No. So to say that all is meaningless, all is vanity, and then be saying all is vanity, without any qualifications at all, probably does not fit. That would be defeating his own argument to say that there is absolutely nothing without qualification that is vanity.

There is a context. The motto, vanity of vanity is all is vanity, has a context, and the qualification for the all, or the everything is found in the next verse and really throughout the rest of the book. Namely, that everything is vanity in one location and from one perspective. And where is that? It’s in the next verse. Everything is vanity and meaningless and empty from one perspective in one location. And that is under the sun.

That’s a huge phrase. Under the Sun. The all is vanity is not describing a cosmic or a universal or an eternal truth. The all is vanity is limited to the time and space that humans inhabit the right now. It’s limited to the worldly realities where humans live. It is the secular mindset. Some of you have come across the word secular before. Secular is non-religious or non-spiritual or non-sacred. All is vanity for the secular person. The person who has no ability to think about life from a different perspective, from a spiritual perspective or an eternal perspective, all is vanity. And that means that for someone without faith, all they are capable of knowing is vanity.

Do you realize that? It is only Christians, it is only believers who have any ability to actually escape the vanity and the meaninglessness and the emptiness of life. If all you have is a this world kind of mindset, then all you can find is vanity. On the other hand, for a person with faith, for a person who has the ability to get above that, the statement, all this vanity is true, it’s just not the complete story. We know that from one perspective, from the perspective of under the sun, all this vanity, but we know that there is more.

I just wanna expand on that for a second longer. Throughout Ecclesiastes, the word habel is applied to different things, such as joy. It says joy is vanity, human actions. Human actions are habel, meaningless. Wisdom is even called habel. Wisdom, we don’t think like that, but wisdom in and of itself is vanity, labor, riches, all of those kinds of things and more are described as meaningless and empty throughout Ecclesiastes.

But you know, there are a couple of things are never included as vanity like God. Nowhere in the book of Ecclesiastes do we find that God is vanity or meaningless or empty. Nowhere do we find, though they’re brief, nowhere do we find eternity as something that is vain or empty. And so obviously for those of us who are New Testament Christians who know Jesus, who have the Holy Spirit as a guarantee of an eternal inheritance, I mean we’re looking for something beyond this life, the Holy Spirit is the guarantee of that. For those of us who are thinking on above kind of things, for those of us who know that there are eternal kinds of things, we can still agree with the comparison that in light of those things, everything under the sun is empty and meaningless and vain.

But we must be careful not to dull the edge of Solomon’s argument here. Our tendency, I think the tendency for most of you who are here this morning, our tendency is to think that we know this already. We typically, at least when we’re here at church on Sunday, we can agree. When we’re in the process of comparing God things with Earth things, we can definitely tell you that one has meaning and one really doesn’t. We’re in the process of contrasting heavenly things and eternal things with earthly things and temporal things. We can definitely tell you here at church on Sunday where the value is and that the other really doesn’t have value at all.

And yet, Monday through Saturday, we go about trying to squeeze out of this world everything we think that may be there. On Sunday we know. We know that one has value and one doesn’t. But somehow we still kind of have this maybe silent hope in the back of our minds that somehow during the rest of the week we’re going to be able to find somewhere under some rock in some place, some task that we do, some relationship that we have, some possession that we get, some level of popularity that we arrive to, we still think that somehow we can squeeze some meaning out of life under the sun. And so the danger for us New Testament Christians is to miss the weightiness of Solomon’s argument here. Do not just leave here thinking, oh yeah, I know that, because we don’t live like we know that.

One commentator wrote, we should let the word do its work before we hasten to make Ecclesiastes a grab bag of inspirational quotes. If we are not careful, we will fall into the trap of writing pious drivel. Oh, we know that God is important and things of earth are not. So let’s pursue God and then leave and go and pursue everything that the world, that the world we think has to offer us. We can’t do that. We don’t need to nor should we take sandpaper to Ecclesiastes to try to rough out the smooth spots. We need to let the roughness of Ecclesiastes smooth out our rough spots, not vice versa. Again, I think that we know that the world is passing away with all its desires.

We know that. But we still keep loving things in the world. That’s first John two. Don’t love the things of the world. Neither things in the world for the things of the world are passing away and the desires therein. But you know what? We got to stop loving the things in the world and holding out this hope that somehow maybe somebody’s just not telling us the complete story. That really if you get good enough grades and get into a good enough college and get a good enough job that can make enough money to buy you all the toys that you want and people think you’re cool and you’ve got the great clothes or whatever you think life is going to be found in.

We just kind of think, you know, we haven’t experienced that satisfaction just yet of what we have got, but we still kind of think that people, you know, they actually really have it.

just not wanted to tell us about it. And you know what Solomon is telling us through inspiration of the Holy Spirit that all of that is empty. We need to make sure that we’re thinking about it. In order to communicate that to us further we have in verses 3 through 11 a poem on vanity. I think there are two reasons, two things that suggest that verse 3 begins a new section. The first reason is because verse 2 is exactly like chapter 12 verse 8. In fact, turn there. Ecclesiastes chapter 12 verse 8. Vanity of vandies says the preacher, all All is vanity. Almost exactly the same as chapter 1 verse 2. These are kind of bookends at the beginning and at the end. And so I think, you know, chapter 1 verse 2 then is its own thing before we get to what’s next, after the bookend. So I think there we should see a difference between the motto and the poem actually starting then in verse 3, not in verse 2.

A second reason for my suggestion that verse 3 starts us on this new subsection rather than having that section start in verse 2 is because verse 3 is closely connected with the rest of the verses that follow. Chapter 1 verse 2 can kind of stand on its own, but verse 3 really needs to go with the following verses or else it doesn’t make sense. In fact, verses 4 through 11 are all proof that all is vanity which I’ll talk more about in verse 3. Now I’m also suggesting that verses 3 through 11 are a poem and though we don’t necessarily find you know cutesy rhymes and exactly the same meter you know meter so far as all your English stuff and poetry goes though they’re not exactly like a poem like we write, like Rose are red, Bites are blue, you know grass is green, snow is white. It’s not exactly like those kinds of poems and yet it is distinctly different in its meter and in some of its vocabulary than what you get in chapter 1 verse 12. Most of your Bibles probably even have verses 3 through 11 set off in a different way than just ongoing prose. So again, even though

though it’s not maybe like a poem we would think I think for Solomon it was more like a poem than just the straight prose that it gets to in verse 12. So there are four major sections of this poem and I’m hoping to talk about the first two of them this morning. First of all is the question. In this poem verses 3 through 11 we have the question in verse 3 and then in verses 4 through 8 I’m sorry, 4 through 7, we have the illustrations. In chapter 1 verse 8, we’ll get the application, and then in verses 9 through 11, we’ll have the reflection. So we have the question, the illustrations, the application, and the reflection. And I’m hoping to talk about the question and the illustrations. We’ll see how far I get. The question in verse 3, what does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun. This is a rhetorical question. It’s a genuine question, but it’s still rhetorical. That is, we don’t need to give an audible answer because we know the answer. This rhetorical question style is actually common throughout Ecclesiastes. It’s a common tool

of wisdom literature in general. Verse 3 then poses the question that the rest of the book is going to unpack. What does man gain by all the toil of which he toils under the sun? Or in other words, what profit is there? What’s the profit of all this stuff that I’ve got to do? Now again, it expects a negative answer, which I think is kind of interesting. Solomon assumes that we actually already know the answer to this question. That is, I think Solomon knows that people who are still out trying to deny this question or ignore it, still know the ultimate answer. What does a man gain by all his toil that he toils under the sun?

What is the answer to that? Nothing. Zero. You get nothing at all. There is no profit, there is no gain from all the work that you do. Period. No value, no profit, no gain. And all of us know that. All of us know that, whether again we’re ignoring it or denying it. We keep posing the question, what’s in it for me? Isn’t that really what life is about? Trying to get mine. That’s all the cool jabber jive kind of talk, you know. You know, you hear professional athletes or whoever say, I’m gonna get mine. Isn’t that maybe Jerry Maguire, you know, show me the money. What’s in it for me? What profit is there for me? What’s in it for me?

What are you gonna give me? The word gain is an important word. It actually appears nine times in Ecclesiastes and nowhere else in the Old Testament. The word gain or the word profit only found in Ecclesiastes and again, like I say, nine times. Outside of scripture, it was a commercial term that referred to profit or surplus. That is in financial terms or financial speak, it describes the difference between the amount earned and the amount you had to put out to make it happen. Right in business, you gotta pay a certain amount of money for overhead. You gotta pay money for your utilities. If you have employees, you gotta pay them for all your resources and materials, all those kinds of things, that’s your overhead.

You gotta spend that money. And then you hope to make money. And your profit or your gain, I know most of you know this, but I’m still trying to learn in the ways myself, okay? So that’s why I’m saying it for me. What you get at the end, what’s left over, that’s the profit.

I think I’ve even learned. Which is which now between gross and net income? Gross income is what you make period, everything that comes in before you have to pay out. Your net income is what is left over, what remains. That is your profit after you’ve paid everybody who needs to be paid and paid for everything that you need to pay. So here’s the question in life. After you put everything in, you pay your dues, If you do all your work, you’re going to put all this stuff in. What’s going to be for you at the end? Nothing. Life pays no dividends. There are no bonus checks in life. Your share in the stock category of life, your share is zip.

You get nothing back under the sun. And yet you work to get it. Toil, you toil. What does man by gain all the toil at which he toils under the sun? There’s some repetition there for emphasis. Sometimes this word toil is used in the Old Testament to refer to hard physical labor. Sometimes it’s used to describe mental anguish. Sometimes it’s used to describe both. I think that’s what it is here. For all of your hard physical manual labor that you do, for all the mental gymnastics that you go through trying to make things happen, and even when those go together, for all that work that you do, all that you put into life, what gain is there?

None. Under the Sun. That’s the key phrase at which he toils, under the Sun. Under the Sun is the realm where vanity reigns. It is this world, the world of men considered in its own right. To live under the sun is to be earthbound. To have no ability to get above that. And so the motto for under the sun is vanity of vanities all is vanity. The banner. If your life is summarized under the sun, you can put on every paper you ever turn in for any class. You can write on any check that you ever get from any job. You can write it over the doorpost of your house when you buy one someday. You’re a brilliant nice new house. You’re a Lamborghini or whatever car you buy.

Spray paint right on the hood. No profit if your life is bound unto the sun. Now verses four through seven bring us to the illustrations. There are four illustrations or pictures or examples of a ridiculous amount of work and toil with no profit. For examples of a bunch of hubbub with no gain. Four illustrations, passing generations, verse 4, the rising sun, verse 5, blowing wind, verse 6, and flowing water. Verse 7. Let’s see if we can cover a couple of these at least. The illustrations, first of all, passing generations. Or sorry, a generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. You want to know why all of your work gets you nothing? Because you’re not going to be around to enjoy it too much longer. You’re going to do all this work, You’re going to get all this stuff for yourself, and literally you are going to die.

One guy said like ants on a rock, we leave no trace of having been here. Cheery. We ought to put that on a poster. We do not live forever. One group of men replaces us, and that group that replaces us will be replaced by another. has been going on for a long time. The stubborn earth is the only thing that stays put. A generation goes and a generation comes again and again over and over. They’re all passing. The earth is the only constant. Now again remember the context of this poem is under the Sun. So from an under the Sun perspective the earth is the only constant. We know, those of us who have a spiritual or eternal perspective, that actually this earth is going to be destroyed as well.

It not only has not been here the whole time, it is going to be changed and we’re gonna get a new heaven and a new earth. But if your perspective is caught under the Sun, the only thing that remains steady is the earth. We all are born and then we all die. One commentator described the preacher’s interest in the dance of the dead, meaning that all we’re really doing here is dancing around until we die. In fact, death is so certain that he’s just calling us dead already. Before we die, it’s the dance of the dead. One generation comes and goes, and another comes and goes. As soon as we are born, we are preparing to die.

mortician, I guess, used to end his letters with eventually yours because everybody dies. Now this is kind of sad and fairly pessimistic. If you get stuck here, you actually feel pretty lonely, pretty isolated, and pretty meaningless ourselves. Life is hard and then we die. Psalm 90 verse 10, you don’t need to turn there. Listen to this. The years of our life are 70 or even by reason of strength 80, yet their span is but toil and trouble. They are soon gone and we fly away. You got 70 or 80 years maybe. You’re not even guaranteed that. While you’re here during all those 70 or 80 years, it’s tough and then we fly way. There’s kind of a cruel irony in this verse. It was stated by Jerome. He said, what is more vain than this vanity, that the earth, which was made for humans, stays, but that humans themselves, the Lords of the earth, suddenly dissolve into dust. What is more vain than that? We’re supposed to be the ones who are taking dominion over the earth, and yet the earth is the only thing that stays.

we don’t. The idea of constant repetition here. There’s a constant coming and a constant going. The passing of generations just continues in a cycle over and over and over again and there is nothing. I promise you there is nothing you or I are going to do to stop that. It has been happening that way before we got here. It’s going to happen that way long after we’re gone or at least until we get the new heaven and the new earth and we’re stuck in passing generations over and over again. Let’s do one more, the rising sun. Verses 5 through 7 go even further than verse 4. On passing generations we talk about the rising sun. It’s another example that although there looks like there’s a whole bunch of things happening, no real progress is being made. Just like there’s no gain for man in his toil, so there is no gain in creation in all her toil.

Creation is characterized by constant change that actually is disguising constant sameness. It looks like things are changing all the time when in fact that’s just a disguise for the fact that nothing is really changing at all. The sun runs around in circles.

wind blows in circuits for no apparent reason, and the waters pour into the sea without making the sea full and without ever finishing. We’ll talk about the wind and the water next time, but look at verse 5. The sun rises and the sun goes down and hastens to the place where it rises. What is the point of these verses of this poem? It is to emphasize the vain repetitions in life and that there is there are things that we are not in control of, which is everything, and that for all the work and labor that we do, and for all it looks like we’re doing, we’re making no progress and there’s no profit under the sun. Now this verse is actually in complete contrast to the description of the sun we get from David in Psalm 19 verse 5. Do you remember that verse? The freshmen are, the freshmen of my Bible class are writing a commentary on us, so I’ve been looking at Psalm 19 a lot as well. In Psalm 19 5, the son is pictured in his excitement or in its excitement like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like on the day of his wedding,

just excited to get up and get out and go get married. And then later on in the verse, it talks about like a strong man running his course with joy, you know, like a Kenyan marathoner who just can’t wait to get started because he knows it’s only going to take him two hours to run this this whole race and he’s just going to bust through it unlike us buffaloes who it takes four or five hours to cover the same amount of terrain. So we’ve got excitement and joy as David sees the Sun. Solomon however sees the exact same thing a lot differently like the Sun the word hasten. Hastens to the place where it rises is actually probably better translated pants And it’s the same word used to describe the exhaustion of a woman who’s giving labor or who is in labor panting and exhausted The Sun comes up at the east it gets all the way to the west and no I got to do it again No to the east To do what?

Do it again And we’re gonna do it again, and then we’re gonna do it again day after day, week after week. One of the things I’ll point out is significant is you can look at the same thing, and if your perspective is different, your conclusion will be different. David’s perspective was to see creation as it was showing off God’s glory.

And as showing off God’s glory, he saw great things in creation. You know what? When you don’t see God and you’re stuck with all this, this is what it all is, this is where the meaning and satisfaction going to happen. Creation takes on a whole different feel. Meaningless, vain, repetition. The point of verse 5 is to accentuate the repetitiveness of the sun. The sun rises, the sun sets, hustles back to rise again. Like the hypocrite in his prayers, it’s vain repetitions. When the sun goes down tonight, we have every expectation of seeing it again in the morning. It does not necessarily have the same expectation of seeing us.

We’re in the passing generations. But we plan on seeing the sun. It’s the same pattern every day. Every single stinking day. When I was in California, honestly, I got to the point of hating the morning because it was never cloudy, ever. We went like three or four months where the sun came up and was just shining bright down in on us every day. It’s like clockwork. Even if you observe the changes in the sun’s pattern over a year, it still always stays within the same limits. Day after day, year after year, it haces to the place where it rises again. The sun toils and labors and works to get from the east to the west.

And when it gets there, it isn’t done. It’s got to do it all again. The sun is running around in circles. I don’t know about you, that makes me tired, thinking about that. That’s exhausting. That’s what life is like, full of those same kind of meaningless repetitions. You wash the dishes yesterday, amazing. You have to do them again today. You put oil in your car three months ago, got to do it again. This shirt was ironed yesterday. It’s going to have to be washed and ironed so I can wear it again. Over and over. Every Monday, don’t you feel that? I mean, tomorrow will be nice because it’s a little bit of a break.

But you know what? It doesn’t change that the Tuesday is going to be the same and then we’re going to get back to a regular Monday, next Monday, and then it’s going to go on forever until we die. Well, there’s obviously two more things.

the wind, the blowing wind and the flowing water. We’ll have to talk about those next time. Life under the Sun is a prison of monotony and you can’t get out unless your perspective gets beyond under the Sun. Pastor Z was mentioning that in his message this morning as well. The goal, I think, I have more to say on this, but the goal for us in even learning and looking at life under the Sun and from the perspective of life under the Sun is that our joy would be transposed. Transpose is a musical term right where you’re changing maybe the key. You’re moving it from one key to maybe a higher key. Guys we need our joys, our loves and passions, and our priorities to be transposed. We need to get a higher perspective on life than just being stuck under the Sun. We need to get Godward in our focus rather than earth-bound and stuck, searching for significance and meaning in what’s right here. Because you know what, Hebel, Hebelim, Ha-kol, Hebel, vanity of vanities, all this vanity.

What profit, what gain is there for a man in all the toil and what you toil is under the sun? None. And I just know that some of you are still, you know that, but your Mondays through Saturdays show you striving after the wind and you’re not going to catch it. help us through your word and through your spirit to give us that wisdom. Teach us to number our days so that we may get a heart of wisdom that we would be able to tell others who are stuck in that vanity that there is meaning they just can’t see it unless they come through your son believing in him. Transpose our joys from being earthbound. to joys in you and we pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.