Immanuel Sermon Audio
Ecclesiastes (21:66)
All right, well done, gentlemen, thank you for leading us. Find your Bible and find Ecclesiastes. We're still in the wisdom literature section of the Old Testament, book of Ecclesiastes. That means the five books or the section that we're in is Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon. And so we're on number four of five in the wisdom literature. Just a reminder of what each of these wisdom books sort of covers, just very broadly speaking. Job and Ecclesiastes are reflective wisdom, reflective wisdom. Psalms is a book about worship, now at the bottom, Song of Solomon is a book about marriage and then Proverbs. We talked about last week is instructive wisdom. And we talked last week about the difference and we talked about it when we looked at Job, the difference between instructive wisdom and reflective wisdom. And this is really important for you to get, not just in your head and sort of to have a definition, but just sort of to feel it and know when you approach one of these books what you're looking at. And so just a reminder, Proverbs, instructive wisdom is general, simple, basic, maxims for life. So the author of Proverbs saying this is how you can expect life to work, this is how God has set things up to operate. Reflective wisdom sort of steps back and says yes, the instructive parts are true, but there are exceptions. You can't take the instructive wisdom and hold on to it as a promise, there are exceptions to that. And so for some reason I thought about a couple of people who were members of my church in Kentucky and it's sort of a strained illustration, but it makes the point of the difference. Between instructive and reflective. And so on the one hand I had a guy in my church named Doug Choir and Doug was an old guy and he looked like an old guy and he had been around the Hollers of Kentucky for a long time and he had actually worked for IBM and made a decent chunk of change working for IBM and then he lost that chunk of change trying to breed race horses, a lot of people lose money trying to do that in Kentucky. But he was an old tobacco farmer, a lot of guys out where we were at had a job and then they farmed tobacco on the side and so Doug, farmed tobacco, he grew up, farmed tobacco and he grew up smoking tobacco from as long as he could remember being sort of able to get around on his own and help out on the farm, he said that's what we did in our family. We smoked and I have smoked all my life and so he was late 80s when I got there, a man who has smoked all of his life. On the other hand there was a lady, an older lady, not as old as Doug, but her name was Janice Chisholm and she was a widow. Her husband had died in an accident many years earlier and she had never in her entire life not one time smoked a cigarette, zero cigarettes. And while we were there, both of them got diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. And so the book of Proverbs looks at Doug and says, you have smoked all your life. That's what happens, that's what you can expect to happen. You do this for that amount of time, there's consequences and Doug knew that, he wasn't surprised by that or angry about that, he knew this is how life works. But then there's Janice, okay, so this is instructive wisdom, this is what you can expect. And then you have Janice, this is reflective wisdom. He says, well, what did I do to get lung cancer? Nothing. It's not always true that that's how you get it and that's what happens and this is 100% ironclad, there's exceptions. And that's sort of the picture you see in Proverbs on the one hand, this is generally what you can expect and Job and Ecclesiastes saying, but there are exceptions and it's not quite as neat as we'd like it to be sometimes. There's another way to think about Job, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, I'll put this on the screen. In a way, all three books are about success. Job is about wisdom for people who have lost success, who had had it good and then they've lost it. Proverbs is a book about wisdom for people who want success. And instructive wisdom, for example, says, don't be lazy, you'll prosper. Work hard, there will be an abundance. Be responsible with your money. You won't have to be the slave to the creditor, to the lender, to the person that you borrowed from, sort of just general things for people who want success. And then Ecclesiastes is wisdom for people who have it, saying you strive for it and you want things to go well and you sort of do all these things all of your life, hoping that everything falls into place and sometimes it all just falls into place. And it all goes exactly like you wanted it to go. And in that situation, you need wisdom on how to think about things and how to deal with things and how to view life. And so Ecclesiastes provides wisdom in that way. How many of you have seen Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory? The original, not the new one with the creepy Johnny Depp and all that. The original with Gene Wilder. And so there's a scene at the end of the movie, if you've seen it, all the kids get destroyed or whatever. And Charlie and Wonka and Grandpa Joe are in the great glass elevator and they crash through the ceiling and they're sort of swirling around the town and he tells Charlie, "I'm giving you the factory and all these sort of things." And then there's a line at the end. I looked it up to make sure I got it exactly right. Wonka looks at Charlie and he says, "Charlie, don't forget. What happened to the man who suddenly got everything he always wanted?" And Charlie says, "What happened?" And Wonka says, "He lived happily ever after." You know from watching celebrity culture in our society that that's not true. And the book of Ecclesiastes is a warning and it just sort of comes up to Wonka and slaps him across the face and says, "Wait a minute. Don't forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he ever wanted. He realized it wasn't enough. He realized it wasn't satisfying. He realized it didn't give him true meaning or fulfillment or joy. And so you know that the lie of Hollywood, Willy Wonka or other movies or the lie, you could just say of our consumer culture and you could say the lie of every commercial you see on TV every day. Every commercial is. If you just had this, then you would live happily ever after. If you just had the Lexus, everything would be so much better. If you just had this vacation, everything would be so much better. If you just had this financial security, everything would be so much better. And Ecclesiastes just sort of gets in the face of that mentality and says, "Not necessarily anything wrong with the Lexus or the vacation or the financial security but if you're putting your hope in that and if you're looking to that to provide fulfillment and joy and meaning in life, you've totally, totally missed it." So let's jump into Ecclesiastes. Look at chapter 1 verse 1. It says, "Right out of the gate, the words of the preacher, the son of David, King in Jerusalem." People say that this is Solomon, obviously he would have been the son of David and the king in Jerusalem. Technically, son can mean descendant, offspring, grandson, great grandson and so it could be talking about one of the other kings but tradition says that Solomon wrote this book. There's two phrases and you find them right here at the beginning of chapter 1 but they're all throughout the book and you've got to know these phrases. If you don't understand these two words and what they mean, you miss everything in Ecclesiastes and it's as dangerous as proverbs if you don't get your feet on level ground to begin with. And so the first phrase is this. It's the word vanity or some translations use the word meaninglessness or meaningless. You find it 35 times in the book of Ecclesiastes. The whole book is only 12 chapters and we'll go from chapter 1, chapter 1, verse 1 all the way to the end of 12 in summary form but vanity. Literally, it means it's meaningless. The Hebrew word interesting is the word able, Cain and Abel. It's the same root word. And so the idea and Abel's name is remember, Cain and Abel are born after the fall is that it's meaningless, it's fruitless, it's pointless, it's different than it used to be. It's not what God intended it to be. And sometimes you find in this book we'll see it several times tonight. It talks about chasing the wind, right? And that's a poetic way of describing what vanity means. This is vain, the preacher says. It's like you're chasing the wind and you can just, you live in a windy place. You can imagine the folly or the foolishness of that somebody running around trying to chase the wind. So vanity is the first phrase you need to know. Second phrase you need to know is under the sun, 28 times in the book. And under the sun means life on this earth considered apart from God. Evaluating life, evaluating your circumstances, evaluating the things that God has poured into your life or the things that you enjoy, evaluating all of that without taking God into consideration. Does that make sense? It's literally under the sun, the sun and down, life down here as if there was no one up there in charge, sovereign, in control, giving meaning, giving direction. And so look at chapter one verse two, it says vanity of vanities, says the preacher, vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What does a man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? So you got both of those phrases right out of the gate in Ecclesiastes. And so we're going to ask questions tonight and the questions are going to use both of those phrases and you just got to keep in your mind what they mean. Vanity means it's meaningless, it's empty, it's void, it's pointless. Under the sun means we're talking about life as if God didn't exist. We're looking for meaning and purpose and direction as if there were no God, life under the sun. Okay? So the first question is this, what is vanity under the sun? What different things are meaningless when you consider them apart from God? And this list is going to just lift you up and bless your heart tonight. We're going to read this list and you're just going to get the warm fuzzies and you're not going to help from just grinning and feeling like you just want to go pet a bunny rabbit and cuddle up by fire. It's just going to make you so happy. But this list is going to tell you, okay? What is vain? What is meaningless when you consider it apart from God? So here we go. Number one, everything, a good way to start the list. One is meaningless, considered as if God did not exist. We already read chapter one, verse two, look down at chapter one, verse 12 to 14. I the preacher have been king over Israel and Jerusalem and I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. You read that and you say, man, what a pessimist. But remember, he's talking under the heavens, under the sun. Considering this life as if there were no God, he says, it's an unhappy thing. It is not a good situation if you look at it that way. Verse 14, I've seen everything that is done under the sun and behold, it is all vanity and a striving after the wind. So number one, everything. Number two, wisdom is meaningless. If you're thinking about wisdom as if God didn't exist, chapter one, verse 17, I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly and I perceived that this also is but a striving after the wind. In much wisdom is much vexation and he who increases in knowledge increases in sorrow. You know that's true just by looking at children in the way that children can be so carefree and so light hearted at times and sometimes you look at your kids or your grandkids and you think they don't have anything weighing them down. They don't even know how difficult life can be and that's a good thing for a time. But you look at them and you think at some point it just is going to come crashing down on you and you're going to realize that life is tough and it's difficult. And so he says, look, much knowledge, much learning, much wisdom, it's vanity. If you're doing it as if God did not exist. Number three, pleasure. Pleasure is vanity. Chapter two, verse one, I said in my heart come now, I will test you with pleasure. Enjoy yourself. Behold, this also was vanity and you can keep reading. He talks about lots of things under this big heading of pleasure. He talks about alcohol. He talks about accomplishment in life. He talks about possessions and material things. He talks about money. Anything that could bring you pleasure. He just sort of lists it off and he says, I looked for pleasure in all these different places for just satisfaction and trying to fill this void in my heart with something under the sun. It's all meaningless. All of it. None of it did what I hoped that it would do. Number one, two, three, four, work. Chapter two, look at verse 18. I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, under the sun because other places in this book, he's going to say work is a good thing and you come back and you look and you say, wait a minute, you can't have it both ways. Do you hate it or do you like it? Which way is it? And he's saying my work, my toil under the sun, saying that I must leave it to the man who will come after me and who knows whether he will be wise or full, yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This is vanity. So you see one aspect of work that he thinks is meaningless, right? I can work my tail off to do great things, but someday I'm going to die and I'm just going to leave it to somebody else and they might not appreciate it, they might not keep it up, they might not take care of it. It could all go to pot is meaningless, it's vanity. So I turned about and I gave my heart up to despair over the toils of my labors under the sun because sometimes a person who is toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it. This is vanity and a great evil. In other words, sometimes you work your tail off and you amass a fortune and then you die and you leave it to your kid and they did nothing to earn it. He says, what a terrible situation, what a rotten thing. And you've seen people that that's happened to. Sometimes it goes okay, but sometimes it goes really bad and he says, this is meaningless. This is vanity. What does a man have? What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart which he toils beneath the sun? All his days are full of sorrow, his work is full of vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest, this also is vanity. In other words, work is stressful and you find yourself awake at night, not able to just shut off thinking about all the things that you need to do and it just wears you out and he says the whole thing, work is vanity. Farmers know that this is true. Think about some of the people we knew in Kingfisher, Kingfisher calls itself the buckle of the wheat belt and they pride themselves on their wheat farming and their wheat crops and these big harvests and go to church with these guys, have these men in my church who are great farmers and I mean work like dogs and have all of their life. And then I see some of those guys die and they leave their fields to their kids who don't work like dogs who are just dogs and the field pretty soon looks like a dog's been running around in it and you say decades and decades of work just flush it, it's gone. You have nothing for it so he says work is vanity under the sun. Next popularity, being popular, fame, right, being loved, you may think of celebrities when you think about this but all of us struggle with the desire to be liked and the desire for people to approve of us and the preacher says here that it's vanity. Look at chapter 4 verse 13 and you got to put your thinking cap on when you read these verses because they're tricky, it's reflective wisdom, you got to think about it, you got to mull it over. Ecclesiastes 4.13, better was a poor and a wise youth than an old and a foolish king who no longer knew how to take advice, think about that. Better was a poor and a wise youth than an old and foolish king who no longer knew how to take advice. He went from the prison to the throne though in his own kingdom he had been poor so this king makes a dramatic rise because I saw all the living who move about under the sun, there's that phrase again, all the living who move about under the sun along with that youth who was to stand in the king's place. Look at verse 16, there was no end of all the people, all of whom he led. There was a mass of people that this king had influence over and they looked to him as the king and they looked to him as the leader. There was no end to these people yet those who come later will not rejoice in him. Surely this also is vanity and striving after the wind. He says look I'm talking about the pinnacle, the king and he's got this mass of people who look to him as the king and he says I know that the king's going to die and the people won two generations down the road will not really think much about the king. Yeah, he's popular now but give it a few years. Either he'll be unpopular in this life or when he dies he'll just be forgotten and not that he will be unpopular he'll just be nothing. I can see this in Kentucky we had a cemetery outside the church, it was an old church, church was founded in 1825 and we had a cemetery. Right there in the front of the church and you can go out there and there was a lot of people who were too poor to purchase a headstone and so they used a rock and so all over this cemetery there's rocks half buried and the ADD person wants the yard neat and wants to pull all the rocks out and they say no no that's a great, that's a headstone and there was a time when a family gathered around that spot and they remembered that person and they put that stone there as a memorial and for the people standing there there was a connection, there was emotion, there was love, there was a relationship and then time goes by, nothing. It's just a rock and he's saying that happens to the king, the one that everybody knows, that everyone looks to. He leads all of these people and one day the people who come later they don't even care about him, one way or the other it's all vanity, it's a popularity. Here's one that I left off of your sheet. I noticed this when I was putting the slides together and it's my mistake but dreams and when I say dreams I don't mean you eat a cheeseburger at 9 o'clock and you have funny dreams at night, I mean like ambitions, plans, goals, things that you set out in your future that you would like to accomplish Ecclesiastes 5, Ecclesiastes 5 1 to 7 is one of my favorite passages in the Bible but just look at verse 7, it says where dreams increase and words grow many, there is vanity, God is the one you must fear and again when he's talking about dreams he's not talking about visions in the night, excuse me he's talking about your plans and your ambitions and all these things that you sort of put on your agenda and you say I'm going to cross this off my list, I'm going to accomplish this, I'm going to achieve this, he says you can have all those dreams in the world, whatever, it's vanity, you may accomplish them, great, vanity, you may fail to accomplish them, who cares, vanity, this is the Old Testament passage of James, you know James in the New Testament says look, I want you people to talk about we're going to go to this town and we're going to make so much money and we're going to go to that town and we're going to make all this money and then we're going to go do this and we're going to make all this money and James says what your life is a vapor, we don't even know what you're talking about, you can make all these plans, it's just meaningless, God's in control of your life, quit acting like you're the master planner, it's all vanity, next money, money, look at Ecclesiastes 5'10, says he who loves money will not be satisfied with money nor he who loves wealth with his income, this also is vanity, that verse doesn't say you don't need money, it doesn't say money is not important but it says if you love it, it will not satisfy you, if you love wealth, it will not deliver on its promises of satisfaction and peace and contentment and joy and meaning of life, it's all just vanity, put a picture up on the screen, ok, Mr. Rockefeller, I think we talked about him a couple of weeks ago, man had more money, I thought about trying to give you some examples of how much money he had back in his day compared to how much money that is today, listen, the man had a lot of money, a lot of money and this is the guy that they said how much money is enough, he had more money than anybody on the planet and what did he say, a little bit more, not enough yet, he just needed a little bit more, he asked me tomorrow, I need a little bit more, it's vanity, you are chasing the wind, I think I forgot to show you a picture and it's a great picture so I want to go back and show it to you, put it up there Catherine, anybody know what that is? It is an Amarillo, actually it's outside of Amarillo, just barely outside of Amarillo, if you go to Lubbock and you go north and you're on I-27 right before you come into Amarillo, there's a movie theater on the left and there is this lovely statue out in the field on the right and yes, those are gym socks painted on the legs of that person, you ever heard of the poem Aussie Mandius, it's an old poem and before you read the poem you read this description sort of of a statue and the statue that's described looks like that, ok, at one point you can just picture this huge statue but now all that's left is the legs and the poem is Aussie Mandius talking about how great he is and it's written at the base of the statue and the paraphrase of the poem is I'm the greatest, no one will ever forget me, everyone loves me, I built this statue so everyone will remember me, I'm the greatest, the greatest, I'm Aussie Mandius and then you look at the statue and it looks like this and you say we forgot you, statue fell down, we don't remember you, ok, this is going back to popularity and I just like the picture and I forgot to mention it, you can put your hope in popularity and the approval of people and people liking you and people knowing you and eventually this is you, right, you're the rock in the cemetery, nobody remembers, you're Aussie Mandius, cut off at the knees, nobody remembers, it's all vanity, next after money, this is a good one, the laughter of fools is vanity, the laughter of fools, these are the people who approach life and say life is meaningless, it's pointless, the popular phrase for young people today is yolo, you only live once, so make it good, have fun, live it up, get after it, just be stupid, do whatever you want to do, have as much fun as you can possibly have, you only live once, here you go, have fun and Ecclesiastes says, not surprisingly, that's stupid, that's vanity, it's foolish, it's meaningless, it's empty, Ecclesiastes seven, verse six, as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so as the laughter of fools, this also is vanity, the laughter of fools is like thorns burning in a fire, crackling in a fire, it's meaningless, you hear it, it's gone, it's over, meaningless, no substance to it, it's just there, you heard it in the fire, crack, gone, empty, chapter eight, what else is vanity injustice, under the sun, apart from God, injustice is meaningless, it's empty, talks about Ecclesiastes eight, ten, he begins to talk about justice and injustice, read these verses carefully, he says, then I saw the wicked buried, the wicked, they used to go in and out of the holy place and they were praised in the city where they had done such things, this is vanity, so he says in verse 10, the wicked, they used to live so high on the horse and look so great, but in the end they got what's coming to them and we buried them, vanity, verse 11, because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children a man is fully set to do evil, in other words people think that because they can get away with evil for a while that it's never going to catch up with them and they set their heart to do more evil because they say, well, nothing happened the first time I did it, I'll try it again, there are no consequences when I did it that time, I'll do it again, he says this is vanity, verse 12, though a sinner does evil a hundred times and prolongs his life, I know that it will be well with those who fear God because they fear him, it will not be well with the wicked, neither will he prolong his days like a shadow because he does not fear before God, now listen to me, verse 12 and 13 are like a, you highlight him and you say that's instructive wisdom, that's generally what's true, the wicked are going to get what's coming to him and it will be well for the people who fear God, generally that's true, look at verse 14, there is a vanity that takes place on the earth, here's what's generally true but there is a vanity that takes place on the earth, there are righteous people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked and there are wicked people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the righteous, I said that this also is vanity, so he just says look, most of the time you get what's coming to you, if you're wicked you're going to pay the consequence, if you fear God it's going to be good for you but he says let me tell you about something that's vain and meaningless and empty under the sun, sometimes the righteous people get a raw deal and sometimes the wicked people just keep getting away with it, that's life and if you look at it under the sun it's meaningless, the future is also vanity, told you this list was going to lift you up, Ecclesiastes 7, 8, next time somebody asks you what is your favorite Bible verse, you need to say my favorite Bible verse is Ecclesiastes 11, 8 and then tell them to look it up, see what they say, Ecclesiastes 11, 8, if a person lives many years, let him rejoice in them all but let him remember that the days of darkness will be many, all that comes is vanity, you can live a long time on this earth but you're going to be dead a long time afterwards, if you're looking at life under the sun, right, you lived 70 years, good for you, how many years were you dead after that, you lived 90 years, that's fantastic, how many years did you spend in the grave after that, there's a long time down there in the dark if you're looking at life under the sun, so he says the future is vanity, he says the same thing in chapter 1, if you want to go backwards, Ecclesiastes 1 verse 9, this is a good verse, what has been is what will be, what has been done is what will be done, there's nothing new under the sun, you can look to the future for all this progress and all these new ideas and isms and philosophies and this and that, we've seen it all, there is nothing new under the sun, it's the same old stuff repackaged in different ways, the future is vanity, youth and health are vanity. Ecclesiastes 11, 10, remove vexation from your heart and put away pain from your body, for youth and the dawn of life are vanity, the dawn of life, birth itself, you think about what could be more exciting and hopeful than celebrating a new birth and he says listen, if you're going to look at the situation honestly under the sun as if there is no God, it's vanity, it's meaning less, so what, there's a new life, someday it's going to end, someday there's going to be pain, someday there's going to be vexation, you can't escape it, it's vanity, youth and health, there's an interesting group of articles on the internet, I see regularly now, sometimes I see them on get on Fox News or CNN to look at the news or maybe I'm scrolling through Facebook or something, you see these articles and they say what happened to and then you fill in the blank with a famous celebrity and in these articles the famous celebrity is like old school, okay, like what happened to, what's the guy from Smokey and the Bandit? Burt Reynolds, what happened to Burt Reynolds and they want you to click on the link and look at the pictures and you pull the pictures up and do you know what happened to him? He got old, that's it and they look at him and say oh but look, look how he used to look, look how pretty he was when he was driving that race car and Smokey and the Bandit and look at him now, what happened to him, he's been giving old, that's what he's been doing and you read these articles like it's so shocking like well did they have some kind of crazy surgery or did they have they just been sitting in a room smoking cigarettes all day long and their skin, their skin got wrinkly, what happened, they got old, that's just what happens and the preacher is saying look youth, the dawn of life, you're going to get old, it's vanity, it's meaningless, if you're looking at that to give you hope, what a waste. Our culture needs to hear that, we think with a surgery here and a surgery there and a procedure here and a procedure there that we can just sort of prolong what's coming and the preacher would say if he just was updating his book for 2015 in the United States of America there might be a Ecclesiastes 1110b that says and all the plastic surgery stuff and all the stuff you do that makes you think you're going to be around forever and look so good forever, vanity, meaningless, hopeless. Okay we'll sum it up where we started, what is vanity, everything, everything. Now everything, look at chapter 12 verse 8, vanity of vanities says the preacher all is vanity, that sums it up. Okay so that is a encouraging list of things that are vanity under the sun. Let's ask this question, why? Why are those things meaningless when you consider them apart from God's existence? And the answer in the book of Ecclesiastes is one word, very, very simple. Why is everything under the sun vanity? Death. And that goes back to work, money, youth, pleasure, all of the things we just listed. At the end of the day you die, that's how the story ends. That's what we keep coming back to in all of this vanity and all of this meaningless. Whatever you find hope in, wisdom, work, accomplishment, pleasure, eventually you die and look in your Bible at Ecclesiastes chapter 3 verse 18 19 and 20. Listen if you read these verses and you don't understand what he means by under the sun, these verses will just, you'll think the preacher is crazy, under the sun, okay. I said in my heart with regard to the children of man that God is testing them that they may see that they themselves are but beasts. For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath and no man has an advantage over the beast. For all is vanity, all go to one place, all are from the dust and to dust all return. Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes downward to the earth. Who knows? If you're looking at life under the sun and you're just going to be honest about the situation you say okay here's a cow. Maybe this cow is born and killed young in life, the fat and calf and he doesn't live much or maybe this cow goes out to pasture and he's a milk cow and he enjoys a nice life living out in the pasture eating grass or maybe he's a bull cow and he gets to enjoy lots of female cows and that's his life. At the end what happens to the cow? He dies and you could be in lots of different situations in life. Prosperity, money, success, pleasure, whatever, popularity, in the end what happens to you? You die and if you're looking at things as if there is no one up there we're just down here, in the end it's all meaningless because we're all going to die. So that's why it's all vanity. Lastly, how do we respond? What do we do to this vanity on life apart from God? Number one, remember there is a time for everything, a time for everything. Ecclesiastes 3 says there's a time to die, to pluck up what's planted, to kill, to heal, to break down, to build, to weep, to laugh, to mourn, to dance, to cast away stones, together stones, together to embrace, to refrain from embracing, to seek, to lose, to keep, to cast away, to tear, to sow, to keep silent, to speak, to love, to hate, for war, for peace. There is a time for everything in this world. That's not a justification for sin but it's just a cold hard acknowledgement of the facts that life under the sun has ups and downs and you're going to have good times and you're going to have bad times. And this is a guy who looked high and low with great resources at his disposal for the meaning of life and he says, look, it really doesn't matter how much you have or how much you don't have or whatever. There's going to be some good times and some bad times and you're going to celebrate some things and you're going to cry about some things and you're going to build some things up and you're going to tear some things down. That's just life. And you've got to acknowledge that. You've got to understand that so that you're not frustrated in this life now. The health and wealth preachers, they want to just ignore this and they want to go to proverbs and they just want to say, look, you do this, it goes great. You do this, it goes great. You do this, it's easy. You do this, everything goes your way, instructive, instructive, instructive wisdom. And when you hear that, now you fire back and you say, wait a minute, reflective wisdom, ecclesiastes. There is a time for things to go great, but there's a time that they're going to go bad and the Bible's clear about that. So number one, you remember this. There's a time for everything under the heavens. Number two, remember that everything under the sun is not everything. That's a big one. When you read this book, you've got to remember he's talking about life. He's looking for meaning under the sun as if there is no God. You read it and you understand everything under the sun is not really everything. There is something, someone else, and you see it at the end of the book. Look at Ecclesiastes 12. Ecclesiastes 12, 13 and 14. The end of the matter, all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments. This is the whole duty of man. God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil. In other words, there is someone not under the sun as he's using this phrase poetically above who brings meaning and who brings direction to your life. And here's the meaning. You fear him and you keep his commandments. You want to find a fulfillment in life and meaning in life and direction in life. Don't look to money, don't look to pleasure, don't look to prosperity, don't look to all these wisdom, all these other things. Fear God and you keep God's commandments. You look at this book and how it ends, it reminds me of C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis has a great quote and it goes pretty close to this. He says, "If there is a longing in my heart that cannot be satisfied in this world, the most basic conclusion I can reach is that I'm made not for this world." If I find an emptiness in my heart that I try to cram everything into, that's what he's doing in Ecclesiastes. I'm trying to fill it up, fill up this emptiness. Here, there, anything I can shove in it and at the end he says it doesn't work. And C.S. Lewis says, "If you find that, that there's nothing on this world that can truly satisfy you in a lasting, genuine way, maybe you're not made for this world. Maybe everything under the sun isn't everything." So you've got to remember that. Lastly, you remember this, remember that Jesus alone gives us hope. Jesus gives us hope. Okay, look at Ecclesiastes 12, the last two verses. I want you to see that these verses give you direction. The end of the matter, it has been heard, all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments. This is the whole duty of man. What you really need to worry about is fearing God and keeping his commandments. You say, "Okay, now I have direction. Now I can find purpose, but look at the next verse. God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil." If you're honest, you look at those verses and you say, "Okay, I have direction, but I also have a problem. Direction, fear God, keep his commandments. Okay, I can set the bearings in this direction." The problem, I have not done that very well. And my track record says, "I'm not going to do it perfectly going forward." And now you're telling me that God will bring every deed into judgment, every secret thing, whether good or evil. And you look at that and you say, "Well, thanks for the direction in life, but now I'm hopeless. It's vanity. If God's going to bring it all into judgment, and none of it gets swept under the rug or forgotten about, I'm in really big trouble." And that's where you go to the New Testament because you're grateful to have a New Testament and you look at 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and you find the answer for what God's people were waiting for and hoping for in the Old Covenant. 2 Corinthians 5 verse 21 says, "For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." That gives you hope, right? The first verse there at the end, Ecclesiastes 12, 13 gives you direction. "Fear God, keep his commandments." 2 Corinthians 5, 21 gives you hope, saying, "Okay, I have not done that." And now you say, "God's going to bring every deed into judgment. Nothing gets swept under the rug." And you find hope in Corinthians that says, "But listen, the one who was righteous, who had no blemish, no secret thing to be brought before God, took your punishment. He became sin for you. He took your sin so that when your faith is put in Jesus Christ, you can become the righteousness of God. And when you stand before God, and he's going to bring every deed into judgment, every secret thing, whether good or evil, he doesn't look at you, the failure, the screw up, the loser. He looks at Jesus who was righteous and you pass the judgment. So your hope at the end of the day is in Jesus. So there's Ecclesiastes, gives you direction, is a reality check, but then it also drives you to the cross and it gives you hope in pointing you to Jesus. So let me pray for us and we'll wrap it up. Lord, we love you. Thank you for your goodness. Thank you for your faithfulness. Thank you for your word. Thank you that it's true. Thank you that in the midst of a culture that is so confused about you and so confused about the meaning of life and the purpose of life. Thank you that we have truth to set our bearings toward. And Father, we live in a place among people who are looking for meaning in a million different places. And Father Solomon looked in all of these places and he found them empty. And Father, we come to you and if we're honest, we look in in the same places, we look for meaning under the sun. And Father, we tonight acknowledge that as wrong and as foolish, that we're like people chasing the wind. Father, and we want to consistently set our eyes and our hearts on you. And we want to be people who fear you and who keep your commandments and who find our hope in Jesus Christ who lived the life of perfect righteousness so that we could be declared just and perfect and sinless. And Father, we find hope in Jesus Christ who took our sin, every sin, every secret thing that maybe no one else on this earth knows about Father. He took all of it and he paid the penalty for it and we're grateful for that. Father, be with us as we leave, as we go back to life, as we go back to work, back to our families, we want to have our bearings set properly. We want to fear you. We want to keep your commandments. We want to find our hope in your son Jesus Christ. We pray in his name tonight. Amen.