Part 02

Remember last week, he performed these various tests / He had come to this realization that everything was meaningless / pleasure / wisdom / toil.

An interesting mention of God

So you’ve got all this meaninglessness / you’re left thinking what’s the point? / we’re encouraged & we encourage our children to pursue meaning / pursue toil / wisdom etc. / study hard / get a job / put food on the table / Follow your passion / And if you can find a career in that thing that will be great / Make a difference / be the next mother Theresa / next Nelson Mandela / But the writer of Ecclesiastes says, meaningless / no matter how meaningful you think it is

Many have grasped this / especially many non Christians / and it’s reflected in the way they live their lives / just for this life / work hard play hard / YOLO / Carpe Deum / at the expense of family / relationships etc / make lots of money / therefore lots of money to spend on stuff, so they can enjoy life.

Ecclesiastes 2:24ff

Look at what he says:

²⁴  A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, ²⁵  for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment? ²⁶  To the person who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

24: a person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil.

Sounds similar to the guy who builds his barns in a parable Jesus tells in the New Testament / remember he says, “Let’s eat drink and be merry, because tomorrow we die.” / Or let’s eat drink and be merry because that’s it / That’s where it ends. / But here’s what the writer of Ecclesiastes not saying let’s eat drink and be merry, / or:   A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil, because that’s it / or because that’s all there is / He’s saying, “eat drink and be merry” / “eat, drink and find satisfaction in your toil” because of what there is.

The good things that we have in this world / These are gifts from God.

David Gibson on Ecclesiastes / Living life backwards / the main point of his book, is that we need to live our lives with a proper view of our death / He says that a proper perspective on death provides the true perspective on life.

Listen to what he says about this passage.

Ecclesiastes 2vs24-26.

When we accept in a deep way that we are going to die, that reality can stop us expecting too much from all the good things we pursue. We learn to pursue them for what they are in themselves, rather than what we need them to be to make us happy. Death reorients us to our limitations as creatures and helps us to see God’s good gifts right in front of us all the time, each and every day of our lives.

It really is all about perspective / the Christian perspective is a perspective that sees this life for what it is / all these things that we do on earth / All the gifts that God has given us / All the opportunities that God has given us as a means to something greater.

Life on this earth isn’t all we have / It’s what we have now / It’s part of life under the sun.

In verse 26 we see The result of the 2 perspectives

To the person who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

Can you see the difference there? / To the one who pleases God / To the one with the right perspective. / who lives his life is not just about this life / God gives wisdom knowledge and happiness / There’s meaning / purpose/ discernment / fulfillment / Because you know that it’s not just about this life.

There’s eternity with your creator / all that you’re doing now, has purpose for then / But to the person who doesn’t live for God / doesn’t see God in the purpose of what he’s doing / You’re on the treadmill of life / performing tasks.

And if you don’t know God, any eternal implications or ramifications / Anything you do that has eternal consequences / you’re not going to benefit / It’s meaningless to you.

 

And the writer gives another perspective or another comparison towards the end of verse 3:

Vs. 18. I also said to myself, “As for humans, God tests them, so that they may see that they are like the animals. (19) Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both. As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath(3); humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless. (20)All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. (21)Who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?”

So you’ve the two human perspectives / Regardless of wisdom / whatever you achieve / We all suffer the same fate / And to emphasize even more so how meaningless it is he compares humans to the animals.

 

Eg. Your pet / apart from making you happy / Their daily activities have very little significance apart from serving them in the moment.

Well, apart from God, it’s the same for us / From dust you came, to dust you will return / Isn’t that the view apart from God? / Isn’t that what many believe / So where’s the meaning? / Where’s the purpose in all of this?

So you carry on reading Ecclesiastes wondering where this teacher is actually going / Starts talking about oppression / again about toil and how meaningless that is / advancement and moving up in the ranks / how you can have all the wealth in the world / how that can be taken from you in a second / You can hoard a whole lot of things / cables / stuff / property / gadgets / cars / Life is like a vapor / It’s fleeting / In the light of eternity / In an instant, you’re not going to have those things anymore.

 

Ecclesiastes 5 vs 15:

15 Everyone comes naked from their mother’s womb, and as everyone comes, so they depart. They take nothing from their toil that they can carry in their hands. 16 This too is a grievous evil: As everyone comes, so they depart, and what do they gain, since they toil for the wind? 17 All their days they eat in darkness, with great frustration, affliction and anger.

This really doesn’t sound inspiring / helpful / promising / Just as you come into this world / You leave this world / You don’t take any of this stuff with you / All their days they eat in darkness / With great frustration, affliction and anger.

But then the teacher takes us back to that 2 ^nd perspective / that begs us to look at everything under the sun / a perspective that takes God into account / that sees the things that we have / the opportunities that we have / Everything under the sun as gifts from God.

verse 18-20

18 This is what I have observed to be good: that it is appropriate for a person to eat, to drink and to find satisfaction in their toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given them— for this is their lot. 19 Moreover, when God gives someone wealth and possessions, and the ability to enjoy them, to accept their lot and be happy in their toil— this is a gift of God. 20 They seldom reflect on the days of their life, because God keeps them occupied with gladness of heart.

You need to recognize the giver / It seems like the writer is saying that these are good gifts / because they distract you from the meaninglessness of everything / So is the writer to the Ecclesiastes saying: Lifes a journey, enjoy the ride?

 

Ecclesiastes leaves you with this sense of: There must be more.

Chapter 12: vs 1-4

1Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, “I find no pleasure in them”— 2 before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark, and the clouds return after the rain; 3 when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men stoop, when the grinders cease because they are few, and those looking through the windows grow dim;

4 when the doors to the street are closed and the sound of grinding fades; when people rise up at the sound of birds, but all their songs grow faint; 5 when people are afraid of heights and of dangers in the streets; when the almond tree blossoms and the grasshopper drags itself along and desire no longer is stirred. Then people go to their eternal homed and mourners go about the streets. 6 Remember him— before the silver cord is severed, and the golden bowl is broken; before the pitcher is shattered at the spring, and the wheel broken at the well, 7 and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. 8“ Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Everything is meaningless!”

Is that it? Is that all there is to life under the sun? / It would be if death was the end / read the rest of the chapter.

But here’s the thing, we need to realize / Jesus came and lived a life on earth / His life was not meaningless / a life that was the most meaningful / Jesus died a meaningful death / there was purpose in his death / And he rose again / And we too will rise again / we will have life beyond our earthly life.

There’s more to this life.

In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul deals with this whole issue of the resurrection.

14And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

In other words if there’s no resurrection, then what’s the point / If there’s no resurrection / Christianity is a sham / here’s what we need to realize / your eternal state / What happens beyond the vapor of this short life on earth / All depends on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ / When it comes to your eternal well being / to earning a status that gets you to stand before God / It doesn’t depend on your work / Your toil / your achievement / your wisdom / how wise or foolish you are / It doesn’t depend on anything you did / It all depends on the death and resurrection of Jesus.

 

If you’re a Christian / Don’t be dismayed by the meaninglessness of everything under the sun / Don’t get depressed about how meaningless you may think your life has been / You get to a certain age you start to reflect / You start to think about how meaningful / meaningless your life has been / Have you made a difference / Have you contributed to the world.

If you have made a difference that’s great / That’s a gift from God / If you’ve contributed to the world / That’s a gift from God / Were you wealthy? / Were you able to help others with that wealth? / Did you enjoy life? / A gift from God.

But when it comes to eternity / life beyond this life / It all counts for nought / What have you done with Jesus? / What have you done about the fact that you’re a sinner who needs forgiveness? / Because if you haven’t addressed that. . . . / Then “Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless. . . .”

Home Group Questions:

• What is Ecclesiastes all about? Give some reasons and show some passages
• If life under the sun ie. Life in the light of this world only is meaningless, how meaningful is everything we do in the light of eternity? Chapter 12vs14.
• Read 1 Corinthians 15 vs 14-19
• How central is the resurrection to our faith?
• So where should we find our meaning / significance / salvation?
• How can we show others the meaningfulness of the gospel?

Revisit Glenn Lyons REACH 2020 vision