I. Intro
Let’s read our passage and then break it down verse by verse. The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem: “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again. All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them. “Why” many people ask, “Is this in the Bible?”
1:1:
“Teacher” – In Hebrew, this is the word "Qoheleth,” which comes from the word >> qahal, “an assembly or gathering.” In Greek, the word for assembly or gathering is ekklesia in Greek.
So, when the Hebrew Old Testament was translated into Greek, they translated Qoheleth “assembler” as Ecclesiastes.
Now, if you’re gathering people, it’s for a reason. In wisdom literature, you would gather people to instruct. So, the gatherer is a teacher.
Some translations of the Bible translate this “Preacher.” But if you’ve read the book of Ecclesiastes, you will quickly find that the author is a terrible preacher. A preacher calls you to something. A preacher instructs you with God’s word.
The author Ecclesiastes is more like a teacher, but not in the sense of being a lecturer. He helps his audience learn by asking questions. He’s like a good philosophy professor. And like any good philosophy professor, he isn’t there to give you answers. He’s there to ask you questions.
The Teacher of Ecclesiastes is there to push you to the logical conclusion of your views. The author wants to lay bare the foundations of your life, to push you to boundaries of thought.
Why do you believe that? Why do you believe this? Do you see where that leads to? Do you see where that leads to? Although critics of the Bible, date this book somewhere in the 300s BC,
There’s strong evidence that our Teacher is King Solomon writing in the 900s BC. Our first hint is his introduction as the “son of David, king in Jerusalem” (v1). Solomon was David’s direct son and next in line for the throne. Later, we read that the Koheleth “[I] increased in wisdom more than anyone who has ruled over Jerusalem before” (Ecclesiastes 1:16).
According to Scripture, Solomon was the wisest man who ever walked the earth (1 Kings 3). Early in his reign as king, the Lord appeared to Solomon. He told Solomon, “Ask me for anything you want and I will give it to you.” Anything. Can you imagine if God gave you a blank check? Instead of asking for stuff, Solomon says to God, “You have made me king over a vast nation, too many to count. Therefore, give me wisdom and discernment to govern your people.” The
Lord was pleased with Solomon. He said, “I will give you what you ask. I will give you wisdom and discernment “such as no one else has had or ever will have!” (1 Kings 3:12) And even though you didn’t ask for it, I will give you riches and fame beyond measure. You will have no equal among kings. However, you must keep my commandments.
This fits what we read in Ecclesiastes. The Teacher is not only wise beyond measure; he also possesses unparalleled wealth and fame.
Most scholars believe Solomon wrote Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverb in his mid-life after God granted him great wisdom and wrote Ecclesiastes at the end of his life when the only thing left to count was the true bottom line.
1:2:
hevel – This word is used thirty-eight times in this book. It is the Hebrew word hevel, meaning “emptiness, futility, vapor.” You see a vapor cloud in the room and in seconds it disappears, yet there’s a hint of gummy bear in the air. Koheleth says that life is like a puff of smoke. It appears, then minutes later all trace of it vanishes.
II. The Central Question of Ecclesiastes (1:3)
Here is the central question that the Koholeth is trying to answer: “What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun?” (1:3) Every word is significant. He says, “What does man gain from all his labor…
“under the sun” – That’s the perspective in which Koheleth analyzes life—a life with a distant, detached Creator. It’s the perspective of a functional atheist: a person who may acknowledge God’s existence but lives as if he doesn’t. Since the functional atheist has God removed from daily life, she is left to find her own meaning. Christian author Peter Greer says, “Ecclesiastes is basically a crazed experiment in staring at the sun and describing how badly it hurts. Life. What’s the point? Does any of it mean anything? But it’s not nihilism. It’s not the assertion that nothingness is everything. Qoheleth simply knows that you have to face the meaninglessness of your self-made life before you can find meaning from another source.
So he writes from a perspective under the sun—under the glaring light and relentless heat of our earthly grind. He invites his readers to forget, for the sake of argument, what life looks like with an intimate relationship with God. Instead, concentrate on this life—just this life—as if that’s all there is.
“I’m not going to look at life above the sun, I’m not going to think about God, eternity, heaven or hell. I’m not going to think of anything beyond. I’m going to look at this life as if this is the only life we have. That’s life under the sun.
“gain” – First of all, he says, “Assuming this life is all there is, what is there to gain? What do you get? What difference does it make?” Now, why ask what is to be gained? It’s because you ask that question about any individual aspect or piece of your life. (Example of bouncing ball) Many hold the view that:
“If I gain wealth, then I’ll be happy.” To some extent, our well-being increases as we make more money. Graduating college, getting a career, and not living off spoonfuls of peanut butter and ramen noodle packets bring a certain amount of well-being. But past a certain point, you start seeing diminishing returns. In a paper published in 2018, Michael Norton, a Harvard business professor, asked more than 2,000 people who have a net worth of at least $1 million, how happy they were on a scale of one to 10, and then how much more money they would need to get to 10. He concludes “All the way up the income-wealth spectrum, basically everyone says [they’d need] two or three times as much [to be perfectly happy].” He found that wealthy people often do not feel happy because of social comparison. They measure their wealth relative to others.
As the Koheleth argues in Ecclesiastes: no amount of wealth, success or pleasure will truly fulfill us. Greer says, “At one point, Koheleth says that God has placed eternity in our hearts, a universe-sized expanse that would swallow the whole world if it could—and still be hungry.”
But the teacher wants us to evaluate the whole of our lives this way. And how do we know that? It’s because of this little word:
“all” – What do you get from the whole of your life? The reason the average person shares the teacher’s premise, but does not share the teacher’s despair is because we refuse to use the word “all.”
You might say, “Look, I’m not a philosopher. Philosophers are the ones who are wrestling with questions about the meaning of life.
“The average person like me lives for the here and now. It’s the things I do, day to day, that give my life meaning.” I may not have an answer to the meaning of life, but when I’m driving with the windows down on a beautiful day, listening to music, it’s meaningful. When I embrace my boyfriend or girlfriend or someone I love, it’s meaningful. When I get a good grade on a test or complete a project at work, it’s meaningful. When I choose to do something compassionate as opposed to something selfish, it’s meaningful to me! Now, you know what you are refusing to do?
You’re refusing to ask the question: “What is to be gained by all of this toil?” Imagine you found your friend in the middle of the street placing a stone on a large pile of stones. You ask him, “What are you building?” He says, “I’m gathering a large pile of stones so that I can put this lantern on top.” You say, “Why would you do that?” “So that cars can see the large pile of stones.” What’s he doing? He’s finding meaning in one part in relationship to another, but he’s refusing to ask the question: Does the whole thing have any use or is just plain stupid?
Why do you work? Usually a person says, “I’ll tell you why I work. I work so I can do the things I like to do. I have hobbies. I travel.” Well, why? “It really recharges my batteries” “Why?” “So, I can work.” “The stone pile is for the lantern and the lantern is for the stone pile.” What is the whole thing for? How do you know that your life isn’t stupid? How do you know that your life isn’t just a lantern on a big stone pile in the middle of a highway?
Optimistic naturalism says, “Everything is meaningless under the sun, but there are such things as moral truths, there are human rights.” Listen, if your origin is from nothing and your destiny is to nothing, then have the guts to admit that your life is nothing.
Do you see the utter oppositions of the alternatives? Either there is life above the sun and there is meaning. Or there is nothing but life under the sun and there’s no meaning.
Stop talking as if you can poke holes in other people’s inconsistencies. You point out the inconsistency of a Muslim person you know that has a drink or a Christian who isn’t loving. You’ll poke holes in other people’s worldviews, but you won’t look at your own.
The famous Existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, said, “God does not exist, and we have to face all of the consequences of it. The existentialist is strongly opposed to a certain type of secular moralism which seeks to abolish God at the least possible expense…Existentialists, on the other hand, find it extremely disturbing that God no longer exists, for along with his disappearance goes the possibility of finding values in [the world]. There could no longer be [any] ‘good,’ since there would be no infinite and perfect consciousness to think of it. Nowhere is it written…that we must be honest or must not lie, since we are on a plane where there is only us, human beings. Dostoyevsky once wrote, ‘If God does not exist, everything is permissible.’ This is the starting point of existentialism. Sartre took this idea. “Life under the sun is all there is” and you know what he says? “Don’t talk to me, in any way that you believe one kind of conduct is any better than another.”
One of the things that came out recently was how much of a misogynist he was. Jean Paul Sartre mistreated women. He was very bad to women. But you know what, whenever I read the people who on the one hand accept Sartre’s philosophy and yet get upset about how he treated women, I imagine him rising up –and he was only 5’2—he would say, “You want to be free? You want to be able to say, ‘I’m free to whatever I want to do’? Then have the guts to get rid of all moral distinctions. You want to be free? Fine! Then you must accept that all of this is, ‘Meaningless, meaningless, utterly meaningless, everything is meaningless’”
Christians look like hard-nosed skeptics compared to a view that says that life under the sun is all there is “but I’m optimistic.” I have meaning in life. I know some things are right and some things are wrong. Talk about blind faith.
Why is Koheleth doing this? If you read the book of Ecclesiastes, God doesn’t appear until the end of chapter 2. He does show up in 1:13 where he says, “What a heavy burden God has laid on mankind.” But up until 2:24, God doesn’t come up. But after that he comes up like 10 times in chapter 3.
He’s running a thought experiment: “What’s left of life if all there is what is under the sun?” In the final calculation? Nothing. Life is utterly meaningless.
So what’s the Koheleth trying to do? He’s driving us to the utter limits of our philosophy of life. He’s pushing us to existential despair. He’s trying to get us to answer the bigger questions in life. You see,
If God exists, then existential despair is a gift from God. It’s a good thing, even though it doesn’t feel good. Why do you think that Jesus deals with people in despair kindly? Why does he look at weeping prostitutes, why does he look to the thief on the cross, and deals with them compassionately? On the other hand, why does he turn away from the smug, the religious, the people who think they’ve got it all together? It' because it’s only “the sick who will look to a physician.” It’s the teacher’s job to drive you to the point of sickness, sickness with the monotony of life, sickness with the futility of life.
It’s a gift from God to get rid of all your defense mechanisms. God helps you to the point of despair because in despair there are all types of pointers to God.
C.S. Lewis said, "How could an idiotic universe have produced creatures whose mere dreams are so much stronger, better, subtler than itself? Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always been, or would not always be, purely aquatic creatures?" Why is despair even there? If the world is just this way, why are we upset about it? Why is the idea that there is no right and wrong, that the strong eat the weak, that when we die we rot in the earth, why does that bother you? It’s a pointer to a God. It’s a pointer to the reality of a God. It’s a pointer to the reality that God has put eternity in your heart.
III. There’s nothing new under the sun (1:4-10)
What’s the point? Koheleth is pointing to the utter repetitiveness of life. The daily grind.
To many, a sunrise brings enjoyment and pleasure. But the Koheleth seems to have no such optimism. To Koheleth, a sunrise signals another day in the salt mines. A sunset signals approaching death. Its very repetitiveness is oppressive: a life of lather, rinse, repeat.
“There is nothing new under the sun” – You might say, “Is this really true?” There are lots of new things that Solomon would’ve never imagined. For example, what would Solomon do if he watched a YouTube video on a smartphone? But remember, Ecclessiastes is written in the form of Hebrew wisdom. The statements he makes are axiomatic. That’s why people often misquote
In essence, there is nothing new under the sun. (Example of product
placement)
IV. Summary of Life Under the Sun
Verse 11 summarizes the futility of life under the sun (1:11)). How many of you know the full names of your grandparents? Raise your hands. How many of you know the first name of both of your great grandparents? Raise your hand. How many of you know the name of one of your great grandparents?
(Example of noted people among old gravestones)
You see, we live as if time is on our side. But within a few generations, within a few centuries, all evidence of your existence will vanish. All of your hard work and toil will be forgotten.
Koheleth pushes you to the brink of utter despair… Like any good teacher, he pushes you to the outer edge of where your worldview takes you. Any good teacher will push you to consider if your worldview remains standing after poking holes in it. But once the Teacher pushes you to outer limits of your view,
BUT he offers an alternative. 12:1,6,13 Ecclesiastes ends, Remember 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…Remember him before the door to life’s opportunities is closed and the sound of work fades…Here now is my final conclusion: Fear [give reverence to] God and obey his commands. He’s saying, don’t wait until it’s too late to find out that you can’t create your own meaning in life.
If you have never trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior, then this book urges you to do so without delay. Why? Because no matter how much wealth, education, or social prestige you may have, life without God is futile. You are only “chasing after the wind” if you expect to find satisfaction and personal fulfillment in the things of the world. “For what shall it profit a man, if he should gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” asked Jesus (Mark 8:36).
Solomon experimented with life and discovered that there was no lasting satisfaction in possessions, pleasures, power, or prestige. He had everything, yet his life was empty! You don’t need to repeat these experiments. Accept Solomon’s conclusions and avoid the heartache and pain that must be endured when he expended his life looking for meaning under the sun.
If you face doubts about God and his existence, consider what is to be gained from life under the sun.