The Teacher’s Message

Introduction

Vanity of vanities, says the preacher, vanity of vanities. All is vanity. I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all vanity and a striving after wind. What a depressing conclusion. It doesn’t seem like a book like this should be in the Bible. Everything is worthless, doesn’t mean anything. Hang with me, because I don’t think that’s exactly where the wise man’s going with this. But he certainly wants us to consider the mundane and how life seems to just continue on and on, particularly from a human perspective without much purpose, without much meaning. And he wants to challenge our thinking, particularly in ways in which we tend to be comfortable or maybe idealistic and how we view the world. He’s going to introduce some ideas to us that will challenge us and make us think.

Probably more accurately, it is bringing those things to the surface, even though we already think them.

1. A Balance to Books Like Proverbs

Wheels turning in our mind and help us wrestle, because that is the nature of what life is like for someone who has a growing faith. To neglect those deeper thoughts, to be unwilling to challenge our thinking, to consider these tough truths and realities really stands in the way of our growth. And this wise sage wants us to be growing in our faith and our understanding of the world that we live in. In some ways, it’s also kind of a balance to books like Proverbs. Proverbs is a book that’s sort of idealistic. You know, like you live righteous, you do the right things, good things will happen. Right? And if you live wickedly and if you’re evil, then you will face the judgment of God. And for the most part, Proverbs is presenting life in that way.

It’s ordered and structured because God has done so to reward the righteous and to afflict the wicked. And of course, Proverbs is dealing with general truths, general realities. And for the most part, if we sort of look at life and we understand how things work in the workplace or in our families or among our friends, you know, if you are an upright person and you’re trying to be moral and you’re living with wisdom, good things do tend to happen. If you do the opposite, bad things tend to happen. And so there is truth in this, obviously. And this is wisdom that’s passed down from a father to the son for the most part, and there’s other paradigms within this as well. But these are things that are passed down over the years, kind of royal knowledge in the book of Proverbs to help guide those who are young.

But then the preacher, the philosopher, the teacher, whatever you want to call them, there’s a very variety of ways in which he is referenced, comes in and says, that’s not always how things work. Yes, that is generally the case, but the reality is sometimes you’re righteous and bad things happen. Sometimes you’re wicked and evil and good things happen. And so this stands behind the idea of this idea of life being vanity or life being meaningless. And the entire book really hinges around that phrase. And so we’re going to talk a lot more about that in just a moment. But let me kind of reinforce what I just said about Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. In Proverbs 11 19, it says, whoever is steadfast in righteousness will live. But he who perceives evil will die.

The preacher says, In my vain life, I have seen everything. There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evil doing. When we read through the book of Ecclesiastes, what I’m going to encourage you to do since we’re going to spend some time in this book over the next month and a half or so, kind of read through it. What we’ll see is we don’t have nearly as much control as we’d like to think. And there’s so many things that sort of equalize everything in life for everyone. Time just continues on. I can’t change time. Time will continue. The seasons of life will be what they are, no matter what I do and how I live.

And death will come to all righteous, evil, man, animal. These are just the things we see in the world around us. These are just unavoidable realities in life, and those can be troubling. When we actually stop and think about how little control we have, that’s a troubling thought. I know some of you were on a similar path with me yesterday. I was making my way down to the camp to pick up my two older kids. I’m heading back there today with Xander. And it was just kind of an eerie drive. I noticed every river, every creek I went past. Every drop of rain that hit my windshield. I was looking around, all around me. And it’s not because I’m just a hyper vigilant type of person or I worry or I’m concerned about everything, but there is a reality right now that I do not have control.

And at any moment, floodgates could open, the rains could pour down, and there’s absolutely nothing me as this small person can do about this. And so in a very real way, we feel that even this morning. These are the types of realities that we have to face in this temporary life. That life often is very unexplainable. And so we’re going to explore the world we live in, which is what the wise man wants us to do, but we’ll never fully be able to explain everything to Matt’s comment a few minutes ago. We’re not going to be able to fully explain all the things in life, but we can explore and observe and consider what the world is offering around us and what that means for me and the way that I should be responding to that.

And that’s what the preacher wants us to do. And this let me throw this out there that Job is kind of a real life example of the lessons we’re learning from a book like Ecclesiastes. And it’s asking the question, what kind of world am I living in? Is God really just? If bad things happen to good people, how can I explain this world or understand the world I’m living in? And this is what Job and his friends are wrestling with. And of course, he comes to the end, and God doesn’t just give him an answer. Like we want answers. As humans, we want answers, we want to know why to everything, but God says, This is not your department. Can you explain how everything was created and how it all functions?

2. Life Is Vanity and Striving After Wind

And he introduces all this to Job, and Job finally realizes, who am I to question God? Life is vanity. Here’s the teacher’s message. Life is vanity and striving after wind. Those ideas are actually very connected. You’re going to see this repeatedly throughout the text. In fact, the idea of vanity is used 38 times. Striving after the wind is a very similar thought, as we’ll see here in just a moment. This is the foundation of what he talks about. And so vanity can mean some of your Bibles might say meaningless. And this is an example. Most of the time, translation is great and conveys ideas. You’ve probably heard the phrase, there’s always something lost in translation. That is reality. It doesn’t matter what language you’re translating from and to, often there’s just nuances and little things that are lost.

And this is a great example of this because when we use the word vanity or meaningless, we have a very different concept than what this writer is trying to convey. Maybe only a part of it, and only the way it’s used in some instances. Maybe we think of vanity as like pride, right? Or selfishness, or a little mirror we sit in front of to get ready, right? Which again is about me or the person who’s sitting in front of it. But that is not necessarily the idea that he’s conveying here. And so I’m going to introduce a word to you that will probably be used quite a bit because it’s so fundamental to the book itself. The Hebrew word heavel. Heil is a word that means smoke or vapor.

And so the literal idea here is something more like life is smoke, life is vapor, life is mist. And so the characteristics of smoke and vapor and mist, you can see it, right? It’s right here in front of you. But what happens if you walk over and you try to hold it? It’s gone. It slips through your fingers. It’s not like a rock. The rock you can pick up and you can hold, you can feel it, you can touch it, but vapor or mist or smoke, you try to grab it and it’s gone. And so there’s all sorts of metaphorical, figurative sorts of ways in which this applies to what this teacher is trying to convey to us. So the idea of vanity, it’s it’s more than just meaningless or empty.

Sometimes the meanings he’s going for, particularly with the next phrase we’re going to talk about here in a few minutes, life under the sun. From purely human perspective, sometimes things do seem very empty and worthless. And he will admit that, and he wants us to admit that.

He says it’s heavel, it’s smoke, it’s vapor, it’s mist. How are the good things? How are the gifts of God also heavily? Well, we have to consider the different ways in which the word is used. It can mean something like temporary, right? Just like that smoke when it goes up, it kind of dissipates and then it’s gone. There’s not a whole lot of substance to it, even though we can see it and we know it’s real and it’s there, maybe like a shadow. You know, you see your shadow, but you can’t really do anything to your shadow. Your shadow’s real, it’s there. That’s kind of like life. You know, it’s real and it’s there, but in a moment you move and the shadow’s gone. And that’s the sort of concept he wants to convey, and actually, the psalmist conveys that very idea in Psalm 144 that we are heavily, he uses the phrase there, and then it says we also are like a shadow.

Those two metaphors sort of work together. And so sometimes the idea is something about it being temporary, short-lived, and this is often used in terms of things that are good or joyful. We experience something that is good from God, but then it’s gone. And that’s just the nature of how life works. But it also can mean something like enigma or mystery or paradox. A paradox would be something like the righteous are doing the will of God and yet they die young. That’s a paradox. It doesn’t make sense. It’s enigma, it’s mystery. Why is it working this way in life? And so heavel can have that meaning too. And also, maybe kind of at the foundation of it is the idea of absurdity. And we look around to the things that life and we just think, it’s just absurd.

It just doesn’t make sense to us. The word is actually used frequently for idols. In the book of Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah. But I want you to understand the reason for this. Idols are called heavel. Because they’re like that smoke, right? That you look and you see, but when you reach out for them, where are they? They’re not there. That’s what an idol is. And so the idea that life is health is when we kind of elevate and we highlight all the things around us, and often we turn those things into idols, whether it’s our work or our wealth, or the friendships we have, or whatever it might be in our life, we turn those things into the most important things. That’s heavily. We’re reaching out for something that looks substantive, but when we grab it, all we’re getting is air.

And so that’s what the wise man says when he says life is heavily. And so vanity or meaninglessness as it’s translated in your scripture is the word heavel, and it’s not necessarily bad. It’s just simply honest. And one thing the preacher is extremely honest. When you look out at life, here’s what it actually is. And yet, to protect ourselves very often, we want to try to stay away from that. We look at things in an ideal way. We imagine that if you do good, it’s all going to work out. And the reality is that’s just not the case. And so he’s giving us permission to wrestle with those realities in life, using this controlling metaphor of smoke or vapor. And then there’s the harsh truth. If this is all there is, what good is it?

I mean, this is it. If we just have this life is heavily, it’s temporary, it’s like a smoke or a vapor that just goes away. And we live, and there’s dark times, and there’s times of life, there’s good and there’s some bad, and then the end it’s just all over. And just like an animal, we die, which is something he says. And everyone goes to the same place. What’s the point of any of it? The wise man will have some answers for us. They may not be what we would think or what we would want, but they are true, and they are right, and they give us something to hold on to. In this reality that life is heavel, it is smoke and vapor. And he wants us to have a more accurate view than this sort of idealistic way we tend to want to think about the world.

And idealistic from the sense of we want everything to be right. I think our world is explained so well by this. Just look at the way that things happen in the world around us. Everybody’s trying to fix everything. You know, we’re going to get rid of every problem. We’re going to change all injustices. We have this kind of idealistic idea that somehow in our smallness, we can affect all the things in the whole world. Life is heavily.

3. Life Under the Sun Is Very Limited

That’s the reality. And when we come at life from a human perspective, from a humanistic standpoint or a secularist standpoint, which in their time frame wouldn’t have meant they don’t believe in any God, but it’s that they’re kind of elevating other things above God is more important. When that’s how we come at life, we’re going to be very disappointed in how it all plays out. Because life under the sun is very limited in its perspective. The way I see the world and the things that I think should happen and what I think should be made right, I am in no way in the place of God to make those decisions, and particularly to question God about what should be happening, because my view is extremely limited.

I have a ground level view on earth. And what the wise man is wanting us to see is the things we see don’t look right on earth, but from God’s perspective, they can look very different. He’s dealing with complexities that we can never understand and we never will understand. So some of the dark things that the preacher says, some of these truths, some of the observations, some of the considerations, actually, many of them in the book, we need to understand are coming from an under the sun perspective. It’s the way it looks to us, and yet we have very limited knowledge, and it can be very different when it comes to God’s sovereignty and how this is all going to play out over the course of God’s plan and his will.

And so part of that is the humility to understand. That just because I see things a certain way doesn’t mean that they are actually reality. We do feel intense darkness. And life does seem pointless sometimes from our vantage point. And the preacher does not dismiss that. He doesn’t say, oh, just get over it. You know, you’re not seeing it right. Don’t feel depressed. Don’t feel upset. How do we feel when someone does that to us? You know, stop being so upset about, don’t be frustrated by that. Move on. Think about something else. How well does that work? Or maybe just calm down. Do we like that one? Guys, do we know.

Yet those things don’t work because they’re not real. The reality is we do feel frustration, and we are down at times. There is darkness in the world, and we do see all of that. And so while the lady wisdom in Proverbs is saying, live right and good things will happen, the wise man, the preacher in Ecclesiastes is saying, yes, live with wisdom, and often good things do happen, but there are frustrations. And life under the sun is difficult, it’s hard, bad things happen, and that’s just the reality we have to wrestle with. Death and time and chance are unavoidable. They’re just a part of what happens to us. No matter how much you do, it seems like it never satisfies. Even wisdom and knowledge often just bring more sorrow.

Have you ever had that experience? The more you learn about something, the more it upsets you. The more frustration it brings. This is the point he’s making in the first part of this book at the end of chapter one. You’re successful. You make a ton of money. But then you’re just going to die and it’s going to go to somebody else. So why do we make that so important in our life? Life is heavy. It’s a vapor, it’s a mist. And the wise man wants us to understand this in a very real way. Some people have everything they’ve ever desired, everything they’ve ever wanted, and yet it still doesn’t bring meaning to their life. A man to whom God gives wealth, this is Ecclesiastes 6, a man whom God gives wealth, possessions, and honor, so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires.

He’s had all the desires of his heart, yet God does not give him power to enjoy them, but a stranger enjoys them. The things that we think will satisfy us in life often just don’t. And so we go down this road and we think this is going to be the answer, and yet when we’re coming at this from a human way, with human perspective, it just continually leaves us empty because we’re putting our hope in the temporary things, the things that are going to dissipate. We’re reaching and we’re striving after that mist, after the vapor, and when we reach for it’s gone. This is what he wants us to see. The wise man isn’t just offering theory, he’s teaching from experience. When we get into chapter 2, he says, So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair.

4. Live in the Moment: Life Is the Gift of God

He’s been through all of this, he’s experienced it all. And he’s tried to find meaning in all sorts of things in life, and he’s come up empty every time. And so he feels despair in this. And yet he wants to share his wisdom with us about what really matters in life under the sun, in a life that is vapor and mist. What is it that actually makes a difference? Well, I’m going to give you the basic answer, and then we’re going to work through in the weeks to come some different angles from this. But I want us to understand that it is one of the afflictions of our mind is the expectation that things maybe will be what they used to be. Or that we’re looking out into the future for some kind of security.

Right? It’s going to be better over here, kind of the grass is greener on the other side, sort of idea. And so sometimes we look back with nostalgia, unrealistic nostalgia, and the wise man says, Don’t do that. Say not, why were the former days better than these? For it is not from wisdom that you ask this, chapter 7 and verse 10.

And what we fail to do so often is the very thing that brings meaning and purpose and joy and life, and that is live in the moment. Even when the moment is difficult and hard. Seeing the blessings of that moment. I think maybe this is best illustrated through the idea of parenting. Parenting’s tough. It’s going to be really hard. You got a kid that’s having trouble sleeping, and you’re up three, four in the morning. And what we need to understand about ecclesiastes is a lot of this is about perspective. Circumstances don’t bring you joy. It’s the decisions that we make and the things that are happening to us in life. And that’s what the wise man, the preacher, is trying to get us to see. And so in that moment, I can sit and rock that baby and be upset because I’m not able to sleep and be frustrated because things aren’t working, or I can think, I’m so glad that I’m blessed with this child and I can comfort this child in this moment.

Now look, I understand there’s still fresh frustration. There’s still being sleep deprived. There’s going to be times of sorrow and grief in which our minds are not going to cycle to that reality, but that is the answer. You’ve had a hard day at work, things did not go well, you lost a deal, you didn’t make a sale, you had to answer tons and tons of emails. You’re just frustrated and upset, and you can carry that home with you and carry it through the rest of your night, or you can realize life is heavily. It’s a vapor, it’s a mist, and I’m going to appreciate the things I have a job. It went terribly today, but I have a job. That job that I don’t really enjoy that much right now, it’s providing for my family.

It’s taking care of my wife or taking care of my wife and my kids. It’s giving me the ability to go see family other places or take vacations. There’s all sorts of ways in which we can live in the moment. Think about the things that God has blessed us with, and repeatedly throughout the book of Ecclesiastes, this is the very thing the preacher tells us to do. He can be talking about the most dark thing you can ever imagine. The righteous die young. Then he says, I commend joy. There’s nothing better to eat and to drink than to be merry. For this is the gift of God. Isn’t that odd? Actually, almost every time he does that, he’s just been talking about something extremely dark and troubling.

And then he pauses and says, There’s nothing better than this. To enjoy the gift that God has blessed you with. And so as we think about what’s happening in the book of Ecclesiastes, I want you to think about that in the weeks to come, or maybe just today or tomorrow. When you get frustrated or things aren’t going well, can we just take a break and think, life, this is the real point, life is the gift of God. It’s not about gain. It’s not that we’re trying to gain something or collect things or that sort of thing. So sometimes we get upset because we aren’t collecting or gaining the way we would like to be.

And me in that moment, realizing that’s where satisfaction and fulfillment actually come from. And it is often unrealistic expectations that kill the joy in our life. Chapter 11 and verse 8 says, So if a person lives many years, let him rejoice in them all. But let him remember that the days of darkness will be many. All that comes is heaven. Interesting thought. An earlier part of the story, or this bringing of wisdom, the preacher makes this statement about the gift of God and how he’s given wealth and possessions and all that, and how you’re supposed to enjoy. And what he means is hey, in the moment, enjoy the things God can give you, because life is heavily, it can all be gone. Enjoy it now.

And this is not some sort of hedonistic sort of thing. It’s just the idea of realizing God has blessed me and appreciating that now. And then living my life with that sort of mentality, because the reality is I could wake up tomorrow and the US dollar could be worth nothing. The market could crash and my house could be worth nothing. I might lose my job. Whatever it might be, the things that we think we have control of, the things in life that we think we can handle, often it’s interesting how they don’t work out the way that we thought. And so what he’s saying is, live now, live in the present with the joy of the Lord in your heart, appreciating the fact that God has blessed you in the way that he’s blessed you, and enjoy that not just yourself, but also with your wife, with your family, with your friends.

This is the answer to life. This is what brings fulfillment and satisfaction.

But the one who lives that way, he says in chapter 5 and verse 20, will not much remember the days of his life because God keeps him occupied with the joy in his heart. The preacher does not promise you that you will not suffer and that you will not have dark days, and if you just live for the Lord, everything will be fun and great and enjoyable. That’s not the promise. But the thought is if I turn the present moment to the Lord, if I bless him for the way he has blessed me, and that’s the way I live my life, I the dark days, I won’t even remember them that much. That’s the concept of what he’s saying here in chapter 5. Yes, everybody’s gonna experience struggles and difficulties.

But remember, it’s about choices, not circumstances. So the answer to heavy, to the smoke, to the vapor, to our limited perspective in life under the sun is to see life as God’s gift, even in the midst of things that are hard and difficult at times. To relish in the moment, to see the beauty and being able to comfort a hurting child, or to help somebody in need. It’s not because those things are good, that their hurt is a good thing or the struggle is a good thing, but there is still beauty and good in the fact that God has blessed me in a way, or he has put me in a position where I can be a part of something that helps. Or in someone’s help for me.

But what that requires is that I don’t get caught up in the past. I’m not so worried about the things in the future, but I’m living in the moment and appreciating the gifts that God has given me right now, today. Isn’t that what much of our worry is? Are we typically worried about like this exact moment? So worried right now. You know, what’s gonna happen when I finish this sermon? That’s not typically the concerns. We’re worried about what am I gonna have enough money to retire? That’s future. Being really caught up in the future. Or when I’m going through some kind of struggle, I’m thinking, man, things were, they were so good back here. I just, I just wish we could go back to how things used to be.

Do you see how foolish that is? We can’t, you can’t go back. That’s what the wise man says. You can’t go back. That’s not from wisdom. And even if you could go back, this is a really important point. Even if I could go back to how things used to be, I probably wouldn’t see it the way I am seeing it now. Right? We idealize the past. It was so great back then. It’s kind of like raising a kid. You know, you got your kid and they’re they’re doing math homework or whatever it is, and they’re losing their mind. They’re all upset, and they’re like, this is not a big deal. It’s a big deal to them. And as we grow and mature, the things that bother us and makes us anxious and we are worried over, they change and they may grow and develop.

Conclusion

And so we think, when we look back, oh man, it was so great when I was 12. I didn’t have anything to worry about. People were worrying when they were 12. It’s about perspective. And so I want us to understand as we work through this book, the answer is to focus on the moment to enjoy the blessings that God has given us today. I appreciate you listening this morning. I just want to show you a little bit of where we’re headed here in the next few weeks. This is not going to be an exhaustive textual study of the book of Ecclesiastes. That’s not a good way to work through this book, anyway. But it’s going to be kind of highlighting some major ideas. The book is actually fairly chaotic from a structural standpoint.

It sort of mimics life, and I think that’s purposeful. He brings up ideas, and just like life in general, he just kind of cycles. He just keeps working through them. Right? And maybe he comes at them from a different angle. And so that’s what we’re going to try to do as we work through this book as well. Seeing this main idea that life is smoke, it’s vapor, it’s temporary, it’s absurd, it’s mystery. We’re never going to figure it all out, but we can explore it. We can come to a better understanding. And then we can finally get to the point where we realize what actually matters in all of this is not all the things, but who it is that we put our trust in, the solid rock.

Don’t put our trust in the smoke, in the vapor, in the mist. We need to put it into that which is concrete and firm. And when we do that, to the extent that we do that, then we will experience joy and satisfaction and fulfillment and life. Ecclesiastes is a book for skeptics, for people who are burnt out, for those struggling with the tough realities of life.

Not in chasing after the wind, trying to grasp the smoke, but fearing God and finding joy in him. And as Matt said already this morning, the answer is Jesus, right? This is kind of foreshadowing this reality of the solid rock. The one that is going to give meaning and joy and fulfillment to our life. That’s the only way we can find it. We won’t find it in all the other things that we’ll talk about that the preacher brings up. It’s only going to be found in the council and the will of God. And so even this morning, I invite you to submit yourself to that. If you’re looking for joy and peace and fulfillment in life, the message of Scripture in general is that you will only have peace when you’ve been justified in Jesus Christ, Romans chapter 5.

That’s the only answer. None of these other things, the smoke and the vapors we chase around us, are going to bring that into our life. It’s only going to be by submitting yourself to the will of God, being buried with Jesus Christ and baptism, resurrecting to a new life. It’s a new way of living. And then following Him, the true master, in the way that He tells us to live. Can we help you begin that this morning? Why don’t you come as we stand and we sing?