How many of you have ever had a job that is just really monotonous and boring? Some of you have a job like that now. I had a job back in the 80s that actually was a well-paying job, but I didn’t even make it through the training because it was so boring and monotonous. It was a job as a letter sorting machine operator at the main post office in St. Louis. I found a picture online. Basically the job is exactly how it sounds. It is someone who operates a machine that sorts letter. You sit at this machine and the letters come down in front of you about one a second and your only job is to type in the zip code. The letter would continue on and go in the appropriate bin. As you can imagine, doing that for eight hours a day could be very tedious. You know 3,000 letters a day can be quite routine and monotonous. So monotonous that you actually received a 15-minute break for every 45 minutes you worked because if you didn’t you would practically go insane. Needless to say, I didn’t make it through training. We have all had monotonous jobs. But the writer of Ecclesiastes seems to imply that not only are jobs monotonous but really life apart from God can be totally meaningless and monotonous. We began the study on the book of Ecclesiastes and the title of the series is Under The Sun, which basically is the author’s reference to life lived for the here and now. Pretty much a life apart from God that really, for all practical purposes, is a meaningless life as he spelled out in the opening verses we talked about last week where he says “The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem: ‘Meaningless! Meaningless!’ says the Teacher. ‘Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless!’ What does man gain from all the labor at which he toils under the sun?” If you were here last week, you know that the teacher was none other than King Solomon. We talked about how King Solomon started off as a very good king but later years in his life he began to pursue wine, women, song, and idols. So he really fell from grace with God. In fact, God actually split up his kingdom upon his death. We also spoke about how, although the book was written 900 B.C. or so, it is a very relevant book for today. What it does is it speaks about the culture that has pretty much turned its collective back on God and, consequently, pursues very meaningless things.
Today, we are going to continue to unpack the first chapter. We are going to look specifically at chapter 1, verses 4-11 and see how King Solomon supports his primary thesis that all of life apart from God is meaningless. I would like to have somebody read chapter 1 of Ecclesiastes starting at verse 4 going through verse 11, ideally the NIV version. (Scripture read here.) As you can tell, there are a lot of verses there that are really quite depressing if you think about it. The first verse, verse 4, really speaks again of the brevity of life against the backdrop of never-changing nature. He says “Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.” We get into this ego where we think we are lord of our universe when the reality is we are just passing through. It is nature that sticks around. Someone compared nature to a backdrop on a stage or a movie set, and we the people are simply actors that come on the stage, make our appearance, and exit off the stage and somebody new comes on. That is kind of a depressing but actually true thought. Solomon is beginning to unpack the meaninglessness of life. Really what he is talking about in this passage and the passages that follow is that life, for all intents and purposes, is very monotonous and very routine. He begins with the sun and begins to talk about this idea of monotony and routine. He says “The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.” He is not talking as an astronomer here. It is about 900 B.C. He is talking about the sun as observed from a human perspective. From a human perspective, sitting in our backyard looking at the sun, that is how we see things. We view the sun as rising up, going across the sky, and going down, and then the next day beginning to start the whole process over. He uses the idea hurries. The underlying word refers to an exhaustion or a panting. It just gets back to the beginning and starts the whole thing over the next day, which implies a very monotonous existence. A monotonous routine. Really it doesn’t accomplish much. We could say sure it accomplishes things. The trees and plants need the sun, but we are looking at life apart from God. Apart from God, the sun serves absolutely no purpose because there is nothing lasting. It produces nothing that lasts for generations.
He shifts his focus from the east-west movement of the sun to the north-south movement of the wind. He goes on to say “The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course.” Again, he is not speaking to us through the eyes of a meteorologist. He is basically just expressing a common observation that the wind goes around and around and does its own thing and basically ends up back in the jet stream or its course really not accomplishing anything. Again, apart from God, what is the point of the wind? Why do we even need it? What purpose does it serve? I think he is suggesting by these passages that just as the sun is in a rut, really the wind is in a rut.
Then he goes on to talk about the water cycle. The waters leave the stream and go up to the clouds and back to the sea, but the sea is never full. He writes “All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again.” We know that the sea never gets full because of evaporation where the water leaves the sea, goes into the clouds, makes its way over land and then drops rain over and over again like it has been doing in Pittsburgh the last month. That is what it does. Again, his point is simply that this is very monotonous. Very routine. For what ultimate purpose? Thinking outside of God, the whole water cycle has no purpose. There is not purpose behind it. In these opening passages, he is using nature, the sun, wind, and water cycle, to express the meaninglessness of nature apart from God. We would think with all this daily activity going on in nature that something long term and eternal would be produced. But the reality is, if you think about it, there is nothing productive about the whole process because there is nothing that lasts. As much as we can sit around with astronomers, biologists, scientists, and botanists and talk about how things work, none of them could answer the question why. Why do these work? What is the ultimate purpose behind it all? Why does nature just appear like a hamster on a wheel that goes around and around and around but never reaches its ultimate destination? They can’t answer that. These opening verses suggest that the earth, sun, wind, and rain serve no end whatsoever apart from God. And if these never-changing things of nature lead to nothing, then what does that suggest about humanity?
That is when he goes on to really address the whole idea of the monotony of the human existence. He goes on to write “All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.” There is one word that summarizes this whole sentence up: boredom. In fact, Eugene Peterson in the book The Message I like how he writes it because he gets right to the point. He says “Everything is boring, utterly boring. No one can find any meaning in it. Boring to the eyes, boring to the ear.” We are a bored people and that is why we are constantly trying to seek out the satisfaction in something. We are trying to seek out the next buzz in life really. We are. We are always looking for the next thing. Whether it is the newest movie out there, the newest song on iTunes, the newest piece of technology, and even the new thoughts that are out there. We are always seeking it out. We get one thing and enjoy it for a short time, but it doesn’t last, so we continue to go on and look for something new. I recently read an article in the last couple days that says the millennial generation, the 20-somethings, buy a new piece of technology and the thrill is gone within 30 days. Totally gone and so they have to seek out the next best thing. I started thinking that it’s not just technology and it’s not just the millennials. It is everybody. Look around your house. Look at all the stuff you have. One time you thought it was the neatest thing since sliced bread. The newest invention that you were willing to pay all sorts of money for only to have it show up in the flea market for 50 cents a few weeks ago. You laugh, but it is true. This was all the new, exciting stuff that we had to have.
What the writer basically goes on to say is really there is nothing at all new under the sun. He continues to write this “What has been will be again. What has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, ‘Look! This is something new’? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.” This is a strong statement. This was written 900 B.C. so we could give Solomon a little pushback and say there are all sorts of new stuff out there. Look at the marvels of technology and science and medicine. All sorts of new stuff. He is not trying to discount that there are things that come on the scene that seem new. But he is trying to suggest that really a lot of the stuff that we think is new is just variations on the old. The stuff that was new at one point 2,000 years ago they thought was the newest, latest and greatest thing. The things that people are going to experience 1,000 years from now that stuff too they are going to think is the newest and greatest thing. The reality is all this stuff ends up in some sort of a trash bin that leads to oblivion. It is not only the things in life but what Solomon goes on to suggest in a very somber way is that “There is no remembrance of man of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered.” This is pretty sad, depressing stuff. But it is honest stuff. We like to think that we are going to be remembered, but short of the big names in history like Jesus, Solomon, Moses, Caesar, Hitler, and Elvis Presley, we are not going to be remembered by many people. Think out 100 years. Think out 200 years. Think out 300 years. I can guarantee pretty much that everybody in this room 200-300 years out are not going to be remembered. Do you remember your great-great-great-great grandparents? Or relatives, or uncles, or aunts? All these people that at one time were living very real and active lives just like everybody in this room but have been forgotten. I was looking in my office the other day, and I have had this picture there for a long time. This is the Bellevue Christian Church congregation in 1924. That is 91 years ago. Aside from maybe one or two of these kids in this picture, I suspect that most of these people are gone and few, if any, are remembered at all. I look out there and I look to myself, and I hate to say it, but 100 years or so from now, somebody else will be standing up here and somebody else will be sitting in the pews, and we are not going to be remembered.
As I said, Ecclesiastes is a depressing book, and we are only in the first chapter. I warned you that this is going to be a depressing series. It is very depressing. I would suggest that it was designed to be depressing. Solomon was somebody who had everything. He had the opportunity to pursue all the avenues of life only to come up and say life is meaningless apart from God. That is the point. Life has absolutely no meaning apart from God. What happens when you put God back in the picture? Things change. When I say put God back in the picture, I am not saying it the way that some people would put God back in the picture by saying God created the world like a clock, wound it up, set it on its pedestal, and stepped aside and said do your own thing. I am talking about God who is a very personal God. A God who loves us. A God whose act of creation was a divine act of love for us. That is the kind of God we are talking about. A God that loves us so much that he started the process of redeeming the world and bringing all of creation back to the way it was intended. You guys know the basic gospel story I think. God created this beautiful world for us and yet humanity collectively has turned its back on God. We call turning your back on God a word that I think is still common, the word sin. When sin entered the world, it basically created chaos. Chaos. Not two steps out of the garden we see Cain killing his brother Abel. That act began to infuse the world with violence, harshness, hatred, and confusion, and all this kind of stuff that Paul sums up with the word frustration. In fact, he writes in Romans 8:20 “For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.” That is a mouthful but basically says the world, because of sin, has become frustrated. It is not the way it is supposed to be. You don’t have to be a biblical scholar to know that the world is not the way it is meant to be. Just watch the news. It doesn’t seem right. It doesn’t seem like the wind and rain should be causing these huge tornados and flooding in the Midwest. Or like it did last week and push down a bunch of trees in the Allegheny Forest and kill a 15-year-old girl. It doesn’t seem like that is the way things should be. Or that we would have these random but continual shark attacks on the east coast where we haven’t really had them that much. Or the attacks in South Carolina at the church in a prayer service that killed nine people. Or the attack on a beach in Tunisia this past week that randomly killed 30 people. It’s not the way things are supposed to be. All that is part of the frustration of creation that we live in.
But, again, we know that we serve a loving God who said I can fix that situation. I am going to fix that situation. So 2,000 years ago “the word became flesh and made his dwelling amongst us.” In other words, God stepped into the futile creation and began to kick start the reversal process. Through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ everything began a reversal. I think it is in Revelation where Christ says “I have come to make all things and new.” That newness begins with us. 2 Corinthians 5:17 “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come.” When God creates something new it’s not just a variation of the past. It is something incredibly new and also something that has an eternal quality to it. It lasts forever. For those who are not familiar with the term “in Christ”, it is just a fancy phrase that means you have received Christ as Lord and you are willing to live out your life under his Lordship, following his commands, day by day, beginning with baptism. That is the beginning. That is the part that we would say you truly become a disciple of Jesus Christ. Like a brand new baby, all of a sudden you are experiencing what we call the born-again experience. Not only yourself is made new, but you begin to see things in a very new way. You don’t look at nature as monotonous, repetitious, and meaningless, like a hamster on a wheel. You see the creation as a testimony to God’s glory. Psalm 19:1 “The heavens declare the glory of God. The skies proclaim the work of his hands.” Purpose. That is the purpose of creation. We just talked about the sun and Solomon said quickly the sun rises, the sun sets, and runs back around. Listen to how the psalmist describes the course of the sun. He says “In the heavens, he has pitched a tent for the sun, which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion, like a champion, a horse, rejoicing to run his course. It rises at one end of the heavens and makes it circuit to the other; nothing is hidden from its heat.” The psalmist is seeing creation as intended. Seeing the majesty, beauty, and glory of God in creation. That is the way that we are supposed to see it.
In many ways, the way we are supposed to see it is the way the little kids see it. Bev talked about vacation bible school and we had the games outside and the crafts downstairs and visiting with Mary. She mentioned the God sightings. To me that was the most exciting part of the whole vacation bible school. The little kids would be asked where did you see God this past week or yesterday or today. They would have to write it down on a little cutout lamb. Just to get an idea of how they are able to see God, I actually took a picture of three of them. One says “I see God in the sun, which reminds me of Jesus.” When was the last time you said that? When was the last time you looked at the sun and said that reminds me of Jesus? Why not? Why did you miss that? How can a little kid see that and you can’t see that? Another kid said “I saw birds. It reminded me about God because he created them.” Is that true? When was the last time you looked at the birds and saw it as a creation from God? This is the one I really love. It says “I saw air, which is God’s way of breathing.” That is very profound. Have you ever thought about air as God’s way of breathing? Kids are able to see the things that we have lost sight of. We are supposed to be the smart ones. We have lost sight of it. That is why Jesus, in the gospel, says “Let the little ones come to me and do not hinder them for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” Because they get it. The older we get, the more muddied our mind becomes and the more cynical we become about everything, including nature. We are not able to see God. I talked about it a lot, and I don’t know if anybody has practiced it. We call it the spiritual discipline of noticing God. Going through your day and paying attention to God. Whatever way you figure out how to do it. Whether it is every time you stop at a stoplight, drink a cup of coffee, put a ding on your phone or whatever it takes to wake up your mind and to break you out of the monotony of life and say, wow, I just saw God in creation, in people, whatever it is. That is a spiritual discipline. We have been so numbed by the world, Christians even, that we need to train over and over again. Eventually, we get better at it, and we begin to see God in very new ways. I know it works. I think I mentioned the author’s name before, a guy named Frank Laubach who wrote this little book, 100 pages or less, called Letters by a Modern Mystic. It is this guy’s observations. Really his determination to notice God every single day. At least once every hour. Just constantly staying in God’s presence and talking in God’s presence. In his mind it is really not that hard. He writes “God is everywhere around us if we only open our eyes. All the world is beautiful if we have eyes to see the beauty, for the world is packed with God.” This is an adult. He didn’t get there overnight. You can read about his frustrations of doing it. Again, this is the discipline of noticing God. You have to train yourself because we have been untrained how to do it.
I need to close, but I know there are Christians here who have been caught up in a rut. Caught in a monotonous routine. Doing your work. Going to bed. You are in this monotonous routine and you begin to think that life has no point. You are one of these letter sorting machine operators. That is how you view your life. You are just looking for that 15-minute break to get freed from that. For you, my prayer is really Paul’s prayer to the people in Ephesus when he writes “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you.” Why does he pray this? Because he knows if you begin to open your eyes and recall the hope you have been given, you begin to have a fresh vision for God. You begin to have a fresh vision for yourself, to realize your life does have meaning as Austin talked about a few weeks ago. The whole idea that there is a why behind everything that we do. You begin to view nature and all of creation the way God intended it to be. Likewise, I know there are people here that still have not received Jesus as Lord of their life. I don’t know what is keeping you. I just don’t understand that. All I know as a pastor is I have to keep laying it out there and say it is not that difficult. It is as simple as ABC. A is acknowledge you are a sinner. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. B is believe that he died on the cross for your sin and he was raised from the grave on the third day and now is seated at the right hand of the Father. C is confess him as your Lord. You are going to mess up all the time, but confess him as Lord and get up every single day and understand that even when you fail, God’s mercies are new every single morning. You just start over again. He is very patient with you. If you do that, you will begin to have an understanding that if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is gone and the new has come. Let us pray.
