The Plowman

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An exposition of Ecclesiastes 1:12-18. This message by Pastor Rod Harris was delivered by Pastor Rod Harris on Sunday morning, July 18, 2010.

Introduction
It may not always be expressed in the same way.  In fact, it may not be worked out to the point the person even understands what they are longing for but people want to know, “why they are here.”  I don’t mean why they are in church today.  I mean why are they on the planet?  Why do they exist?  What is the purpose or meaning of life?  Tied directly to this question is the confusion surrounding why the accumulation of wealth, power and influence does not satisfy.  You may say, “Well I’ve really not been given the opportunity to test that hypothesis.  I can’t say wealth, power and influence does not satisfy I haven’t experience any of them for myself.”  Perhaps not but you’ve desired something.  Something that you believed, if you just got it – you would know happiness.  So you worked and you planned and you saved and finally you got what you wanted and it was wonderful…for a while.  But soon the joy passed.  The newness wore off.  It did not satisfy and something else caught your attention and you were certain that it would bring lasting joy.

Just for fun the other day I “googled” – “the path to happiness.”  I found listed several websites that promised to guide me down the path to true and genuine happiness.  One was actually named pathtohappiness.com!  The website assures Happiness is not a result of what happens to us, it is a result of the stories we tell ourselves about what happens to us.  The site promises to guide you through a process of identifying the stories you tell yourself, how to evaluate them, offer you other stories that might better serve you and thus lead you to genuine, lasting happiness.  According to an article in USA Today one of the fastest growing industries in the country is “Life Coaching.”  A life coach is an individual who comes along side to get you “unstuck” professionally or personally.  I would have to add to this, because it was not covered in the USA Today article, “spiritual coaching.”  According to the article, written in 208, there were 10,000 life coaches operating in the United States.  That number has risen dramatically over the last couple of years.  Why?  In spite of all of our technological advances, regardless of our high standard of living, despite Facebook, people are lonely, frustrated, unfulfilled and empty.  The cry of “the preacher” 10 centuries before Christ rings true today, “Vanity of vanities!  All is vanity!”  All of life is empty, transient and passing.  Our text this morning is found in the first chapter of the book of Ecclesiastes.

Text: Ecclesiastes 1:12-18
The preacher, the one who calls the assembly is walking us through a process.
He is surveying his life and looking at his life as a great experiment.
He is thinking out loud about life and its lessons.
At times he seems depressed and melancholy but you must remember the phrase, “Under the sun.”

Life with God out of the equation.
Life without regard for God or the things of God.
Life from a merely human perspective leads to these conclusions.
It is a fallacy to believe the writer thinks nothing in life is worthwhile.

He is not saying there is nothing of any value in anything – he is saying, if there is no God and this is all there is – it is ultimately empty and unsatisfying.  Sin always has its pleasures.  The most godless person you can think of has his moments of peace and joy.  The point is such peace and joy ultimately prove to be fleeting.  They do not last and they do not satisfy.

He begins by stating his conclusion – life under the sun is full of vanity.
Vanity = empty, transient, fading, unsatisfying, unfulfilling
Life apart from God is an endless drudgery leading nowhere.
It is a meaningless, monotonous existence.
It is an empty memory.
In other words it is a vain and empty pursuit.

We pick up with verse 12 of chapter 1 (read the text).

Here we discover…
Thesis: Any attempt to gain meaningful satisfaction through intellectual pursuits proves to be a fool’s errand.

You know what a fool’s errand is – it is a fruitless mission or undertaking; a completely absurd and pointless pursuit.  It is a task or activity that has no hope of succeeding.  That’s what Solomon describes in our text.

I think we need to understand this because we live in a culture that believes if you just “educate” people everything will be okay.  The problem is people just don’t know.  When they know this or that is wrong or hurtful they won’t do that anymore.  That’s not true.  It’s not that simple.  Don’t misunderstand me – I’m all for education.  “I are educated” but knowledge, by and in itself, is not the answer.  Solomon makes that clear in our text.

Let me point out 3 things.

1. A sincere, diligent search for meaning through mere human wisdom proves fruitless.  (1:12-14)
2. In spite of profound effort applied with genuine desire answers prove to be allusive.  (1:15-17)
3. Such pursuits only add to the misery of life apart from God.  (1:18)

Conclusion
Solomon did not say, and I’m certainly not going to say, that if you are not a Christian you cannot know any joy in this life.  Of course there are moments of joy, peace and genuine happiness but they ultimately fade.  They are transient, they are passing.  Those moments will not fill the emptiness deep within your soul.  In fact those moments only cause you to hunger more for genuine, lasting fulfillment.  A fulfillment that can only be known through Christ.

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An exposition of Ecclesiastes 1:1-11. This message by Pastor Rod Harris was delivered at Trinity Baptist Church on Sunday morning, July 11, 2010.

Introduction
Power is an illusion.  Fame is fleeting.  Life is but a vapor.  We spend our days fighting and clawing our away to the top.  We struggle and strain in the hopes that we will achieve some success, that we will be remembered for some great thing.  All the while knowing that the vast majority of us will live and die in obscurity.  Few will take note that we traveled this way.  Oh, and those who do achieve notoriety – they too will one day be forgotten.  Doris Kearns Goodwin, the presidential biographer, gives these haunting words about the end of Lyndon Baynes Johnson:

A month before he died, he spoke to me with immense sadness in his voice.  He said he was watching the American people absorbed in a new president, forgetting him, forgetting even the great civil rights laws that he had passed.  He was beginning to think his quest for immortality had been in vain, that perhaps he would have been better off focusing his time and attention on his wife and his children, so then he could have had a different sort of immortality through his children and their children in turn.  He could have depended on them in a way he couldn’t depend on the American people.  But it was too late.  Four weeks later he was dead.  Despite all his money and power he was completely alone when he died, his ultimate terror realized.  (from a commencement address quoted in Holman Old Testament Commentary: Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs page 20.)

At one point the most powerful man in the world.  A few years later he died…alone.  Just one of many of the once great who are now footnotes in history.  Is it any wonder the “preacher” cried, ?“Vanity of vanities!  All is vanity?”  We live in a skeptical age, among jaded people.  Life has been robbed of any meaning.  The endless pursuit of materialism has proven fruitless.  The power of pleasure to satisfy has proved to be an illusion.  We are left to wonder, “Is life worth living?”  By the way we are not the first to wonder about that.  10 centuries before Christ a perceptive preacher asked, “What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?”  In other words, “What profit is there in living?”  Our text this morning is found in chapter one of the book of Ecclesiastes.

Text: Ecclesiastes 1:1-11
Admit it – this is an odd and confusing book!
It is part of the “wisdom literature” of the Old Testament.
Though the author is not named it has been assumed that Solomon authored this book.
That would make Solomon the author of three O.T books:
Song of Solomon or Song of Songs – written as a young man – about marital bliss.
Proverbs – written during midlife – extolling the virtue of wisdom rooted in the “fear of God.”
Ecclesiastes – written at the end of his life demonstrating the folly of life apart from God.

The book has been a source of conflict through the years.  There have been various approaches taken in trying to make sense of it.  Is this the rantings of an “eternal pessimist?”  Do we have here the reasoned arguments of a religious and philosophical skeptic?  It seems, at times, the author blatantly contradicts other Scripture or at least makes some very unorthodox statements.  When reading the book you get the idea the writer has “issues.”

But actually the dark, foreboding and brooding conclusions we find throughout the book are not the author’s final conclusions.  For his ultimate assessment we have to wait until the end of the book.  The preacher is “talking” through the issues.  He is speaking “out loud” as he works his way through these deep, theological and philosophical questions.

We begin in chapter 1.
The first 11 verses serve to remind us that…

Thesis: Life apart from Christ is a vain and empty pursuit.

There are three things I want to point out in our text.

1. Life apart from Christ is filled with never-ending drudgery that leads nowhere.  (1:1-8)
2. Life apart from Christ is a meaningless, monotonous existence.  (1:9-10)
3. Life apart from Christ is an empty memory.  (1:11)

Conclusion
“Pastor, thanks for the uplifting sermon today!”  That’s my point.  You cannot appreciate the wonder of God’s grace until you taste the despair of life without Him.  Friend, life apart from Christ is a vain and empty pursuit.  In contrast Jesus said, “I have come that you might have life and that life in abundance.”