The Myth of Human Progress

Transcript

in a fallen world, dealing with all the effects of the fall. And because of that, Ecclesiastes serves as kind of a counter-narrative to what some people consider cookie-cutter Christianity. This book will give you the freedom to remove your plastic smiles when life takes an unexpected turn for the worst. And so while this book can be challenging both to hear and to understand and process, my prayer for us is that it will ultimately serve as a great encouragement to you. Because this book reveals to us that God wants to engage with us in the complexities of our emotions. He wants to engage with us with these big questions of life. He seeks to speak to us concerning those bitter providences, especially when life starts to feel so completely out of control. So family, as we go through this series, I want to encourage you throughout your week

to pray for me as I prepare, to pray that God would help me as I preach, and to pray for yourselves that God will guide you through this exposition. I also want to encourage you to spend time during the week devotionally to engage with this book, to prepare your hearts and your minds so that you don’t show up on Sunday morning and hear the preaching in a sense that it feels cold and disconnected from it. Because that will serve to be a great challenge for you. We’re going to encounter some really hard truths in this book, and it can be difficult for some of us to process. And you’ll see some of that even this morning. And so we need God’s help to soften our hearts, to prepare our hearts to receive these hard truths. Amen? So will you commit to do that? Amen. Whenever we dive into a new book or a sermon series, it’s always helpful to establish a bit of context.

Questions for the Heart

So I always try to begin with a sermon series introduction of the book, where we seek to unpack some of the big themes of the book, where we identify the author, and we try to get acquainted with some of the important details. And family, given some of the unique complexities of Ecclesiastes, I’m going to take just a bit more time this morning to set the stage for this sermon series. And in fact, the text this morning actually kind of leads us in that direction of setting context. But even before we do that, I want to begin this morning by posing a few introspective questions that I think will help guide us along. I don’t want you to answer these questions out loud. Please don’t do that. Kids will get all hype and crazy. But I do want you to hear these questions and seek to answer these questions as honestly as you can.

If you’re the note-taking type, write these answers down, or just kind of hold those answers in front of you as we navigate the text this morning. Okay, so question one. What brings you the most satisfaction and sense of purpose in life? What brings you the most satisfaction and sense of purpose in life? Number two. What holds the greatest importance and significance in your life? What’s the most important and most significant thing to you? Now, your answer here could be the same as your first answer, but it could also be different. And number three, and finally, what is it that if removed from you would leave you feeling empty, depressed, or even begin to think that life is meaningless? You have those answers? Now, these questions are what you would call quest for meaning questions. And the answers help you reveal what it is that you are pursuing after

to find a sense of purpose and meaning in your life. Or at least its aim is to try to help you get pretty close to it. And of course, given everyone’s different desires and temperaments, our responses will obviously vary from person to person. So for some, maybe your answer was your marriage or your spouse. For others, maybe it was success. For some of us, it was obvious. It’s children. Maybe for others, it’s financial stability. Various things can fill that space. My concern lies not just with how we as a congregation are trying to find meaning, but also with the consequences connected to our individual pursuits of it. You see, we are living in a challenging age. Many argue that we are living in an age that is going through a crisis of meaning. And I wholeheartedly agree. This crisis exists because how often people’s pursuits for meaning fall short

and fail our expectations. You see, what is inherent in our pursuits to find meaning is expectation. We were wired this way. So when our God-given desires push us to pursue a sense of meaning, and those pursuits don’t meet our expectations, we get crushed under the weight of it. Largely because we elevated those things or those pursuits as the ultimate source of meaning and significance in our lives. You remember those introspective questions? Whatever that was for you, when those pursuits fail or they’re taken away, the result is depression, confusion, anxiety, loneliness, despair. You might even start to believe that life is meaningless. It’s not worth living. Family, this is a crisis. And this is our world right now. It only takes just a few moments to examine the people of our world, and you see it play out. And it’s not just with the world outside of the church.

Listen, even biblically grounded, theologically sharp Christians are feeling this crisis. Because we do the same thing. We just tend to pursue those things in a way that’s packaged with a Christianized framework. We kind of have this idea that if I love God, if I go to church and read my Bible, then God will bless me. And you see, the pursuit, it sounds very Christian. But the pursuit is not really God. The pursuit is blessing. Many Christians operate under the assumption that a life marked by following Jesus means that life will go exactly as I planned it to go. I will get married to the woman that I have dreamed of or to the man that I have dreamed of. I will have kids. I’ve always wanted to have kids. I will live in a safe neighborhood. I will get the house that I want with the perfect yard,

and I will live my life filled with never-ending happiness, completely void of hardships, catastrophes, or evil. But where does this expectation come from? Often it’s rooted not in Scripture, but in the popular Christian teachings that we hear. And we hear people say things like, you know, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. What do they mean by that? Or we hear people say, you know, if you would just simply turn and trust in Jesus, then all of your problems will disappear. You know, sometimes we mistake the principles outlined in the book of Proverbs as if those are promises, and we build all of our expectations on these Proverbs, assuming that they will produce the results we think they will produce. But when those expectations aren’t met, we are crushed under the weight of it, because those were never meant to be promises,

only principles. And what is the typical response when things don’t go as expected? As Christians, oftentimes we start to think that God is angry with us. He’s not satisfied with all of my religious work or contributions. Or maybe he doesn’t love me the way he loves other people whose lives seem to be going perfectly well. Maybe he just doesn’t care for me. Maybe there’s not enough value in me for God to care for me. And for some of us, well, we actually become angry with God, because we feel as though God hasn’t held up his end of the religious agreement. I did my part, God. Why are you not doing your part? You have breached the contract. But family, this is where the book of Ecclesiastes helps us. Because what if the issue isn’t with God? What if the issue is largely with our misplaced expectations

and our misguided pursuits of meaning? That’s what this book is all about. The search of meaning and failed expectations. And this book helps put to death the secular and human impulse that leads us to seek meaning in all of the wrong places, while at the same time also eradicating any sense of religious entitlement that we may feel as Christians, because after all, we’ve done our part. And this is, friends, what we’ll be driving at over and over and over again over the next 10 or 11 weeks. This book will systematically challenge all of our presuppositions about meaning and satisfaction, and it will continue to poke at all of those false expectations we have as Christians about how our life was supposed to go. So, if you have control issues, like me. If you have a strong sense of justice, like me. If you have a strong sense of reaping and sowing, like me.

Meet the Preacher

This book is going to be a bumpy ride, but it’s going to be a good ride for you. It’s going to be a good help. So, friends, that kind of gives you a bit of an overview of the book. Welcome to church. Okay? This is where we’re headed. And you’re going to kind of see that kind of revolving theme throughout our weeks. Okay, so let’s kind of dive into our text a bit. To help guide us, I’ve broken down our introductory text into three key sections. Okay, so we’re going to just kind of sit on this for a little bit because we need to understand this introduction to help us navigate the weeks ahead. Okay? But to help guide us along, I’ve broken it up into three sections. We’re going to look at the persona, the premise, and the pattern. We’re back to alliterations. Okay?

So let’s begin at the very beginning. Chapter 1, verse 1, with the persona. The words of the preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. So here we get this nice, little, seemingly simple and straightforward introduction to the author of the book. But before we just kind of move on, there’s something very important for us to understand. This book actually features two different voices. You have the voice of the preacher. We’ll be looking at a lot in this book, but then you also have the voice of the narrator. If you notice, you’ll notice this in the next verse, but here in verse 1, this is not the voice of the preacher, it’s the voice of the narrator. He’s the voice that’s introducing us to the preacher. The narrator, he only chimes in a few times in this book, and it’s in the beginning of the book and it’s at the end.

And at the end of the book, he offers his closing remarks about the preacher’s words, and we see that in Ecclesiastes 12, 9 and 10. The narrator says, Besides being wise, the preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care. The preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote the words of truth. So in verse 1, we’re introduced to the coming preacher, but this narrator introduces this preacher, but who exactly is he introducing us to? Who is this preacher? Well, it’s not as clear as it might seem on the surface. Many people automatically assume that King Solomon is the preacher, given the description of the preacher, the son of David, the king in Jerusalem. So it would seem that Solomon kind of fits the bill, right? But the text never explicitly identifies the preacher as Solomon,

which is interesting, especially when you consider that Solomon’s authorship is made completely clear in all of his other works in the Bible. So there seems to be a bit of intentional anonymity here about the identity of the preacher. And the word preacher in the original language, it’s translated kohelet. Say that with me. Kohelet, okay? Kohelet, it essentially means someone who gathers people together to teach them. So teacher could also be a good translation. But it’s not just that the kohelet assembles people, it’s that he’s also assembling wisdom for the people. He’s collecting people and wisdom, okay? So that’s what this preacher’s name means, assembler, the kohelet. Now, to be clear, this is just my opinion, I don’t believe King Solomon is the kohelet, okay? And I think this for a few reasons. First, stylistically, Ecclesiastes is just a bit more street and grimy than all these other books that King Solomon wrote.

Those are a bit more royal. This is just kind of ghetto, if you will. Okay? When you start to dig deeper into the text, certain elements just don’t align with what we know of King Solomon, especially given the fact that Solomon’s faith in God was a bit shaky in the end. Right? So I think what we’re looking at here is what I call persona poetry, okay? Where this kohelet is, poetically speaking, wisdom in the persona of King Solomon, portraying Solomon’s rise and catastrophic fall from grace. Essentially, the kohelet embodies Solomon as an ultimate representation of someone who had access to all the resources this world had to offer, but still found life to be empty or meaningless. And honestly, the book just seems to make more sense when it’s viewed through that lens. But listen, whether you think Solomon was the author or not, I don’t care.

That’s not really a big deal. The crucial point in this book is that Ecclesiastes serves as a collection of wisdom poetry designed to guide us through this fallen and fleeting world with all of our fleeting experiences that this world has to offer. Okay, so that’s the persona, the introduction of the kohelet. Which brings us to verse 2, the premise. Verse 2 says, Vanity of vanities, says the preacher, or the kohelet. Vanity of vanities. All is vanity. So here the kohelet captures the essence or the central theme of the entire book. Everything is vanity. In fact, it’s not just that, you know, everything is vanity. It’s that everything is the highest expression of vanity. There is no greater vanity. He uses this superlative, vanity of vanities, and I think it’s his poetic attempt to juxtapose other biblical superlatives like holy of holies, or king of kings, lord of lords.

Everything Is Vapor

The highest expression of those things. Okay? And he’s driving the fact that there is no higher vanity. But what does he mean by everything is vanity? Is he suggesting that everything is prideful or conceited? Well, given the content of the book, that doesn’t quite make sense. In that, I can understand that because the word vanity in its original language doesn’t translate well to English. The word vanity in the original language translates to hevel. Okay? So say that with me. Hevel. Okay? This is an important word. This word appears 38 times in this book, which means it’s probably pretty important. Okay? Hevel is literally translated smoke or vapor. But it can also be meant to imply fleeting or futile. Some translations use the word meaningless, and I think that’s okay. So long as you understand that it’s not in the sense that it has no meaning,

but more that it’s hard to make sense of the meaning. Okay? So it’s less understandable in terms of its meaning. So in the same way smoke is visible and lingers in the air, because it’s fleeting and eventually will fade to nothing, it’s hard to make sense of it. Ever try to grab smoke? Try to grab hold of it to read it or understand it? Mold something out of it? It’s really complicated if you can’t do it. Right? It can’t be grasped. Therefore, it can’t be understood. It can’t be examined properly. Okay? James 4.14 tells us,

What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.

— James 4

(ESV)

This is Hevel. Psalm 39.5 says,

This is Hevel. Kohele seems to be telling us plainly that everything is Hevel. That everything is visible but fleeting. A mist that vanishes. Everything is like warm breath on a cold winter day. You breathe out, you see it for a moment. It’s gone. Surely, he’s speaking in hyperbole when he says everything is Hevel. Because if he was speaking literally, well, that would sound pretty depressing. Right? Might sound like he’s saying that everything in this life is essentially meaningless because everything is fleeting. So, what’s the deal then? Is he being literal or is he being hyperbolic? Friends, he’s being literal. He’s being literal. He literally means everything is Hevel. But hold up. Everything he’s referring to is restricted to a particular domain or jurisdiction. Okay? And in verse 3, we get a clue as to the domain of everything. Okay? Verse 3 says,

The domain he’s speaking about when he says everything is under the sun. And this perspective of under the sun becomes essential to understanding all the nuances of this book. Okay? Hevel isn’t an outright rejection of meaning, but a commentary on the transient and complexities of life under the sun. So, the Kohelet is going to take us on this journey to survey everything under the sun. And what he means by under the sun is everything in this fallen world. He’s going to speak to us and cause for us to look at the world on a human level, from a human perspective, to expose what life is like from the perspective as if there was no God. As if this world is all we had. So, the Kohelet is saying everything is Hevel under the horizon. Okay? So then, what does that mean for us who live under the sun

in this fallen world, if everything is Hevel? Well, the Kohelet raises the first of many profound questions to help. These kind of questions will happen all throughout this book. This specific and very first question he asks is, what do we gain from all of our toil, if everything is Hevel? And to be clear, he uses the word toil not to mean like vocational labor, like your job or your career, though it might be some small part of that. What he means to imply with toil is human progress. All the things that we work for on a human plane. Okay? He argues that if all of our efforts are invested in this fallen world, then what endures? What’s the gain? And this word gain, this doesn’t simply mean benefit. Like, what’s the benefit if we work really hard in this world? It’s a word, gain, that’s used in business and accounting.

It has to do with profit and loss. Okay? It’s a small business owner, you know, who maybe runs a design studio, like Eliezer, right? At the end of the month, once he’s paid his employees and his contractors, he’s paid all of his bills, sits down, he opens up his profit and loss statement, or probably in El’s, it’s probably some app, like, you know, QuickBooks. He’s looking at this statement for a very specific thing. Perhaps the most important thing of the month. How much did I clear? Was there any net profit? Am I in the black? Or to make it dumb clear, is there any money left over? And that’s what’s underneath this question. Okay? It’s what the small business owner asks. Was it worth the work? Was it worth the toil if I have no money left over? And that’s what’s going on with the word gain here.

Is there anything left over from all of our work in this world under the sun? And the Kohelet meets at ground level to critique a life viewed solely from a human plane, isolated from God, to show us the myth of human progress. Because if there’s nothing left over, then we are really not progressing in our human efforts. In other words, what’s the point of all our work if there’s nothing to show for it? What’s the point of investing in human progress if we are bound to a world that is smoke? To help us understand this, the Kohelet, he offers us this kind of dark and bitter poem. And we see that in verses 4 through 11 with the pattern. And we’ll look at the 4 through 7 first. The Kohelet writes, A generation goes and a generation comes but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun goes down and hastens to the place where it rises.

The Weary Cycle

The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north. Around and around goes the wind and on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run to the sea but the sea is not full. To the place where the streams flow, there they flow again. So here the Kohelet, in this dark and seemingly depressing poem, he drives home the premise about the illusion of human progress by painting this picture of creation’s consistent pattern so that he can juxtapose that with humanity’s consistent pattern. He uses the sun, the wind, and streams as metaphors and then he connects those to the cycles of birth, life, and death. He says that generations come and go but creation maintains its rhythmic pattern. So typically when we think of generations, our mind naturally gravitates towards human progress. We think of posterity and we think of growth and we think of legacy

or leaving an inheritance or the future. We can’t help but think about that when we think about our children and our children’s children. We’re often looking towards the future with a sense of hope that there will be meaningful progress in this life that I can see and appreciate the fruit of my labor. But the Kohelet sobers us with the reality that while younger generations are being born, praise be to God for that, it’s also true that older generations are passing away. And eventually today’s younger generation will become the older generation that eventually passes away. It’s really a sober reminder that as much as we trust in human progress from generation to generation, we can’t escape this pattern of birth, life, and death. There really is no true human progress to appreciate if we’re not around to appreciate it. It says, but the earth remains the same.

J.L. Crenshaw wrote this. He says, what is more vain than this vanity? That the earth which was made for humans stays, but humans themselves, the lords of the earth, suddenly dissolve into dust. That stings a little bit, yeah? But it’s true. And then we get this illustration with the sun and wind. Essentially, the Kohelet is saying, you know, the sun rises in the east, it bows across the sky, and we see it starting to set in the west with the beautiful landscape. And then just as we see it set, the sun flips back around and starts the same process. The cycle repeats. And then the wind moves from the south and it pushes to the north, and it pushes so hard to the north that it eventually makes its full circuit. And so what the Kohelet is doing with these two lines is wonderful. He gives this poetic compass of consistency.

North, south, east, west, everything moves in every direction, but it all moves in an endless and repeatable pattern. It’s crazy. And then we get these streams, which originate from either the rain clouds or the snow-capped mountains. They push their way down until it makes its way into the sea, but check it out, the sea never fills up. It never overflows. That’s crazy. How does that happen? It’s Ricky the Raindrop. And if you don’t know who Ricky the Raindrop is, then you are under the age of 40. Or you’re over the age of 50. Maybe it was just the unique couple years for me. It’s evaporation and precipitation. Look it up on YouTube, it’ll make sense. So the Kohelet uses creation to showcase that what may seem like progress, seems like things are moving in a particular direction, are merely just a repetitive pattern. They trick you and then it just kind of circles back to the beginning.

It’s a perpetual cycle that never truly advances. And so then he moves from creation to humanity to show us the weary repetition of life. Look at the beginning of verse 8. He says, All things are full of weariness, a man cannot utter it. He begins with this truth that though it’s poetic, it’s something that we feel and know experientially very well. Everything in this life is full of weariness. Now you may not have agreed with the Kohelet when he said that everything was vanity. But here, perhaps for the very first time, you’re beginning to resonate with the philosophy of the preacher. Our life in general is tiresome. It’s so exhausting that we can’t even put it into words. The mere attempt to communicate how wearisome it is requires energy that we don’t have, so we don’t even want to talk about it. Right? And most of us certainly have felt this.

You come in from work. You get asked the question, How was your day today at work? Hard. Okay? Maybe you come home and you say, How was it with the kids today? Exhausting. Thank you for asking. How was school today? I’m so tired I don’t want to talk about it. Right, kids? It’s a lot of work, huh? Yeah. We work and we work and we work. And what do we get from all of our work? What is our return on our investment? Weariness and exhaustion. Now, there’s some joys in there, but you know, for the most part, even going camping is exhausting. For some people anyway. And it’s not only that it’s wearisome, but it’s also that we never feel quite satisfied with our work, and that’s kind of what makes it so exhausting. Again, you have to understand that this work is not exclusive to our jobs.

All the things that we labor at in this world under the horizon. I was just thinking about this morning a few weeks ago. This was in the category of house projects. A few weeks ago, actually my first week on sabbatical, I had been thinking about painting the trim of my garage. Right? So I decided, okay, I’m going to do it the first week of sabbatical. And I started it, and I literally got into it, thinking to myself, man, I’m going to get this done. So I started the process, and then I realized, oh, man, this is going to be exhausting. So I started to sand, you know, the wood around the garage, and then I realized, oh, the wood’s actually rotten, and that’s why it looks so horrible. So now I’ve got to take the wood out, and I’ve got to replace the wood,

and that’s exhausting. And then, you know, I’ve got to kind of, you know, put all this stuff on the side and make sure – I don’t know what that’s called, but, you know, the stuff that glues it together, whatever. Josh, that’s so shame. Josh is laughing at me. But it was exhausting, and every step of the way, I was never satisfied with my work, and my wife can attest to this. And even after I was done, which took me a week to finish, like every day when I walk to my car, I just look at it, and I’m like, ugh, the lines are not right, the paint is kind of not that good, and I didn’t, you know – everybody else is okay with it, but I’m just not satisfied. And that’s the process with our work. We’re never satisfied. And so the Qohelet knows this, and so he gives this sensory illustration

to showcase this, and we see this in the second half of verse 8. He says, The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. And so in the same way, we’re always looking and listening, but we always want to see and hear more. So it is with all the other aspects in our life. Family, this is why we binge watch on our streaming platforms. This is why some of us are just addicted to books, and we read book after book after book after book. This is why many of us just sit and doom scroll. And it’s also the reason why many of us are so quick to go and get the newest iPhone. Or, you know, Samsung, whatever your deal is. Because we’re never satisfied with life. And what do we get from all of the hard work that never produces satisfaction?

Emptiness. Depression. Anxiety. Numbness. Discontentment. This is what we see in our world today. Amen? Look at the pattern of weariness in human history, verse 9 and 10. What has been is what will be. And what has been done is what will be done. And there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, see, this is new? No. It has been already in the ages before us. So certainly there have been new things in human history. Like the Tesla. Or technology. I mean, just think about this. In the last 30 years, I can trace the advancement of technology with my own life. I started off with like a pager. Right? You guys know what pagers are? Young kids, forget it. These kind of brick phones. You remember those? It looked like a brick. Then it went to flip phones.

Then it went to, you know, a smartphone. Then it went to the iPhone. Then it went to the Apple Watch. And I don’t even know what’s coming next. But that’s a whole lot of technology. Right? So surely we have seen some new things under the sun. But the point that Kohelet is making is that people are not new. And therefore there is no new way of behaving. So humanity will always never be satisfied. Who we were is who we are. And what has been done in the past will for sure be repeated in the future. No matter how much we advance as a human race, we will always stay the same. And this is why human progress is a myth. Because we will build something and we’ll feel totally unsatisfied. And then we’ll tear it down. And we’ll just build something again. And then Kohelet, he closes his poem with perhaps the hardest and harshest evidence for Hevel under the horizon.

Verse 11. There is no remembrance of former things. Nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after. So life is full of weariness, says the Kohelet. It’s full of hardships. We work and work but we’re never satisfied. This is who we are. This is how we’ve been. Since the fall of humanity we’ve had this problem and humanity doesn’t seem to be changing in any way. And in the end what will account for all of this weariness of life? Nothing. We won’t even be remembered. Six generations from now we will all be forgotten. How many of you know who Philo Fansworth is? Anyone? Oh, you don’t know? I didn’t know either. I looked up some strange person that was pretty relevant back in the day but now nobody knows. Philo invented the television. That’s a pretty big deal, right?

A lot of people benefit from that. I think in every home there’s a television. Nobody even knows who he is. And so will it be the case for us. We’ll hear the names of people in the past but we won’t really know who they are because they are forgotten. Life itself is fleeting. It’s heavile. Therefore, human progress is a myth. This, brothers and sisters, makes for the most depressing sermon I’ve ever preached in my life. How is this even in the Bible? How is this in any way encouraging? And what is the deal with the Kohelet? What he’s trying to accomplish with this sad and heavy content is that he wants us to feel the meaningless of life under the sun. He wants you to sit in the tension of heavile and feel all the weight of its weariness. He doesn’t polish it up for you.

Hope Above the Sun

His whole aim in this book is to help you see the fleeting nature of everything under the sun. And why does he go to such length to depress us with the realities of life under the sun? To help you become disenchanted with it. To break its allure. That’s the point. Disenchantment. To help you see how futile it is to try and find any sense of real meaning or ultimate satisfaction with anything or anyone under the horizon. Because you weren’t made to find it there. No matter how promising the person is or the thing is, it will ultimately fail you because it’s heavile. It’s transient. It’s fleeting. It’s smoke. You can reach for it. But the moment you think you have got it in your hands, you open it up, it’s gone. And listen, though the words of the Kohelet might seem shocking, depressing, and heavy,

or even hopeless, the words of the Kohelet are not that far from the words of Jesus. In fact, Jesus pretty much says the same thing. The Kohelet says that we gain nothing from all of our toil under the sun apart from God. Jesus says in Matthew 16.26,

What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?

— Matthew 16

(ESV)

Jesus says in Matthew 6.19 and 21,

Do not lay up for yourself treasures in heaven where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. Hevil. Transient. But lay up for yourself treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys, where thieves do not break and steal, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

— Matthew 6

(ESV)

You see, you can give yourself to this world and you can have Hevel

or you can give yourself to Christ and have heaven. And you see, that’s the whole point of Ecclesiastes. You won’t find what you were made for looking under the sun. There is no hope in the Hevel. Your hope lies above the horizon. Your hope is Jesus Christ, the one who did not remain above the sun in the heavens but was sent by the Father to go down below the sun into the Hevel to save us from our sin and to put an end to our endless pursuit of significance, satisfaction, and meaning. The Kohelet sees everything below the heavens and he gives us this accurate assessment of humanity’s work and progress and he declares it meaningless, futile, fleeting. But the psalmist in Psalm 19 says,

The heavens declare the glory of God and the skies proclaim His handiwork.

— Psalm 19

(ESV)

The psalmist is lifting you up into the heavens beyond the Hevel.

And the Lord’s handiwork, His labor, will remain forever. G. Campbell Morgan explains the Kohelet perfectly. He says, This man had been living through all these experiences under the sun, concerned with nothing above the sun, until there came a moment in which he had seen the whole of life and that there was something over the sun. It is only as man takes account of that which is over the sun as well as that which is under the sun that things under the sun are seen as their true light. This is exactly what the Kohelet is doing. You see, it’s only when we see this world rightly, both under and above the sun, where we realize we need something beyond this world to give our life to, to find meaning and satisfaction. You see, it makes sense that this world would be unsatisfying and fleeting because we were made for a better world,

one that will satisfy our deepest longings and a secure and eternal fixed future. This is what we were meant to find. As I’ve been preaching this morning, I wonder if you’ve been thinking about all of your pursuits to find satisfaction and meaning in this world under the sun. Is it your career? How successful your business is? Is it perhaps financial freedom? Is it your political party? Is it technology? Is it your sexuality? Is it the American dream? Those things at some point will fail you. And listen, those can be good things, but those good things were never meant to be ultimate things. My encouragement to you is to ask God to help you realign, to take those ultimate things that you’ve been pursuing and place them where they ultimately belong, in the category of good gifts that God gives to us to enjoy, but not to find our meaning in.

Maybe ask the Lord to help you see what you’re investing your treasure in. Is it Heaven or is it Heaven? That’s an important question to ask, because one will pass away and one will remain. Are you investing your life wisely? The Westminster Shorter Catechism asks this question, what is the chief end of man? And the answer is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. But this question could also be asked another way, how does man find meaning? And the answer is pretty much the same, by glorifying God and enjoying Him forever. This is the only hope of Hevel we have. And this, brothers and sisters, is what we’ll be looking at over and over again for the next 10 weeks. This preacher, the Kohelet, in his poetry, will begin to put the microscope on everything that lies under the sun so that we can see it for what it is,

so that we can pull it apart and properly order those things, ultimately to keep us looking above the sun, to the Son of God. Amen? Let’s pray. Our Father and our God, it is so good to know that this life is not all there is, that though this world is fleeting and fading away quickly, we have an eternal hope because of Jesus Christ, our Savior, who saved us from the futility and meaninglessness of life, gave us a new heart so that we might be able to look at the Hevel of our world and see it for what it actually is, so that we might act appropriately and go to You for help when the Hevel seems confusing and hard to manage. We pray, God, that as we go through this series, that as we have our heads pushed down below the sun, that by Your Spirit, You would consistently lift our gaze to Jesus,

the glorious and bright Son, who is the source of all hope, meaning, and significance. Would You help us to see that this life has no delight for us apart from Jesus Christ? Help us to prize Christ as the greatest source of delight and significance. We pray these things in Christ’s name. Amen.