Latest / Reformed Thinking / Misty Joy Under the Sun: Ecclesiastes Breath and the Gift of a Fleeting Life

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Misty Joy Under the Sun: Ecclesiastes Breath and the Gift of a Fleeting Life · Reformed Thinking

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Welcome to Reformed Thinking. I want to start our time today
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by bringing you to a scene that is, you know, strikingly
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ordinary but I think universally relatable.
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Oh, for sure. Picture this right.
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You are on a family vacation on the Oregon coast.
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The air is brisk, cutting right through your Jack.
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That classic Pacific Northwest. Show Yeah, that's it.
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And the ocean is this vast, intimidating expanse of Gray and
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blue just rolling out toward the horizon.
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The sound of crashing waves fills the atmosphere, basically
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drowning out the background noise of the whole world.
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Right, it's a very grounding environment.
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It is, and we are looking at a specific scene described by
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author Brian Borgman. So he is sitting on the cold
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beach watching his children play in the sand.
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His baby daughter is right there, bundled up, taking in the
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sights and sounds of the coast. This sounds like a great day.
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It is perfect picturesque family moment.
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Like you could frame it. But in the middle of this
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pristine scene, Borgman is suddenly hit by what we might
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call a Rogue Wave of realization.
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Oh. Wow, yeah, those hit hard.
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They do. He looks at his children and the
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thought just pierces his chest, like they will grow up, they
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will marry, they will move away to different cities, and one
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day, long after he is gone, they will pass on too.
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That is heavy. So heavy he can take out his
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phone, right? Snap a photograph to preserve
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the moment. But you know, that photograph
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only proves that the moment is already gone.
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It is in the past the second the shutter clicks.
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Yeah, that's so true. The human heart deserately says
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hold this, keep this forever. But time objectively answers.
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You cannot. Time cannot be paused.
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It is a heavy, melancholic realization that crashes over
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this realization of life's staggering brevity.
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It is a moment of clear, piercing reality, though.
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I mean, we often perceive it as a moment of sorrow.
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Right. It feels sad.
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Yeah, but that sudden awareness of our own transients and the
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transients of everyone we love is universal.
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No one escapes it. We watch our parents age and
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slow down, we bury our loved ones, and we March steadily
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toward our own physical end. It's intense to think about.
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It really is. The natural human reaction is to
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recoil from this thought, like we want to distract ourselves.
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Oh. Absolutely.
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Turn on the screen, stay busy. Spot on.
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We turn on the television, we work 80 hours a week.
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Or we try and build some massive legacy, like a company, a trust
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fund, a monument, something that resists the relentless forward
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March of time. We want to pretend the clock is
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not ticking. And that universal feeling is
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the launching cloud for our mission today.
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OK, let's get into it. We are going to examine a
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collection of theological writings focusing on the Book of
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Ecclesiastes. We're drawing specifically from
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Boardman's work Don't Waste Your Breath alongside related
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theological expositions. Right, good material there.
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Really good. And our goal today is to rescue
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Ecclesiastes. I mean, let's be honest, it has
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a notorious reputation. Oh, it gets a bad rap.
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It really does. It is treated as the black sheep
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of the biblical Canon. It is the pessimistic, gloomy
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book you avoid unless you're having a severe mid like crisis
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and buying a sports car hasn't worked.
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That is pretty much how people see it.
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But the writers we are looking at today argue something
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completely different. We want to show you how it's
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striking honesty about lice. Brevity is actually the secret
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to true, unshakable joy. OK, let's unpack this.
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To set a baseline for our discussion, we have to look at
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the psychological reality of our modern era.
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OK, sure. Statistics show that 29% of
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adults in the United States face clinical depression at some
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point in their lifetime. Wow, almost 1/3.
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Yeah, it's a huge number, and a vast portion of this widespread
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melancholy is tied to a feeling of existential angst.
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Like asking what is the point of it all?
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That's the one. It is the feeling that life
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lacks meaning when lived apart from a sovereign providential
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creator. When people reject A sovereign
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God, they are left grasping at the wind, trying to find eternal
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satisfaction in temporary things.
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Like careers, fitness, relationships, that sort of.
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Thing but bought on. But here is the critical
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clarification we need to make right out of the gate.
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Ecclesiastes does not teach that life is meaningless.
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Wait, really? Because I feel like that's what
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everyone says it means. I know it is a massive
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misconception that is derailed how people read it.
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Instead, it teaches that life is short, life is a fleeting mist.
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Oh, so short rather than meaningless.
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Yes, that distinction changes everything about how we read the
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text and how we live our lives. If you are listening to this
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right now, maybe on your commute or while doing the dishes, I
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want you to think about your own Oregon Coast moments.
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Yeah, everyone has them. Right.
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Maybe it was dropping your oldest child off at their
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college dorm room, shutting the door and walking back to an
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empty car. That's a tough one.
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Or maybe it was walking through your childhood home after your
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parents sold it, seeing the empty rooms where you used to
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have Thanksgiving dinner. Or honestly, maybe it was just
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looking in the mirror this morning and noticing the Gray
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hair that was absolutely not there last year.
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Oh yeah, the Gray hair sneak up on.
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You. They really do.
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Those times you realized you could not hold on to a perfect
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memory or freeze time. Our promise with this deep dive
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is that we are going to provide a theological framework for that
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exact feeling. We are going to see how God's
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Word addresses that ache head on.
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And to do that, we must move into the historical and
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covenantal context to understand the weight of this book.
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We cannot read ancient texts through a modern secular lens.
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Right, we can't just impose our 21st century ideas on it.
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No, definitely not. If we just open the book and
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read it like A blog post about depression, we will miss the
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point entirely. We have to establish who is
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speaking and the historical reality they occupied.
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If we ignore who wrote it and when they wrote it, we miss the
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thrust of the entire argument. So who is the actual author?
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Because I know there is quite a bit of debate about this in
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academic circles. There's a lot of debate, yeah.
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And the scholars we are looking at firmly reject liberal higher
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criticism on this point. OK.
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Specifically, there is something called the Graf Wellhausen
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hypothesis. Without getting bogged down in
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19th century academic theories, this was essentially a scissors
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and paste approach to the Old Testament.
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Scissors and paste. Yeah, these critics claimed that
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Ecclesiastes is a late post exilic mash up.
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They argue it was originally written by a secular cynic who
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hated life. Like just some angry guy.
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Right. And then much later, a pious
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religious editor panicked, took the text, and tacked on some
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religious phrases to save it from being thrown out of the
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biblical Canon. They treat it like a compromise
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document. Wait, so they think it was just
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a grumpy philosopher complaining and a priest came along later
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and slapped a God is good sticker on the end of it just to
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sneak it into the Bible? That is the essence of the
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critical theory, yes, but the scholars we are examining
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dismissed that entirely. Oh good.
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The internal evidence, the testimony of the historical
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church, and the specific Hebrew phrases used point directly to
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Solomon, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
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He is the singular human author. So it's all one cohesive thought
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from one guy. Yes, writing near the end of his
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life after a period of intense reflection and, frankly,
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rebellion. Let's build a picture of Solomon
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so we can grasp his position. Let's use an analogy.
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Sure, imagine a modern billionaire.
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OK, I'm with you. But not just a regular tech
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billionaire with a lot of stock options.
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Imagine someone with unlimited liquid resources, a brilliant,
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unmatched intellect, and absolute political authority
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over a massive, peaceful, globally dominant empire.
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That is quite the resume, right? That is Solomon during the
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United monarchy of Israel. He had the funds, the time, and
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the unbridled authority to test every single avenue of human
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fulfillment. He really did.
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He pursued massive architecture projects, you know, building
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palaces, temple complexes, entire cities.
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He engaged in complex agriculture, planting exotic
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gardens and vineyards. They had the best of everything.
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Everything. He hired the finest musicians,
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debated philosophy with visiting royalty, and indulged in every
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sensual pleasure available, famously having hundreds of
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wives and concubines. Yeah, the text is very clear on
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that. If anyone in human history could
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find lasting satisfaction in the material world, it was him.
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He possessed absolutely everything the natural world
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could offer. He lacked nothing.
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So he was uniquely positioned to conduct a grand, exhaustive
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experiment on human existence. No one else in history has had
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his specific combination of wealth, peace and wisdom right.
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No one else could even attempt what he did.
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And his historical setting is crucial because he is looking at
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the world as it actually is. Which brings us to the Genesis 3
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reality. OK, the fall.
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Yes, the world Solomon observes is a fallen world.
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When we read Genesis 3, we see the curses pronounced after the
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fall of man, the thorns, the thistles, the sweat of the brow
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required to produce food, and the inescapable reality of
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physical death. These are not mythological
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tropes or symbolic poetry. They are objective historical
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facts of a cursed world. So Solomon is factoring that
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into his worldview. He operates entirely within this
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historical reality. He sees the curse functioning in
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real time every single day in his own empire.
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I noticed in the material we are reviewing there is a really
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sharp contrast drawn between Ecclesiastes and other ancient
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Near Eastern literature. Oh yes, the contrast is huge.
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When you read texts from surrounding cultures, like the
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Epic of Gilgamesh or the Babylonian theodicy, they look
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at suffering, toiling, and death as cosmic accidents.
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Right, like the gods messed up. Yeah, in those stories, the gods
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are petty. They send a flood because human
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beings are being too noisy and interrupting their sleep.
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They view the gods as capricious, just playing games
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with humanity. Which is terrifying, honestly.
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It really is, but Solomon is writing under the covenantal
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justice of Yahweh. The world is cursed because of
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human sin, Yes, but God is still sovereign, and God is still
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fundamentally good and just. That is a vital distinction.
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Solomon is not a secular fatalist throwing his hands up
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at a random universe. He is a covenant theologian.
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He understands the promises made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
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He understands the law of Moses. But he is observing the systemic
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anomalies of a fallen world. He is watching how the curse
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distorts human effort. But if Solomon had all this
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wisdom and all this covenantal backing, why does his text sound
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so jarring? What do you mean?
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I mean, compared to the neat, tidy rules of the book of
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Proverbs, Proverbs is written by Solomon too, and it lays out a
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very clear, orderly view of the world.
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That's true. It basically says work hard, get
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wealthy, be righteous, get blessed, do evil, face ruin.
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It reads like a mathematical equation for a good life.
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Yeah, a formula. Then you turn a few pages to
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Ecclesiastes and the tone is completely different.
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The righteous suffer, the wicked prosper, and everyone dies.
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Why the massive whiplash? The answer lies in understanding
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the literary genre of wisdom literature, known in Hebrew as
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chokma. OK, Chokma.
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You have Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes operating together
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as a complete set. Think of them as a three legged
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stool. Oh, I like that visual.
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Proverbs gives the normative rules of cause and effect in
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God's ordered universe. It teaches general principles.
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If you touch a hot stove, you get burned.
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If you are lazy, you will be poor.
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Standard advice. Right, but Joe and Ecclesiastes
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provide the necessary counterbalances to those general
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rules. So they balance it out.
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Exactly. I mean, absolutely.
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They deal with the mysteries, the exceptions, and the systemic
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anomalies of a fallen world. Things that don't fit the neat
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formula. Right.
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They prevent believers from reducing God's Providence to a
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simple mechanistic formula like a vending machine where you put
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in good deeds and get out blessings.
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Oh that makes so much sense. If we only had proverbs, we
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would look at a righteous person suffering from a terrible
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disease and assume they must be hiding some secret sin because
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the formula says the righteous prosper.
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Spot on. And that is what Job's friends
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did. They misapplied the general
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rules of proverbs to Job specific anomalous suffering.
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So they use the right rules in the wrong situation, yes.
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While Job addresses individual suffering, Ecclesiastes
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addresses the staggering brevity of human existence on a
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universal scale. Broadening the scope.
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It points out that sometimes the wicked live long, comfortable
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lives and the righteous die young.
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It brings to mind that our finite minds cannot penetrate
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all the secret workings of God's Providence.
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So Ecclesiastes acts as a counterbalance to simplistic
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bumper sticker theology. It keeps our feet on the ground.
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Very much so. Building on that idea, let's
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look at the specific language Solomon uses to shock his
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audience out of their complacency, because the words
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he chooses are very deliberate. This is where we hit a massive
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translation issue in church history.
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In the opening lines of the book we find a specific Hebrew word,
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Hebel. Hebel, The King James Version
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famously translates this word as vanity.
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Vanity of vanities. All is vanity.
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Modern dynamic translations often use the word meaningless.
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Yeah, I've seen both of those in different Bibles.
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The writers we are studying argue that these are disastrous
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translations. Disastrous.
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That's a strong word. They force an artificial
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pessimistic grid over the text, obscuring Solomon's actual
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point. I always thought vanity meant
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being obsessed with your looks, like staring in a mirror too
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long or maybe thinking too highly of yourself.
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That is how the English language evolved, Yeah.
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The King James translators use vanity based on the Latin word
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vinitas, which meant empty or futile.
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But over 400 years English changed and now we associate
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vanity with conceit. And meaningless is even worse
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because it implies life has no purpose whatsoever, which
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contradicts the rest of scripture.
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Right, because God wouldn't create a life with 0 purpose.
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Absolutely not. If vanity and meaningless are
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the wrong words, what does the Hebrew actually say?
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Let's get down to the actual exegesis of this word, Hebel.
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When we look at the original ancient Hebrew dictionaries, we
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see that hebel is a concrete, physical noun.
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It is not an abstract philosophical concept of
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nothingness or conceit. OK, so it's a physical thing you
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can touch? Well, sort of.
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It literally means vapor breath or mist.
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Wait, so it's like when you step outside on a freezing December
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morning, You walk out to your car.
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You exhale and you see your breath clearly in the air.
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It has shape, it has form. You know it is there.
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You can see the mist. But if you reach out, try to
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grab it and put it in your pocket to save it.
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For later, it just vanishes. Yeah, your hand closes on empty
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air. That is a perfect physical
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illustration. That is heble.
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It is real. It is visible.
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It is a genuine part of your experience.
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But it cannot be grasped. You cannot make it permanent.
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You cannot hold onto. It that completely changes the
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tone of the book. He is not saying life is garbage
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and means nothing. He is saying life is a puff of
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smoke. It is here and then it is gone.
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And the rest of scripture validates this translation
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perfectly. We see King David using the
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exact same concept in Psalm 39 verse 5 where he declares to
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God, behold you have made my days, a few hand breaths, and my
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lifetime is as nothing before you.
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Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath.
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Oh wow, the word there is Hebel. The word there is Hebel.
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Proverbs 21 verse 6 warns that getting treasures by a lying
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tongue is a fleeting vapor. Interesting.
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The Apostle James brings this exact concept into the New
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Testament. In James chapter 4 verse 14 he
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rebukes arrogant businessmen who think they can plan out their
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whole future asking them what is your life for you are a miss
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that appears for a little time and then vanishes.
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I've read that verse so many times.
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The scriptural consensus is rock solid.
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Solomon is stating with heavy emphasis that life in this
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fallen world is breathtakingly short and ungraspable.
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Here's where it gets really interesting.
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Let's say we accept that life is just a mist.
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What is the actual problem, right?
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Why is Solomon so bothered by the fact that life is a vapor?
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Why does it cause him so much distress?
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The foundational question driving the entire book is found
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in Ecclesiastes One, verse 3. What gain has a man from all his
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toil? Gain OK.
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The Hebrew word for gain here is yutron.
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It is a commercial term, an accounting term.
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It indicates a permanent lasting surplus or dividend.
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So like a return on invacment? Yes, you work hard, you invest,
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and you get a surplus that you can keep.
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Solomon is searching for a permanent, eternal profit in a
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temporal world. He wants a return on his
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investment that death cannot touch.
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And does he find it? The text answers its own
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question. There is no yutron, no lasting
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surplus when looking at life under the sun, which in Hebrew
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is Tasha, Hashemish. Under the sun, that phrase is
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everywhere in the book. Feels like the central motif.
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Yeah, it occurs 29 times. It acts as an absolute boundary
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for human knowledge. It means looking at life purely
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on a horizontal earthly level, restricted to the cursed earth
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and disconnected from divine revelation.
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So an earthbound perspective. Right when you limit your view
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to what happens under the sun, human exertion yields no
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permanent surplus. Death eventually strips away
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whatever temporary gains you manage to accumulate.
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You can build the biggest company in the world, but when
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you die you leave it to someone else who might ruin it.
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Or sell it. Or dismantle it.
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Yeah. So if human life is just a mist,
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and we can't keep anything we build, surely there's something
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solid we can rely on? What about the earth itself?
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Does Solomon find any comfort in nature?
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He looks there, definitely. Let's look at how he proves this
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thesis by observing the natural world, because he spends a lot
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of time talking about the environment.
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Solomon walks through a brilliant poetic demonstration
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in Ecclesiastes 1, verses 4 through 7.
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He diagrams the inescapable, repetitive cycles of nature.
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He notes that one generation of humans goes and another
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generation comes, but the earth remains forever.
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Then he looks up. The sun rises the sunsets and
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pants or hurries back to where it rises.
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Oh, wow. He looks at the weather.
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The wind blows to the South, turns to the north and goes
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round and round and it circuits. He looks at the water.
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The rivers run to the sea, at the sea is never full, to the
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place where the streams flow. There they flow again.
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He is describing the water cycle like evaporation and
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condensation, millennia before a modern meteorology.
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He really? Is, but the contrast he sets up
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is stark and frankly, a little terrifying.
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How so? Creation operates in massive,
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eternal, unyielding cycles. The earth is a stage and it does
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not move. The sun keeps ticking like a
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clock. The rivers keep churning, but
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the generations of men we just flash in and out of existence.
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We are the microscopic mist passing over the giant stage.
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The rivers will keep flowing long after the modern political
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activist, the wealthy Wall Street CEO and the powerful king
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are in the Grays. Nature cycles do not care about
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human ambition. The sun does not pause its
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rising because you are having a bad day or because you achieve
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something great. The theological implication here
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is designed to completely humble human pride.
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Creation is ordered, yes, but it's endless Cycles do not
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deliver final satisfaction to man.
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We're just passing through. Right.
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We arrive in a world that is already moving by God's decree,
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and we leave before the cycles are finished.
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We are not the center of the universe.
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We are temporary residents. Then Solomon moves from the
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physical environment to the psychological reality.
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He provides a conclusion in verses 8 through 11 that is
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devastating. Yeah, it gets close to home.
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He says all things are full of weariness.
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A man cannot utter it. The eye is not satisfied with
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seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
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He is highlighting the severe limitation of human perception.
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Because we are finite and our minds are darkened by the fall,
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there's a boundary to what we can understand.
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We cannot deduce the ultimate meaning of the universe through
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observation alone, right? Think of it like trying to
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download the entire Internet onto a 1990s floppy disk.
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Oh, that's a great analogy. The hardware simply cannot
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handle the data. Our brains are the floppy disk.
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God's massive sovereign Providence is the Internet.
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The text asserts that there is nothing new under the sun.
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That directly rebukes our modern arrogance.
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We think we are so advanced we constantly chase novelty.
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We buy the newest smartphone the day it comes out.
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We spend hours in endless scrolling on screens looking for
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new information, new videos, new takes.
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We follow new philosophical trends, genuinely thinking we
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are progressing as an enlightened species.
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We think because we have airplanes in the Internet, we
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have outgrown the ancients. But the text asserts that human
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nature has not changed. 1° New technology simply amplify old
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lusts. Wow, say that again.
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New technology simply amplify old lusts.
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A smartphone just gives you faster access to the same pride,
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envy and greed that existed in Solomon's court.
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That is convicting. New political slogans are just
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recycling the old Tower of Babel, the belief that if we
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just organize ourselves better, we can reach heaven and make a
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name for ourselves. Human beings cannot break out of
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the cursed cycle of history through human exertion.
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The human heart is a factory trying to extract eternal joy
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from temporal things, and it always ends up exhausted,
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overworked, and entirely empty. Yeah.
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The more a person consumes, the more they discover their
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capacity for consumption grows without any actual contentment.
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We collect experiences, we travel the world, but we fear
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sitting in silence in our own living rooms.
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Exactly. I mean totally. 1000
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entertainments on Netflix cannot substitute for the knowledge of
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the Creator. We are entirely dependent upon
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special revelation from the God who dwells above the sun.
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If God does not speak to us through His Word, we are stuck
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staring at the cycles of nature slowly going bad.
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That is the precise trap Solomon is describing.
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If you lock yourself in the room of Under the Sun, the air runs
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out. OK, let's unpack this.
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If everything is a mist and human effort cannot fix it, and
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our eyes and ears are never satisfied, the natural question
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any reader has to ask is why would God include this
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depressing reality in Scripture? Right.
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Why even bring it up? Yeah, why inspire an entire book
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to point out how feudal everything feels?
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We have to look at the authorial intent Solomon intended to
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severely unsettle his original Israelite audience.
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His words act as an incendiary device.
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Like a balm. Sort of, yeah.
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The Israelites were prone to making idols of the Promised
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Land. God had given them a beautiful
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land flowing with milk and honey.
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But they looked at their massive agricultural crops, their
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military might, their stunning architecture, and they placed
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their ultimate security in those things.
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So they trusted the stuff instead of God.
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Right, they started worshipping the gifts instead of the giver.
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Ecclesiastes functions as a theological Wrecking Ball.
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It is designed to violently explode their make believe world
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of self-sufficiency. Solon wants them to look at
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their massive storehouses and realize the grave is rapidly
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approaching to strip it all away.
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But wait, hold on. Doesn't tearing down all human
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ambition just leave the listener in a state of paralyzing,
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suicidal despair? If my crops, my buildings, my
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career, and my bank account mean nothing permanently, why even
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get out of bed in the morning? Why try it all?
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What's fascinating here is the shift the text makes.
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The goal of the text is not nihilism.
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Solomon is not trying to make you depressed.
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The goal is to drive the reader to the end of their own
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self-reliance so they find their beginning in the fear of the
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Almighty. The despair only happens if you
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insist on finding permanent salvation in the vapor.
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Oh, I see. Because life is a vapor, we must
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stop demanding that it provide eternal permanence.
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Once you drop that demand, the pressure is completely off.
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The text actually pivots to these striking commands that
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seem completely out of place until you understand this shift.
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In Chapter 9, Solomon tells his audience, eat your bread with
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joy. Drink your wine with a merry
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heart. Enjoy life with the spouse whom
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you love. Yes, the scholars we are reading
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stress that these are not fatalistic college fraternity
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slogans. This is not the secular Eat,
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drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.
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No, the secular version is rooted in despair.
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Like nothing matters, so let's just get drunk and ignore the
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void. Solomon is doing the exact
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opposite. So what is he doing?
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These are mandates from a covenant theologian.
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He is saying because this world cannot give you eternal
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salvation, stop asking it to. Instead, receive the good things
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in it as gifts from God. He is teaching them to find the
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glory of God in the mundane, ordinary things of life.
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Spot on. By receiving food, honest work,
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and marriage as temporary gifts from a sovereign God, everything
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changes. Think about it.
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If you demand that your career provide your life with ultimate
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meaning, then every bad day at work, every mispromotion, is a
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total existential crisis. Your whole identity is
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shattered. Right.
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Your world falls apart if you demand that your marriage be
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your salvation. You will crush your spouse
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because no human being was designed to hold the weight of
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your eternal soul. They will eventually disappoint
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you and your idol will shatter. But if you receive your job and
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your spouse as unmerited, temporary gifts from God, you
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can finally enjoy them. You stop asking the vapor to act
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like solid granite. That is a massive paradigm
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shift. It frees you.
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You can work hard, clock out, go home, and sleep in peace knowing
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that the universe does not rest on your shoulders.
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You are freed from the tyranny of trying to achieve ultimate
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gain under the sun. That is so liberating.
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It really is. You can handle the ups and downs
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of a fallen world with a robust, realistic faith.
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You know the world is cursed. You know things will break.
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You know people will get sick. But you also know God is good
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and He provides moments of joy. Like a good meal, a laugh with a
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friend, a beautiful sunset. Yeah, you received those
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temporal moments as gracious gifts from his hand.
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As striking as this Old Testament wisdom is, it leaves
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us longing for a final, permanent solution.
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Solomon diagnosis the disease of human transients perfectly.
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He shows us the MRI. But an MRI isn't a cure.
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No, it's not. We need the eternal cure, and
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this is where the narrative of Scripture transitions.
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We must look at how this connects to the broader biblical
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picture. Specifically, the fulfillment
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found in Christ Jesus is introduced in the New Testament
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as the greater than Solomon. Yes, we see this explicitly in
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Matthew 12 verse 42 where Jesus says behold, something greater
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than Solomon is here. Think about the contrast, OK?
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Let's look at the contrast. Where Solomon, with all his vast
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resources and wisdom, fell into idolatry and multiplied wives
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and wealth in violation of God's law, the Incarnate Word
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succeeded perfectly. Jesus voluntarily entered life
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under the sun. He left the eternal glory of
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heaven and subjected himself to the weariness of human
26:52
existence. He grew tired, He was thirsty,
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He wept at the tomb of his friend Lazarus.
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He worked with human hands as a Carpenter.
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And at the end of his life he bore the physical curse of
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Genesis 3 by wearing a crown of literal thorns.
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So. He stepped into the vapor.
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He entered the Hebel the Mist to redeem his people from it.
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The natural cycles of Ecclesiastes also connect
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beautifully to the Apostle Paul's words.
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In Romans chapter 8, Paul writes about the cosmic groan of
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creation. Yes, Paul says the creation was
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subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him
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who subjected it in hope. The Greek word Paul uses for
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futility is Matayotes. Matayotes.
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What is fascinating is that matayotes is the exact word used
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in the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament to
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translate the Hebrew word hebel. Oh wow, I didn't know that.
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It's an incredible connection. So when Paul says creation is
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subjected to futility, he is looking right back at
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Ecclesiastes, the groaning of the rivers and the endless
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circuits of the wind that Solomon observed.
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That is actually creation waiting for the return of the
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king. It is waiting to be liberated
27:59
from the bondage of corruption. The ultimate problem, Solomon
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observed, was death. Death is the great equalizer.
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It is the big, terrifying reality that swallows both the
28:09
wise man and the fool. It mocks human toil.
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It really does. You work for 50 years and then
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you end up in the exact same dirt as the town fool who did
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nothing under the sun. Death seems to have the final
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devastating word, but the resurrection of Jesus Christ
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defeats the vapor. Because Christ conquered the
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grave and bodily resurrection, the permanence we seek is
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finally secured. We do not have to look for
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permanent surplus in our earthly bank accounts.
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Thank goodness. The Apostle Paul can look at the
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despair of Ecclesiastes and answer it confidently.
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In First Corinthians 15, verse 58, after spending an entire
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chapter proving the resurrection of the dead, Paul declares,
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Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always
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abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord
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your labor is not in vain. Not in vain.
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Right. That phrase, not in vain, is the
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direct answer to Solomon because of the resurrection.
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Labor done in Christ is not Hebel.
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The resurrection provides the eternal yeetron, the eternal
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surplus that life under the sun cannot offer.
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That changes how we view absolutely everything.
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Even the simple joy Solomon commended are actually shadows
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of something greater. Earthly marriage is a beautiful
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temporary gift, but it points forward to the eternal wedding
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supper of the Lamb. Earthly rest on the weekend is a
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gift, but it points to our final unbroken Sabbath rest in Christ.
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Earthly food and wine are gifts, but they point to the bread of
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life. Yeah, the temporal gifts are
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just signposts. Right.
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If you hug the signpost, you miss the destination.
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Ecclesiastes diagnosis The fatal disease of human transients and
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the Gospel provides the ultimate cure.
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The mist is lit by the dawn of resurrection morning.
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This brings us to the practical application.
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How do we land the plane for you, the listener, based on
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these texts? What must we actually do today
29:54
with this knowledge? The first clear application I
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see from our discussion is rejecting false theologies that
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distort the reality of life under the sun.
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Yes, there are modern movements that simply cannot coexist with
30:06
the book of Ecclesiastes, for instance the prosperity Gospel.
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The prosperity gospel is entirely incompatible with
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biblical wisdom. It falsely promises earthly
30:15
permanence, perfect health and limitless wealth as a guarantee
30:19
for enough faith. It tells people they can have
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their best life right now. But Ecclesiastes refuses to
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equate God's favor with ease or visible success.
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The curse is real. Bodies decay, economies crash,
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and suffering happens to righteous people.
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So true, teaching people that faith is a magic wand to bypass
30:34
the curse sets them up for a devastating crisis of faith when
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tragedy inevitably strikes. On the complete other side of
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the spectrum, there is hyper asceticism, right?
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This is the idea that physical things are inherently bad, so
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you should reject pleasure, avoid enjoyment, eat bland food,
30:51
and just be miserable until you get to heaven to prove how
30:54
spiritual you are. Ecclesiastes rebukes that too.
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It does. It rejects the idea that God's
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good physical gifts should be shunned.
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We are commanded to enjoy the food, the drink, the honest
31:06
labor, and the relationships God provides.
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We must walk carefully between those two errors.
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We enjoy the gifts without turning them into idols.
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We appreciate the vapor without trying to freeze it.
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This requires a constant posture of repentance.
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I want to ask you directly, where are you trying to make
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vapor permanent? Look at your own life right now.
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Is it your career? Are you grinding away, ignoring
31:29
your family, compromising your ethics, thinking the next
31:32
promotion will finally make you secure?
31:35
Is it your bank account? So common.
31:36
Are you hoarding wealth, anxiously checking the stock
31:39
market, thinking a certain number in your portfolio can
31:42
protect you from the curse? Or maybe it is your children's
31:45
success? Yeah.
31:46
Are you demanding that their athletic achievements or
31:49
academic scores validate your existence?
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The application here is to open your clenched hands.
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Surrender the illusion of control to the sovereign
31:58
Creator. And part of surrendering control
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is engaging in sober preparation.
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The text mandates that we number our days and face death with
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complete honesty. Something we don't like to do.
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Not at all. Modern culture tries to hide
32:11
death. We put makeup on corpses, we
32:13
hide the elderly and facilities out of sight, and we distract
32:16
ourselves with endless entertainment.
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Yeah, we pretend it isn't coming.
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But biblical wisdom requires us to bring death into the room and
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let it instruct us. Knowing you are or vapor should
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change how you treat people today.
32:29
Speak the necessary words of forgiveness today.
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Make that phone call today. Because tomorrow is not promised
32:35
to anyone, we must live each day recognizing its breathtaking
32:40
brevity. So what does this all mean?
32:41
We started on the cold beach of the Oregon coast, looking at the
32:44
ocean, feeling the heavy reality that time is slipping through
32:48
our fingers. We spend so much of our limited
32:50
breath trying to carve our names into the granite of human
32:53
history. We build companies.
32:56
We curate perfect social media profiles.
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We strive for awards, all in the desperate hope of building a
33:01
legacy that will outlast. Us.
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We want to be remembered. We want to matter.
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But if human remembrance is just another mist that blows away
33:09
with the wind, perhaps the only record of our lives that carries
33:12
any actual weight is the one kept in the book of Life.
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Are you exhausting your breath, seeking the temporary applause
33:18
of men? Or are you spending it in quiet
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faithfulness before the only judge who holds eternity?