It's Not Fair! (Ecclesiastes 4.1-16)

Introduction

If you have spent any time at all with children you’ll know that at the age of about 2 or 3 they develop a deep sense of justice. “She’s got more than me!” “Why is he allowed to stay up longer?” Their God-given conscience triggers an internal alarm bell whenever they see that some universal law has been violated to their disadvantage! “It’s,” “not” and “fair” are the first three words some children string together.

I was the middle one of three children and we always had to do the dishes after meals. One would wash, one would dry and one would put away. Whichever role my little brother was assigned to, he felt it wasn’t fair and he would broadcast his grievance at length and at high volume. I never understood his logic.

And have you noticed, “It’s not fair!” always works in one direction only. My siblings and I never said to my mum, “It’s not fair, I’ve got more cake than her.” Or “It’s not fair, I’m allowed to stay up later than him.” We complained bitterly only when we compared ourselves and felt we could make a case of being worse off.

In chapter 4 of Ecclesiastes there’s a lot of “Life’s not fair”. It’s a difficult chapter to get a handle on. It’s almost like Solomon just picks out random things in life that particularly tick him off.

Actually that’s how I talk when I’m in a bit of a bad mood. “There’s nothing good on TV, the house is cold, I’m sick of this filthy weather, England are rubbish at football, the fridge is empty, and I can’t do a thing with my hair.”

Actually, to be fair, I think England are rubbish at football even when I’m in a good mood. But do you ever talk like that or is it just me? Well, this is where Solomon is at in chapter 4. Everything annoys him. 

I love it that the Bible is honest about human emotions. Life isn’t all unicorns and rainbows is it? A lot of the Psalms, when you read them, are people just sounding off about how unfair life is and how far away God feels. God never says, “Well I’m not having all these miserable, grumbling old men ruining my word!” No, he includes it because he accepts us and love us as we are, not as we think we should be.

I want you to imagine chapter 4 with me as a walk through a room in a museum with six different exhibits.

Suffering and Oppression

The first picture is about suffering; this is what Solomon thinks about in v1-3. It’s a really dark painting of some poor, desperate soul being maltreated by powerful bullies. It’s about tears and oppression. Look how they’re all alone with no one to comfort them or help.

Solomon saw in his day, and we see in ours, that some people just get a sick satisfaction in inflicting pain on others.

Oppression was a fact of life in Jesus’ time as well as our gospel reading shows. Pilate just cruelly slaughters some Jews whose only crime was to be worshipping in the Temple when he was in a particularly foul mood. Then a badly built tower randomly falls on some innocent victims.

From modern slavery and human trafficking to coercive control and domestic violence in respectable looking homes, oppression is everywhere. What a sad, fallen world we live in!

Worldwide, $2.4 trillion are spent annually on an industry that creates or manages violence (the arms industry), while a tiny proportion of that sum, £175 billion, would eradicate world poverty with one investment.

In v2-3 Solomon hits rock bottom. He even envies those who are dead and gone. The second lowest you can go is to wish you were dead. But the lowest surely is to wish you’d never been born in the first place. But this is the kind of thinking that atheist philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre ended up with. “Life begins on the other side of despair” he said. Oh wow! A night out with him must have been a barrel of laughs…

But Solomon’s the king. If anyone can do anything about oppression it’s him. He didn’t. He forgot his faith for most of his life. If he had stayed in tune with the God he knew when he was young, he probably would have remembered the orphan, the widow and the foreigner and how God says to love them. He would have done something about all this instead of just sitting on his hands and complaining about how unfair life is.

Sometimes we feel powerless don’t we?

I read this week about a curate who once visited a young couple who were expecting their first child. They were young professionals, friendly enough, but not all that interested in spiritual things. In due course the child was born but very soon it became seriously ill and died.

The curate went to visit them again but, to his great distress, he couldn’t find anything to say and he just sat there in their living room fighting back tears, deeply upset for them. He left feeling a complete failure. To his amazement, the following Sunday, the couple were there in church for the first time. He welcomed them in, sat them down, made them feel at home, and then said, “I don’t understand it; when you needed me most, I had nothing to give you.” And they looked at him and said, “Oh, but you gave us everything you had.”

Possessions and Envy

The next picture in the gallery is about a group of women jealously envying their neighbour’s new designer handbag and slim line figure. 

This is what Solomon thinks about in v4; envy.

Someone once said, “We buy more than we can afford because we want more than we need.”

I have a nephew, now in his twenties, who grew up in a part of the south east where people live in large houses, drive expensive cars, own second homes and yachts and go on exotic holidays.

When he was about 14, his parents asked him what he wanted to do in life he said, “I just want to earn lots and lots of money. I am going to be rich.” He saw opulence and luxury all around him and decided he would give himself no rest until he had it too. And now he works in the City and earns big money with obscene bonuses.

This is the kind of thing Solomon saw going on in his day too. Envy. It’s not fair! People obsessed about getting into the next tax bracket, sending their children to a more elite school, moving to a more select neighbourhood.

Solomon noticed that people are so consumed by this drive that they never stop to ask “Actually, what is this all for?”

We tend to imagine that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. But even if it is, remember the neighbours’ water bill is higher as well.

Work and Inequality

You walk on and look at the next picture in the gallery and it’s of two workers in an office; one is quietly skiving off while the other is so overworked he doesn’t even notice. 

In v5-6 Solomon muses about the workplace. You’ve got workaholics driving themselves into the ground, getting into the office early, leaving late, taking work home at the weekend, and always stressed.

And you’ve got workshy idlers, throwing a sickie every two weeks, never pulling their weight, forever hanging round the coffee machine, systematically late back from lunch…

Neither has a good work/life balance and neither is really content.

In my first job we hired a young man called Craig Burden. I’ve never known someone so aptly named. He took laziness to a new level. You asked him to do something like move a box from a to b, and he’d just stand there and look at you slightly startled, as if you’d asked him to weigh the Moon. And he picked up the same wages as me at the end of the week. It’s not fair!

Solomon’s seen all this. “What’s the point of working hard?” This is what v6 means.

Money and Weariness

Next to that picture is one of a man sitting on a pile of wealth, more money that he’ll ever be able to spend, but he’s without a friend in the world and his eyes are empty and sad. 

This picture is the epitome of the expression, “It’s lonely at the top.” Here’s what Solomon sees in v7-8.

In 2013 Jane Park became Britain’s youngest Euro Millions lottery winner. She was 17 years old and won £1 million. She’s now 21, and says that her new wealth has failed to deliver any long-term happiness.

She was recently interviewed in The Independent, and said: “I thought it would make [my life] ten times better but it’s made it ten times worse. I wish I had no money most days. I say to myself, ‘My life would be so much easier if I hadn’t won’.”

She claims that she is considering taking legal action against Camelot, suing them for negligence for allowing her to win the money so young because it has “ruined my life.”

This is what she said: “People look at me and think, ‘I wish I had her lifestyle, I wish I had her money.’ But they don’t realise the extent of my stress. I have material things but apart from that my life is empty. What is my purpose in life?”

She could have taken those words right out of Ecclesiastes. Even people who win the lottery say “It’s not fair!” You see how relevant this is? As people climb the ladder of success, or win instant fame and fortune, many get lonely and the people they can honestly call friends get fewer and fewer. 

Popularity and Disapproval

And the last pictures are actually photos in two sections. The first two show three politicians the day they took office. 

Notice the optimism and happiness. But next to those pictures are scenes from a few years down the line.

Popularity has sunk. People feel betrayed and let down. It’s the same old same old. In politics, yesterday’s men are quickly replaced, often discredited, and seldom thanked for years of public service. It’s not fair.

This is what v13-16 are about. Solomon’s kingdom was torn in two in one generation later. I think he saw it coming. It all fell apart. He left no lasting legacy… For our politicians, it usually ends in tears, and for our celebrities, fame is fleeting.

Ending

Why has God given us Ecclesiastes? Because all the questions raised in this book, all its yearnings, things that the world still feels (if anything more than ever) are answered in Christ.

The church he established, and promised would grow, a community united by love, is the ultimate fulfilment of v9-12. People working together and making a difference. “If you remain in me, in I in you” Jesus said, “you will bear much fruit.” The chord of three strands (you, me and Jesus) is not quickly broken.

The thing is, Solomon never really enjoyed fellowship. His dad, King David, wrote in Psalm 122, “I was glad with those who said to me, ‘let us go to the house of the Lord.’” But Solomon, the loner, like so many in our culture, didn’t really do church. Too busy. Too distracted. Too self-absorbed. And look where he ended up.

But the gospel changes peoples’ hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. It is good news for people, like Solomon, are just lost in a deep frustration that life is empty and going nowhere.

In the 4th Century, the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate bemoaned the fact that his pagan religion was failing and in decline whilst Christianity was growing everywhere. And he wrote these words in a despairing letter: “Observe the kindness of Christians to strangers; their care for the burial of their dead, and the sobriety of their lifestyle has done the most to advance their cause... Not only do they care for their own poor, they care for ours.”

This is who we are, and this is the gospel we have, which is still as good news as it’s ever been.

Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.”

Encountering Jesus changes everything because it affects the very heart of who you are. Jesus recalibrates all your values. He all redefines your ambitions. What a discovery!

Jesus said about the one who finds the treasure “in his joy he goes and sells everything that he has.” He doesn’t just sell all he has; he does so with elation, with abandon, laughing out loud. No regrets. No complaints about the sacrifice. He doesn’t even consider it a hardship. However much he gives for the field, he gets so much more in return.

Let’s pray…

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 26 February 2017

How Can I Find Happiness? (Ecclesiastes 2.1-26)

Introduction

In the summer of 1978 I was in what they now call Year 11, and I said to myself, “When these exams are over, I’ll be free from the tyranny of school and life will be good.” Inexplicably, I got a few GCSEs, (or O Levels as they called them then) and went on to VI Form College. There were no school uniforms, you called teachers by their first names, smoking was allowed on campus… this was great for all of a couple of months.

Two years later, I was waiting on A-level results, clinging to the remote hope that I might somehow scrape the grades I had not worked for. Needless to say, I got one E and two fails.

So I thought, “I’ll get a job then, and when I do, I’ll earn some serious money and be able to buy stuff and do more.” A few months later I opened a letter from a desperate employer to read these beautiful words, “Dear Mr. Lambert, we are delighted to inform you…” Oh, the elation! Now life was going to get interesting.

So I started work as a Trainee Manager in a frozen food store (a bit like Iceland) and for a short while it was brilliant. The adrenalin, the challenge, but mostly if I’m honest the tea breaks, lunch breaks and the pay slip at the end of the month… But then the novelty of that wore off too.

So I thought “Maybe if I found a girlfriend, life would start to take off.” And miraculously, I somehow managed to sweet talk a young lady who wasn’t all that picky (not Kathie by the way) into an awkward few dates but it was no Mills and Boon romance…

Because one day we had a big argument about nothing, (I still think I was right by the way) and before I knew it, I had been unceremoniously dumped for another boy with greasy hair and zits – but, crucially, who owned a second-hand Ford Escort. I sat down that day and said to myself, “Isn’t there more to life than this? There’s got to be something better...”

Everywhere I go, I find that people spend their whole lives dreaming about the next job, the next house, the next extension or new kitchen, the next promotion, the next relationship, the next holiday, the next buzz. But when they get there, they find it doesn’t fulfil them in the way they hoped it might. Can you relate to this?

This is what Ecclesiastes chapter 2 is about.

Money can buy you virtually anything, but love isn’t one of them and neither is contentment. You can have a full wallet, a full larder, a full stomach, a full house, a full diary, a full career, a full wine cellar, and a bed full of beautiful women - and still have an empty soul.

Solomon’s Three Stages of Life

As we saw last Sunday, it was written by Solomon, son of the great King David. We know he was famous for his wisdom but what else do we know about him? I want to drill down a bit so we can understand him a bit better.

We know he wrote three books in the Bible and it looks like he wrote them at three different stages of his life.

The first is a book we call the Song of Songs. When I first read it I thought it was called the snog of snogs. It’s basically a collection of steamy love poems. You read it and think “this guy either needs a cold shower or he should get a room.” It’s full of erotic imagery and is packed with fantasies that he and his bride have for each other. They yearn for intimacy all the way through it. It’s safe to assume that he was a young man, maybe early twenties, whose veins were throbbing with hormones when he wrote it.

Intriguingly, the First Book of Kings tells us that Solomon wrote 3,000 proverbs and 1,005 songs, which corresponds almost exactly to the number of women in his life. Some have even speculated that, because the number of songs and number of women is so similar, he may have written a new love song for each of his women. Maybe he did.

And if that is so, there’s a reason why only one of them made it into the Bible - and that’s because only one woman was ever God’s choice for him. That’s God’s plan for sensual love; one man and one woman in an exclusive lifetime covenant. However much people rebel against it, this is the only sexual relationship that God has promised to bless.

So Solomon wrote love songs in the springtime of his life.

In his prime, perhaps in his 30s and 40s, he collected and compiled sayings and axioms. We know that he must have been a dad with children and teenagers when he put the book of Proverbs together because it’s basically a manual of advice from a father to a son.

All the proverbs are muddled up, you must have noticed this. It would be nice if there was a section on laziness, a section on money, a section on gossip etc. But they’re all cobbled together like jigsaw pieces when you take the lid off the box.

It’s exactly like a parent giving advice to a grown-up son or daughter as he or she heads off for university. “Don’t forget to eat plenty of green vegetables. And make sure you change your socks every day. And don’t buy stuff from door-to-door salesmen. And don’t forget to wrap up warm in winter.”

It reminds me actually of something a teenage girl once said to her mother. “Mum, what did you get up to when you were my age that makes you so worried about me now?”

But this is how parents actually pass on advice to their children. I never sit Ben down and say, “Now Ben, I’ve got three points for you this morning with a couple of sub-points on each one!”

The problem is, Solomon had tons of wisdom from God for other people, including for his own children, but he was very unwise in his own life – and, as a result, his kids ended up further away from God than even he did. The best way to ensure your children walk with God is to walk with God yourself.

I think Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes when he was a grandfather. The end of the book gives it away, as we’ll see in a few weeks. Now he’s at the end of the journey; looking back.

And as he weighs up his life, he suddenly realises he’s done it all wrong. The pleasure, the learning, the fame, the grand building projects – all of it was good in itself, but because he was a workaholic, because it consumed him, it took his focus off God.

1 Timothy 6.6 says; “Godliness with contentment is great gain.” Solomon didn’t value godliness, so he found no contentment. That’s why he concluded that his life was meaningless and empty.

I don’t know if there is any discovery more depressing than to realise at the end of the only life we have that it’s all been wasted.

Giving It Both Barrels

Solomon, as we saw last week, is a man with exceptional talents. He is born into a life of wealth and privilege. He has every opportunity possible to live life to the full.

And in Ecclesiastes 2 he shows how he gave it both barrels. He reels off an impressive catalogue of all the things he did to maximise his happiness.

This is Solomon’s bucket list – and he ticks every line. He tries partying (v1), laughing (v2), drinking (v3), engineering (4), gardening (v5), creating (v6), acquiring (v7), womanising (8), studying (v12) and working (v19).

We can glean a bit of detail on all this from the first book of Kings. It says he lived in sumptuous palaces. He strolled about in beautiful landscaped gardens. He constructed a private zoo displaying exotic animals from all over the world. He amassed a fleet of cars; 12,000 Egyptian thoroughbreds (the best that money could buy) and 1,400 chariots.

Royalty from all over the then known world travelled to Jerusalem to admire the splendour and finery of his kingdom. He sent them home dizzy from the experience and lavished with extravagant gifts. He held banquets serving the world’s most luxurious and sumptuous food and drink imaginable with top celebrity guest lists. Everyone wanted to be Solomon and everybody envied what he had.

He was waited on by a personal staff estimated at 10,000 servants, each trained and dedicated to indulge his every whim. He only had to click his fingers and he would be entertained by the country’s best singers, musicians and comedians.

He drank the finest wines in pure gold goblets. Prosperity in his reign was such that silver was considered worthless. No expense was spared.

He could have unlimited sex, whenever he felt like it, with any one of his 1,000 or so wives and partners. He spared himself no sensual pleasure.

He had the power to do anything he wanted. And as for bling, he sat on a throne of ivory and gold, exalted on six steps, adorned with twelve hand-carved lions, and surrounded by hundreds of shields in hammered gold. Yes, Solomon was the godfather of kitsch.

In fact, he says “I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me… (v9). That’s not hubris and ego. It’s a statement of fact. His engineering feats were legendary; grand building projects, fortress cities, impressive roads and canals...

“Yet (v11) when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.”

Here are the three paradoxes:

·         He has a brain the size of a planet but cannot make sense of anything.

·         He lives in a playboy mansion but gets no real pleasure from it.

·         He has a dream career but never once finds job satisfaction.

At the end of the day he looks at everything he is, everything he has, and everything he’s achieved and says “whatever.”

The private jet, the luxury yacht, the diamond chandeliers, the personal golf course, the exclusive art collection, the stately homes, the swimming pools, the high-class vineyards –all in a spiritual vacuum... It just leaves him unfulfilled.

Why is that? It’s because (and here’s the key) he tries to find happiness by enjoying everything he has, independently of any connection with God. He doesn’t even mention God until v24.

Jonathan Aitken, the former Government Minister, who was later disgraced in a perjury trial before coming to faith in Christ in prison, described his feeling about first being appointed to the Cabinet.

This is what he says” “Gnawing away inside me was a problem I could not describe, except by giving it… labels such as ‘lack of inner peace’, ‘emptiness of feeling’, ‘hollowness of spirit’, or more simply ‘something missing’. It was as though, after spending a lifetime wanting to climb a particular mountain, I had unexpectedly reached the final approach to its summit only to discover that there was nothing there worth the effort of the ascent.”

Phil Collins is one of the world’s best known and most successful musicians. He had more US Top 40 singles than any other artist during the 1980s. He has sold over 150 million albums worldwide. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His fortune is estimated some way north of £100 million. 

But his three marriages all ended in unhappiness and divorce. In an interview shortly after his third marriage breakdown he said this: “Night after night I find myself lying on the bed, staring out of a skylight at grey Swiss skies, rueing my life. I'm all alone, save for my good friends Johnnie Walker and Grey Goose." Then he added, “The huge hole, the void, I had to fill somehow. I filled it with booze. And it nearly killed me.”

He’s got everything people dream of - in spades. But would you swap your life for his after what you just heard? That “huge hole”, that “void” he talked about, Solomon brings it up in chapter 3, and we’re going to look at it more closely next Sunday.

Ending

We’re not going to end on that note though because the chapter doesn’t. It finishes slightly upbeat. After 41 straight verses of doom and gloom, there’s a glimmer of optimism.

Finally, Solomon mentions the “G word”. Verse 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, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment? 

As soon as he brings God into the picture, the mood lifts. He’s saying that life is given to us by God for our pleasure. When God made the heavens and the earth and the trees and the birds and the fish and the beasts and human beings he saw it was good, very good. It is.

1 Timothy 6.17 says “God richly provides us with all we need for our enjoyment.” Take pleasure in what you do, and enjoy life, live it happily and to the full, because it’s a gift from God who loves you and wants to bless you and fill you with good things.

And then he says this: (v26) “To the person who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness…

Hold that right there. What he’s saying here is that God shows favour to those who make him their treasure.

Things like food and work and friends and laughter and leisure are good. That doesn’t mean you can find security and self-worth in these things. Solomon tried that and it was a dead end.

"But” he says, “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.”

Your security and self-worth are in knowing Jesus Christ and following him. Real enjoyment of life comes when we follow God’s guidelines for living. Which Solomon did not.

And those who shut God out all their lives end up with nothing. The day after you die, having had no spiritual interest at all your whole life, what have you got to show for it? And what is there to say to God?

What about you? Are you building your whole life on perishable pursuits or on the firm foundation of knowing God?

Let’s pray…

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 12 February 2017 

What On Earth Am I Doing Here? (Ecclesiastes 1.1-18)

Introduction

In January 2004 a new American reality TV show first appeared called The Apprentice and it has been hosted for the last fourteen seasons by a man named Donald Trump. You may have heard of him. The UK version is hosted by Alan (Lord) Sugar. And on this show, as many of you will know, between 14 and 18 eager contestants compete with one another, desperate to avoid being fired, as they aspire to success, fame and fortune.

But the Canadian comic actor Jim Carrey, who has already achieved success, fame and fortune once said this: “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of, so they can see that it's not the answer.”

So what is the answer? What are we all looking for in life? What’s the goal? To be happy? To be fulfilled? Some of us feel like we’re on one of MC Escher’s famous architectural drawings of steps that lead nowhere. Many people feel like the further they walk, the less they travel.

Background to Ecclesiastes

King Solomon was a man like this. He lived about 1,000 BC which was Israel’s golden age. Its borders have never, before or since, been as extensive as they were in Solomon’s day. Israel’s economic wealth, its cultural influence and its military strength were all at their zenith during his reign. And he was top dog.

As we’ll see next week he was an exceptionally high achiever. He was multitalented. Politically, culturally and spiritually, he left his mark - big time. But above all, he was known all over the ancient world for his unparalleled wisdom. He was an intellectual, a thinker, a sage who knew a lot about a lot and spoke a lot of sense to people. He was before the great Greek philosophers like Epimenides, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. And in fact, only Jesus Christ in the whole Bible is presented as having wisdom greater than Solomon.

But Solomon’s whole life was a restless pursuit of an answer those great questions behind all teenage angst and responsible for every midlife crisis – What is life all about? Why am I here? Who am I? How can I be happy?

Solomon is the narrator of this book Ecclesiastes (he introduces himself in 1.1 and 1.12 as is David’s son and king in Jerusalem; that’s who he was).

And, as we’ll see over the next couple of months, he talks in this book about the many things he did in his quest for happiness and his ambition for greatness. But he just keeps coming back to a point of weary dissatisfaction, if not despair. “What’s the point?” he sighs again and again.

Now I know what you’re thinking. This is all very well, but what is this strange book doing in the Word of God? This is exactly what I thought when I first read it as a new Christian. It seems to be more about fate than faith. It sounds like the confessions of a burned-out secular humanist. It jars. This isn’t how God speaks.

It’s more concerned with earthly happiness than eternal holiness. It seems to almost sneer at the whole positive thrust of the gospel as good news of great joy. Ecclesiastes is never quoted in the New Testament. It’s dark. It’s a bit heavy. It’s like it was written by Eeyore in an exceptionally wretched mood on a particularly miserable day.

But no one ever doubted or disputed that this had its place in God’s word when they put the Old Testament together. Furthermore, no one argued for its exclusion from the Bible when the New Testament was added either. This absolutely belongs in God’s inspired word, but you need to dig deep to unearth its riches - and that’s what we’re going to do together all the way up to Easter.

Two Key Words

Let’s just set the scene a bit. In v1, Solomon gives us a heading. “The words of the Teacher” he says.

That word “teacher” is our English translation of a Hebrew word “qoheleth.” I’m going to introduce you to two Hebrew words this morning, both of which have a range of meanings much wider than what we have in English - and this first one, qoheleth, is variously translated in different versions of the Bible as the Teacher, the Critic, the Professor, the Philosopher, the Preacher and the Quester…

If you look at the footnote in your pew Bibles you’ll see it says “the Leader of the Assembly.” And this is what it literally means, it’s someone who gathers people round to listen.

I think the very best translation is “the Speaker.” Like the Speaker in Parliament who introduces a motion, chairs a debate between two sides and then gives the conclusion at the end.

This is what happened this week in Westminster. Various opinions were voiced in a two-day debate over the referendum outcome and the Speaker presided over the debate, ensuring every point of view was heard, before summing up and declaring the result of the vote at the end; “the ayes have it” as he said.

When you read Ecclesiastes all the way through, you can see that this is exactly what’s going on. Solomon begins with a motion “Meaningless, everything is meaningless.” Then he debates with himself throughout the book whether there’s any purpose, whether he’s wasted his life, whether it’s all just pointless - and he explores his own thoughts for and against, before concluding in the final chapter with his verdict.

It’s really important to understand this because, just like with Job, Ecclesiastes investigates alternative views to God’s word. Job and Ecclesiastes both conclude by saying that much of what has come before in each book is not what God thinks.

It’s a bit like picking petals off a flower; “she loves me, she loves me not…” Have you ever done that? It doesn’t work if you stop half way through! You’ve got to get to the end, haven’t you, or you might get totally the wrong answer. (Actually, in my experience this is not a scientifically proven method of determining the amorous sentiments of females)…

The other Hebrew word I need to introduce you to is the word “hevel” which occurs 38 times in Ecclesiastes and is translated here as “meaningless.” Other versions translate it “useless,” “vanity,” “empty”, or “boring.” It literally means “vapour” and this word carries the thought that life is fleeting like a whisp of smoke; it’s confusing; you can see it but when you try and grab it there’s nothing there.

Last summer we had the Paris grandchildren round (I’ve only just recovered by the way) and we were blowing bubbles with them in the garden. They would run after these bubbles, big and shiny with all the colours of the rainbow – but no sooner had they captured one and held it in their hands, they found it had vanished.

That’s “hevel.” Our days between birth and death pass like the vapour of a breath on a frosty morning.

Circles

In v1-11 Solomon starts out by sighing about the way life seems to go round in circles.

When I was growing up, recorded music looked like this (a 12” vinyl record). But the records scratched and warped and you could only fit about 45 minutes’ music on it and the technology was replaced by this (cassette tapes).

You could record over what was on the tape and put an hour of music on it. But the tape sometimes got chewed up in the machine so that technology was replaced by that (CDs).

Now you could have over an hour’s music perfectly reproduced and the plastic didn’t scratch so easily or warp. But when this came along (iPod) you could put hundreds of hours of music on it and the CD is now on the way to becoming obsolete.

We do advance technologically but Solomon is more interested in whether we progress as people. The truth is, he says, that every generation goes round in the same circles as the previous one.

Teenagers often think they've nothing to learn from their parents, certainly I was like that, but then they find out the hard way.

As Geoffrey Stevenson said, “History repeats itself. It has to, because no one listens.”

There’s a story about an old time preacher on Hyde Park Corner talking about the promises of eternal life. An attractive woman in her early twenties started to interrupt him saying his ideas had had their day; what he was saying was just naff and outdated. He just looked at her and said, “Young lady, you came into this world in an old fashioned way, and you’ll leave it in an old fashioned way too.”

“There’s nothing new under the sun” Solomon says in v9, a Hebrew proverb that has been adopted into the English language. Or as the French say, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” The more it changes, the more it’s the same thing. That’s been adopted into English too. Why? Because people know how true it is.

Our generation, just like our parents’ generation did, busies itself with keeping up with and overtaking the Joneses, trying to acquire ever more stuff, hoping it will deliver the happiness we crave for. The next generation will do the same.

People say, “I feel like I’m just going round in circles,” or “I’m getting nowhere fast.” People talk about life as a treadmill; relentless effort, but no sense of progress. Or “I feel like a hamster on a wheel.” The daily grind. The French call it “métro, boulot, dodo” (meaning “commute, work, bed, commute, work, bed”). What’s the prize for winning the rat race?

It’s like “chasing after the wind” Solomon says in v14. We have many ways of saying this in our day – because we experience exactly the same feelings 3,000 years later as Solomon did. And people will be saying exactly  the same things in 3,000 years’ time if the Lord has not returned beforehand.

Jack Nicolson starred in a brilliant, but quite sad, film in 2002 called About Schmidt. It’s about a man who retires as a senior manager in a life insurance company. But after getting the gold watch and a lovely send-off, he gets bored and feels a bit useless.

So he pops in to see his dynamic young successor, who is all smiles. “Great to see you Warren!” Schmidt, because he’s bored, says “If ever you need help with anything, just let me know.” And the new whiz kid says how much he appreciates it but diplomatically declines. And as Warren Schmidt leaves the office building, he sees all his old office furniture and all his files, basically the sum of his entire career, in the skip.

He becomes overwhelmed with loneliness. He starts to neglect his personal hygiene, sleeps in front of the TV, goes out with a coat over his pyjamas and eats convenience food. I won’t say any more and spoil the end if you haven’t seen it but it’s worth watching.

Solomon could have written the script of About Schmidt. He’d say “Look, when I retire and get my gold watch, I’m not stupid, I know I won't be missed after a week. Everything will be just as before. And what will I be left with one second after my death? Nothing. All I worked for, all I built, all I accumulated, all I achieved will be like that vapour, that bubble; reach out for it and it’s gone.”

We sit here today with an illusion of stability, but in fact we’re all spinning round and round on a giant spinning top rotating at over 1,000 miles an hour and hurtling round the sun at the speed of 18 miles a second. But actually we’ll be exactly where we were today on 5 February 2018 and all the way round, some people will be saying “stop the world, I want to get off.”

Life is cyclical. Someone once told me that if you live in Teesside, the tap water you drink has already been drunk and recycled five times by the nice people up river. 

As Solomon says in v4-10, the sun will keep rising and setting - the planet will keep spinning. The rain cycle will ensure the rivers will keep rolling into the sea. The lunar cycle will guarantee that the tide will ebb and flow as before. And all that will still be going on long after time has erased you and me and everything we care about from the face of the earth. Who’s going to know about me in three generations time?

This is what he says in v11: “No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.”

People often say, “Well, I hope to leave the world a little better than I found it...” But do you think there’ll be fewer wars in 100 years? There’s just as much (if not more) violence, injustice, famine and pestilence as there was 100 years ago – and now we’ve got Justin Bieber and Pot Noodle as well!

So there it is. Nothing lasts. Everything fades. Fashions becomes passé. You work for years building up an awesome cassette collection but when your machine breaks you can’t get a new one because the technology has left you behind. That’s what it says here in v3. “What does anyone gain from all their labours at which they toil under the sun?”

No wonder he says it’s all so meaningless; honestly, what significance do we have in the grand scheme of things?

Solomon, like so many others before and since, set out with high hopes in life to achieve, to change the world, to build an empire, to be a somebody – but as he looks back on it all as an older man now, he admits that it amounted to so little.

Jesus knew all about this. He asked, “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?”

Under the Sun

Nearly 30 times in this little book Solomon uses the expression “under the sun.” We’ve already come across it three times in chapter 1. He’s talking about the material world, where people never stop to think about spiritual realities. Solomon is speaking to the general public, who never see beyond the mundane and everyday, on their terms. “Under the sun” is what the New Testament calls “the world”, it’s a secular outlook that has no spiritual interest or curiosity.

He’s talking to people whose highest ambition is acquiring a suntan that others can envy. Solomon’s the type who’s done the sunbeds, and done the luxury holidays, and now looks in the mirror and sees an orange face or one with a complexion of a prune.

And as he thinks about all this, Solomon says in v15 “What is crooked cannot be straightened; what is lacking cannot be counted.” He means that the world is so crooked that nothing fits right. In the last 100 years, as the Western world has turned against God, modern art has appeared. You can't even tell which way up it is and people pay millions to own it.

Something has gone wrong, this is not how it was supposed to be. The world is all bent out of shape.

And over that same time, a new dramatic genre has emerged; the theatre of the absurd. Fluid plots that don’t make any sense. All communication breaking down. Logical construction and dialogue giving way to irrational, meaningless speech before ending in silence with everything up in the air.

Solomon says here that he world is so hollow, that nothing fills it. Life is like a 1,000 piece jigsaw of with only half the pieces, no picture and no shapes that seem to interlock.

Ending

So, as I close, Solomon chose this word “meaningless,” to sum up how life often feels without God. What words would you choose to describe your view of life?

God has built this quest for meaning and this sense of restless dissatisfaction in to us all. It’s there to point us to Him.

It’s why Romans 8.20 says, “the whole of creation was subject to futility...” (in other words meaninglessness, emptiness).

But almost every time someone gives a testimony in church about their new faith in Jesus - maybe after an Alpha course or at their baptism - you hear one familiar word; “purpose.” This is what I felt when I came to faith in Christ aged 17. Now my life has purpose. I’ve got something to live for. I’m fulfilled. This is what I was looking for. Now my life has meaning.

Let’s stand to pray…

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 5 February 2017