The Search for Meaning

0:53We were trying to solve that problem and so we did and it's been awesome. But you know one of the things that makes puzzling fun is that you know what you're going for. Imagine if somebody handed you a 1500 piece puzzle in a Ziploc bag. No box, no picture, just a bag full of pieces. If you were able to finish it, it would probably take you forever. You've got all the pieces and looking through that enormous pile, you can tell that some of them seem to connect, but you're very likely to just Your hands up because you've got no way to understand how those random pieces fit together.

1:38Today we're beginning a six-week series through the book of Ecclesiastes. Words that almost no preacher has ever uttered. We're calling this series a puzzling book for puzzling times, and this book was written by a man who simply identifies himself as Koheleth, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. Now, the word Koholeth is a notoriously difficult word in Hebrew to translate. It means something like the preacher because it's connected to this verb that means to gather a congregation of people together to teach them.

2:18And from internal and external evidence, most commentators have concluded that the author must be King Solomon. His authorship makes the best sense out of all the data. And so, for our purposes, we're going to assume that Solomon is the author and therefore that he's writing this book at the end of his life, somewhere near the end of the 10th century BC. Now, if the book of Job is wisdom literature for those who have lost everything, then the book of Ecclesiastes is wisdom literature for those who have gained everything, or at least for those who hope to gain everything.

3:00If this year has taught us anything, it has taught us that life is fragile, health is uncertain, financial stability is not guaranteed, and the government and scientists are unable to protect us from the realities of living in a fallen world with fallen people. Does that sound hopeless to you? I want you to listen to Mark Dever, take a look at what he wrote. Without an honest look at the curse of death and futility, we miss a key piece of the puzzle that no amount of feel-good optimism can adequately replace. Ecclesiastes is powerful exactly because it presents the tension and struggle between the teacher's sense of futility and his very real faith in the God who is true, between the way things are and the way they ought to be.

4:04The book of Ecclesiastes is a puzzling book because it seeks to make sense out of all the pieces of life that just don't seem to fit together. But this puzzling book is also a perfect book for us to study during these puzzling times because in the end, what Solomon does is he directs our hope to heaven by exposing the utter futility of placing our hope. In this present world, so today we're going to loosely cover chapters one and two, where Solomon makes observations about the vanity of the natural world and then the vanity of pursuing hope and meaning and satisfaction in wisdom and pleasure and work.

4:51And what we're going to learn today is that Christ alone brings meaning and lasting satisfaction to this life. In chapter 1, verses 2 through 11, I want you to join me in verse 2. He begins with this statement: vanity of vanities. All is vanity. And here we have another challenging word to translate, this word that's translated vanity. It's also been rendered meaningless or empty or futile. It carries the sense of something insubstantial or temporary or fleeting.

5:32So when you see the word vanity in this book, and it appears nearly 40 times, every time you see that word, you can picture the morning mist. It's there for a little while, but as soon as the sun rises, as soon as it starts to heat up, that morning mist burns away. That's kind of a picture that I think he's going for. So in verse 3, he asked this rhetorical question that's meant to clarify his exclamation that all is vanity. Look what he. Writes in verse 3, what does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.

6:16Recently, I was listening to a podcast, and the host asked this question: What do you think the world is going to be like in 100 years? The answer that the interviewee gave was all new people. All new people. Isn't that sobering? There is virtually no one alive today who is still going to be alive in 2120. There is virtually no one alive today who was alive in 1920, but the earth remains forever. A generation comes and goes, but the earth remains forever. So, look at these observations that he makes in verses 5 through 7. Verse 5, the sun rises, the sun goes down, but then it just simply rises again the next day.

7:08Verse 6, the wind blows from the north to the south and then from the south to the north over and over. Verse 7, all the streams run into the sea, evaporate into the air, rain down on the earth, and then empty back out into the ocean. Friends, despite all of our discoveries in astronomy, in meteorology, the sun still rises and sets. The wind and the seasons still blow and change. The water cycle continues unabated. No matter what we do or don't do with our lives, the natural cycle continues.

7:56And those truths, those observations about the natural world form the basis of Solomon's judgment in verses 8 through 11 about human beings and our pursuits. He says, Do you think something is new? Do you think this is novel? Well, it's not. Everything that's done has been done before, just like the sun rising and the wind blowing and the water cycle continuing on. History just sort of repeats itself over and over. Look at verse 11. He says, there is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after.

8:35And why is that? Well, just consider the old maxim: those who forget history are destined to repeat it. That's what Solomon is saying in verse 11: that over time, we forget both the people and the things they accomplished. So every generation, and remember, this is being written by a man. Whose culture revered their ancestors, who identified themselves based on which family they came from, who their grandfather and great-grandfather and grandparents were. That's where they found identity. This man is saying every generation and the things they accomplished are eventually forgotten by those people's own descendants.

9:27One commentator observed: the majority of the human race lives and dies in obscurity. And that sounds really depressing, but I want to pause for a moment there with you because I think, friends, that if we can understand and believe what Solomon is trying to tell us here in chapter one, if we can understand and believe the reality that most of us live and die in obscurity, I think that's one of the most freeing things that we can do as Christians.

10:00Just think about how many people have spent their lives trying to be somebody. Think about all the moms and dads and people who have lived at the office and who have lived traveling and who have lived on social media, trying to be everything to everyone, trying to make a mark, trying to leave a lasting impression. Meanwhile, George Washington has two pages in your history book. The bitter irony is that so many of us are killing ourselves trying to make a difference in the lives of everybody. When, if we had invested in our children, in our local church, in our neighborhoods, in our workplace, we could have actually made a difference. But because we tried to make a difference in everybody's life, we ended up making a difference in no one's.

10:55Friends, when we accept the fact that most of us are going to live and die in obscurity, the temptation to pursue making a name for ourselves just sort of loses its pull. How many dead preachers can you name? Five? Ten? Twenty-five? I doubt it. Count Zinzendorf, who was a bishop in the Moravian church and owner of the coolest name ever, he wrote this: Preach the gospel, die, and be forgotten. I am under no false pretenses that a hundred years from now, anyone is going to remember me or my sermons. And you know what? That's freeing. That's freeing because when I stand up here, I'm not trying to preach to the ages. I'm trying to preach to you.

11:56I'm trying to meet you where you're at. Care what people a hundred years from now think about me or don't think about me, and it's probably B. So that's wonderfully freeing. And right at the outset of the book, Solomon has put his cards on the table. He's already telling us: if you put your hope in this world, you're going to be sorely disappointed. But remember, he's a teacher. So he's not just going to make a statement, he's going to seek to prove it to you. So over the next two chapters, he's going to invite us to walk with him on a quest for meaning apart from God.

12:37And on this journey, he's going to try on the life of the philosopher and the hedonist and the workaholic. And he's going to see if we can find meaning apart from God in any one of those pursuits. And once again, the word of God shows how timeless it is because we can find the philosopher, the hedonist, and the workaholic just as easily in our day as Solomon could in his. And so let's pick up here in chapter 1, verse 12, and watch as Solomon tries on the life of the philosopher in pursuit of meaning through wisdom.

13:20Verse 12. I, the preacher, have been king over Israel in Jerusalem, and I applied my heart to seek and to search out wisdom. 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. I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and striving after wind. What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted.

13:54So, our preacher is now embarked on this quest for meaning through wisdom, and he reveals that he really applied himself, he really sought out everything done under the sun. And so, if you skip ahead to verse 16, you will see that he acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before him. But the problem is that his quest to find meaning and lasting satisfaction in life through wisdom came to a dead end. He says in verse 15, what is crooked, not in the sense that we would use that word of something being corrupt or wicked, but in the sense of being inscrutable and past understanding. He says, What is crooked cannot be made straight?

14:44And here, what Solomon is doing is he's acknowledging the limits of human wisdom and experience. He's saying that there are just things that are past finding out, there are things that defy explanation. This life. But that drives us crazy, doesn't it? Especially modern Western people living after the so-called enlightenment. We can't stand not having answers, and our assumption is that if we just give scientists enough time and money, eventually we'll have an answer for everything. But remember what Solomon said: there's nothing new under the sun. People have not fundamentally changed.

15:31So, a couple thousand years ago, Jesus and his disciples are walking and they pass this man who was born blind. And the disciples are like, Hey, Jesus, will you explain this situation to us? Is this guy blind because he sinned or because his parents sinned? I want you to look at Jesus' reply: It was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. What did the disciples want?

16:08They wanted an explanation. They wanted to understand the cause and effect relationship between this man's blindness and whatever led to that state for him. But you notice in that verse, Jesus doesn't explain it at all. He does say that their two theories are wrong, but he doesn't. Give them an explanation. He doesn't explain why this man was born blind, but he does say that God is going to fix his blindness. Warren Wearsby absolutely blew me away this week. Take a look at this quote: Those who go through life living on explanations will always be unhappy for at least two reasons. First, this side of heaven, there are no explanations for some things that happen, and God is not obligated to explain them anyway. Second, God has ordained that his people live by promises and not by explanations, by faith and not by sight. Is there a witness in the house today?

17:18God has ordained that his people live by promises and not by explanations? I got saved again when I read that. That is incredible. What a word for our generation. We want an explanation for everything. There must be an explanation, we think. But friends, what Solomon is getting at is that there simply aren't explanations this side of heaven. And if we live and die by understanding why things happen, why things happen to us, why things happen to our loved ones, why some people don't have any symptoms from COVID, and some people die.

17:57There are just not explanations for some of these. Things this side of heaven. So, if you skip ahead to chapter 2, verse 12, Solomon is going to share more about his quest for meaning through wisdom. And in this section, he admits that there is more to gain in wisdom than folly. It's certainly not better, he says, to be a fool than to be a wise person. But in verses 15 and 16, he notes that in the end, the wise person and the foolish person both die. They're both forgotten.

18:33So, look at verse 17. So, I hated life because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and is striving after wind. Plenty of philosophers have been or are self-proclaimed atheists. But oddly, very few of them seem to have had the courage to follow atheism to its logical conclusion. If God does not exist, life truly is pointless. Life is pointless, suffering is pointless, wisdom is pointless. None of it matters because we didn't exist until we were born, and we will no longer exist once we die.

19:27This is what led so many philosophers. Philosophers in ancient Greece to move towards what's called Epicureanism. And the Epicurean philosophers genuinely believed that life was pointless and meaningless, so we better squeeze all of the pleasure and enjoyment out of it that we can. And that's where Solomon goes next. After trying on the life of the philosopher and coming up disappointed, he'll now try on the life of the pleasure-seeking hedonist. So let's back up to the beginning of chapter 2, verse 1.

20:12I said in my heart, Come now, I will test you with pleasure. Enjoy yourself. But behold, this also was vanity. So his search for meaning and lasting satisfaction through wisdom comes up empty. And so now our preacher turns to pleasure, hoping that he's going to find what he's looking for there. So, beginning in verse 3, he seeks pleasure in every way imaginable. Look at all this stuff. He tries wine, building houses, planting vineyards, gardens, and parks that are filled with fruit trees and water sources. He tries owning.

21:00Flocks and herds and precious metals. He tries entertainment. He tries marrying 700 wives and having 300 concubines. And after all of that, look at the summary, verse 9, chapter 2. So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also, my wisdom remained with me. And whatever my eyes desired, I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil. And this was my reward for all my toil. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.

21:53Isn't that incredible? Solomon says he denies himself nothing. Whatever his eyes desired, that's what he enjoyed. He let his heart try on every pleasure imaginable, which for so many people sounds like a dream situation. It sounds like a fantasy. And yet, Solomon admits that his quest to find meaning and lasting satisfaction through pleasure came to another dead end. You see, what Solomon discovered. Is the paradox of pleasure. That is, things that please us will only deliver satisfaction up to a certain point. Then they will deliver no more pleasure, or they will make us miserable.

22:49So, think for a minute about eating. Eating good food will make you happy up to a certain point. But if you keep eating past that point, it will cease to make you any happier. And if you keep eating past that point, it will eventually make you miserable. And that's true for anything pleasurable. It pleases us up to a certain point, then it levels off, and then it begins to plummet. It actually becomes displeasing. So, look what Derek Kidner said.

23:28In themselves, and rightly used, the basic things of life are sweet and good. Food, drink, and work are samples of them, and Koheleth, that's our preacher, will remind us of others. What spoils them is our hunger to get out of them more than they can give, a symptom of the longing which differentiates us from the beasts, but whose misdirection is the underlying theme of this book. I want you to look at that line again. What spoils our pleasures is our hunger to get out of them more than they can give.

24:14Isn't that the truth? We ruin God's good gifts by expecting too much from them. So, if you enter into a relationship with another person, expecting to give and receive sacrificial love, expecting to have a companion for life's joys and sorrows, expecting to be sanctified and to be used in their life to sanctify them, well, then your relationship is going to be a source of joy to you throughout your life. But, friends, if you enter into a relationship looking for your mythical soulmate, this one person who is going to be all things at all times for you and never be bothered by your sins and your weirdness, then your relationship is going to be a constant source of disappointment to you and will lead directly to the next fruitless search for your mythical soulmate.

25:28Friends, we ruin. God's good gifts by expecting too much from them. When we expect to find meaning and lasting satisfaction from good things, pleasurable things, listen to me, they will end up crushed under the weight of our expectations. And then we will end up crushed because those things were crushed. They can't bear the burden that we're asking them to bear. And C.S. Lewis knew this. And that's why he wrote this famous quote: If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.

26:21God is so perfectly wise that he created pleasure to point us to himself. When we enjoy his good gifts in the ways that he designed them to be enjoyed, we are reminded that every good and perfect gift comes from him. And when those good gifts fail to provide meaning and lasting satisfaction for our lives, we come to the realization that we must have been made for something more. So our preacher has now tried on both the life of the philosopher and the life of the hedonist, and he's found both of them working. Wanting.

27:02So perhaps if pleasure isn't the answer, maybe what we think of as its opposite, work, will be the answer. Let's pick up in verse 18 of chapter 2. I hated all my toil, in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool. Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun, because sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart for which he toils beneath the sun? For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity.

28:24Solomon just comes right out of the gate and says it. I hate work. Specifically, he hated the fact that he was going to work hard his whole life, and in the end, he was going to leave it to someone else who may be a fool. Now, contrary to popular belief, work wasn't a part of the curse. We have to remember that before Adam and Eve fell into sin, before the curse, God placed Adam in the Garden of Eden. Why? To work it and to keep it.

28:58But of course, Adam and Eve rebelled. And I want you to look at what God says when he curses them in Genesis chapter 3. And to Adam he said, Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground because of you. In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

29:42Now, doesn't Solomon affirm that? In verse 23, just look there again, he says, Because of our work, our days are full of sorrow. Our work is a vexation. Even in the night, our hearts can't rest. So after the Fall, work is now difficult and stressful and painful and tedious. It's going to continue like that until we die or until Jesus returns. Work is difficult because of the fall. And yet, strangely, many modern Americans seem to have a hard time not working, particularly the supposedly lazy and entitled millennials.

30:34There was this excellent article that came out last January. It was called, Why Are Young People Pretending to Love Work? This is one of my favorite sections. Take a look at this. Perhaps we've all gotten a little hungry for meaning. Participation in organized religion is falling, especially among American millennials. In San Francisco, where I live, I've noticed that the concept of productivity has taken on an almost spiritual dimension. Techies here have internalized the idea, rooted in the Protestant work ethic, that work is not something you do to get what you want. The work itself is all. Therefore, any life hack or company perk that optimizes their day, allowing them to fit in even more work, is not just desirable, but it's Inherently good.

31:33So think about companies, I won't name names, but companies in Silicon Valley that have everything from childcare to dry cleaning to, yes, pods for napping that are supposed to be perks, which are really only designed to keep you at your desk longer. This is one reason that people now switch jobs, even careers, every three to five years. Friends, make the connection. We're doing the same thing with our jobs that we've done with relationships. We're out there looking for this mythical, perfect job for us that will leave us completely satisfied and fulfilled, where we will not say, thank goodness it's Friday, we'll say, thank goodness it's Monday, TGIM, every week.

32:28Why would we fall for that? We have our Bibles. We've already read Genesis 3 before. We've been told that all work is under the curse. Ask anybody who has their dream job how dreamy it really is. Astronauts go into outer space for a few days in their life. The rest of the time, they're behind a computer like you. Ask any person. Professional athlete, how fun it is to wake up on Monday morning and every single thing hurts, and you have to practice 12 hours a day for the next five days so you can be on television again the next weekend. None of it is any fun.

33:16It's a myth, but it's a myth that we're all buying into. Why? Because we're looking for meaning and lasting satisfaction in our work. But when you've rejected the hope of Christianity, you've already tried out the life of the philosopher and the life of the hedonist, what's left? It's just the life of the workaholic. So look where Solomon ends up: verse 24, chapter 2. There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. Notice it doesn't say meaning and lasting satisfaction, it says enjoyment. This also I saw is from the hand of God. For apart from him, who can eat or who can have enjoyment? For to the one who pleases him, God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy. But to the sinner, he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.

34:21What Solomon is saying is that eating and drinking and work are good gifts. But they are terrible gods. We're expecting these things to bring meaning and lasting satisfaction to our lives, and they can't do it. When God is our God, when we live to please him, we get wisdom and knowledge and joy thrown in on top. But when we make God's gifts into gods, we get none of it. Just however many years of disappointment that we get on this earth and then death.

35:08Friends, some of us have done exactly that. We have taken the good gifts of wisdom and pleasure and work and turned them into gods. We're expecting that they're going to bring meaning and lasting satisfaction to our lives, which is a burden that they cannot bear. They will be crushed, and then we will be crushed. If that's you, if you're here this morning and you realize that you've turned God's good gifts into gods that you're hoping are going to bring meaning and lasting satisfaction to your life, I want to point you to the person of Jesus Christ.

35:50When he came across this woman at a well, Jesus told her that he could give her water that would leave her never feeling. Thirsty again. That's what she needed because she was trying to quench her thirst with men. Now, what was she looking for? Love? Community? Acceptance? Safety? I don't know. I don't know what it was that led her to marry five different guys and then start living with a sixth. But what I do know is that we're all just like her.

36:31We have this seemingly unquenchable thirst, so we go on a quest to find something that's going to satisfy it. But what Solomon is telling us is that wisdom, pleasure, work, anything like that is the equivalent of drinking out of the ocean. It seems like a good idea at first, but it just leaves you thirstier and thirstier until eventually it kills you. Instead, we must go to Jesus, the fountain of living water, who lived and died and rose again to satisfy us once and for all, to set us free from endlessly traveling to wells that are unable to quench our thirst.

37:22So, friends, go to Jesus this morning. He invites you to come to Him, to leave the wells. That you've been going to, and to come to Him so that you will never be thirsty again. Because Christ alone brings meaning and lasting satisfaction to this life. Let's pray, Father, we opened up your word this morning to this book because we believe that every word in Scripture is God-breathed and it's profitable. And this book is hard for us to understand.

38:38And yet, as we read it, it's undeniable that it's your voice who's speaking truth to us in all of those seasons of life and all of those experiences that we've had that have disappointed us, that have left us wanting, that have. Left us searching for more after we were so sure that we had finally found the answer. Whether the answer was a person or a job or an experience or a thing. So, Lord, when we read these chapters, we are reading our own experience.

39:32And at some level, all of us go to these other wells looking to be satisfied, and they just cannot do it. So, Father, for all of us, my prayer this morning is that we would run, either for the first time or once again, to Jesus, the fountain of living water, so that our thirst that is unquenchable in any other way could be satisfied by Him, the fountain of living water. Thank you for speaking to us this morning. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

40:21Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us all. Online at newlifecs.net.