Transcription of 20ID4030

Ecclesiastes 1:1-11 "Is Life Really Worth Living?" May 10, 2020

All right. Let's open our this morning to the book of . It is found in the in what is called the poetic books, or the books of poetry and . And they are pretty unique in the Old Testament. They begin at the book of Job and they continue all the way through the Song of . They are unique in the sense that they presume a couple things: Number one, that whoever's reading it is interested in their relationship with God; they want to grow in their walk with God. And most of these books of wisdom and poetry are written in the present tense, so it's immediately applicable to your way of life. Furthermore, these books are interested in tough questions. Why do the righteous suffer? Where is God when I need Him? Or in this case, is life worth living?

Mark Twain years ago wrote that he thought life would be a whole lot better if we could begin at 80 years old and live backwards to 18. He wrote, "Just think of the advantage that the years of experience and wisdom could be added to our life." But that's just not the way life is. We begin young, we hopefully grow up by experience to learn things about life, and we usually do that by asking questions of ourselves, of those that we trust, and ultimately of the Lord. And some of the big questions that always arise, why am I here? What is the purpose for my life? When all is said and done, where will I be? And what will I have wasted? Or will I have purposefully lived my life in such a way that matters? Those are pretty deep questions to consider. They're heady. Philosophers in every generation have tackled them. I think young people at a college level, if nothing else, sit around campus and maybe wonder out loud together. The problem is, if those questions aren't answered satisfactorily over time, you tend to begin to live your life towards despair rather than hope, and maybe even disillusion.

Well, Solomon, the king, asked these questions of himself later on in life. He keeps a journal. He writes down, if you will, records potential answers that he has discovered, ones that he has come across often. He holds them up to the 1

rigors of scrutiny. He analyzes them. And he finds that most of the answers that he finds out there in the world are unfulfilling, they are dissatisfying, and they seem to leave him more disillusioned than ever. And I think it's a pretty good and accurate description of life in the world for people who don't know the Lord. You know, you can hear it in the pessimism in the world, in the lyrics of popular music. At every level of age, it seems that the despair that follows not having satisfactory answers to the important questions of life, you know, lead men to wonder at some point is life really worth living at all. I think it was Thoreau that wrote, "Men lead their lives in quiet desperation."

Well, this book, this book of Ecclesiastes, in God's word goes out of its way to address those very issues, and I think it will provide a platform for you, if you know the book well, to use as a witnessing tool to those in the world, because it really does address those who don't know God; that are out there at whatever level they're at, successwise, agewise, the status that they've maintained or that they've achieved. And yet, they find this lack, because that's ultimately where the world ends up, a place of lack.

The very first verse -- and we're going to try to get to verse 11, but the very first verse of this book tells us the man of the book. Notice it says, "These are the words of the preacher, he's the son of , he's the king of ."

The Hebrew word for preacher is the word "kohelet," and "kohelet" is not the kind of preacher that you might think I am, standing in a pulpit, declaring God's word. The Greek translation of this Old Testament book called the translates the words Ecclesiastes from the word "ecclesia," which is a word for the church in the New Testament, but is in a general sense the word for someone that collects together, or to assemble. And really that's the way this word is used of Solomon here. He was the man who would assemble together theories and understanding of the ways of life. He'll go test things out for us, and then come back and give a report of how things went. He is the wise teacher when you get to the . He is the royal lover in the Song of Solomon. But here he is, the assembler or gatherer of the philosophies of life, through experience, through preparation, through observation, and then recording what he has found.

Solomon will look at life. Here's his description of life under the sun. How does the world see life, setting God 2

aside; as a seeker, a searcher, as a gatherer? These, this short book, are his sermons, his reviews, his observations, his conclusions. But understand for a minute who Solomon is, because Solomon in his generation was the richest man on the planet. God's blessing gave to him in such, he could afford to chase down anything he wanted.

And he was given amazing, tremendous spiritual assets as well. You might remember when his father David died, that the Lord appeared to Solomon and said, "What can I give you?" And Solomon didn't ask for money, didn't ask for fame, didn't ask for power, didn't ask for a long life. He would be given all of those. He asked to have wisdom. "God, give me the wisdom that I can rule Your people like my father David did, and to do it well." And it pleased the Lord tremendously, and He gave to him, according to II Chronicles and according to I Kings Chapter 4, he gave to him a wisdom that no one else will ever excel. He was the wisest man, aside from Jesus, who ever lived. And he was given honor and he was given wealth, but he was the smartest, the wealthiest, the wisest, the most accomplished.

Solomon knew God. His early prayer asking for wisdom was phenomenal. Like it says, the Lord was so pleased to hear that coming from his lips. He was a man of prayer. If you go into I Kings Chapter 8 and read the prayer that he prayed over the dedication of the temple, I mean, it's an amazing prayer. He is an amazing young man. You can read Psalms 72, which was also written by Solomon.

And so, look, here's a man with tremendous advantage. Wealth more than all, wisdom greater than any, a relationship with God, an understanding that God answered prayer and He listened. And yet over time, that relationship that he had with God and the gifts that God had given him seemed to Solomon to lose its luster, and he began to doubt. He began to question the dilemmas that he faced, the enigmas that he saw in life began to engender questions, and he began to walk away from the Lord. He thought that he knew better. He eventually drifted with his life into the world.

Back in Deuteronomy 17, when the Lord gave to Moses for the people His law, there is a section in that chapter where the Lord speaks about a time when Israel would have a king. They didn't have one then. They didn't have any land then yet. They were still wandering in the wilderness. But God talked to them about when they occupied a land, and when God would raise up a king, that these were the specific things that a 3

king should do in his place to serve the Lord. All of the things that you read there were specific, and they were ignored entirely by Solomon. For example, it says that they weren't to be a foreigner. Well, he got that right. They weren't to multiply wives to himself, or to themselves. They weren't to gather gold or silver or horses, or to return to Egypt for such things. And then the king was to make a copy of the law of God, written in his own hand, so that he might meditate in God's law day and night, know the heart of God, not be lifted up with pride, and be willing to serve the people.

Well, that wasn't Solomon. Though he was wiser than all, had been given more than all, it's one thing to have wisdom, it's another thing to follow it. And to not follow what God has shown you is the height of foolishness. Solomon ignored God's wisdom. He married 700 women. Can you imagine? Had 300 concubines in his harem. He owned so many horses that he could fill the massive stables that you can still see in Israel in Megiddo. He had so much gold that we read in the scriptures that silver was rendered useless during his reign. But, look, his disobedience to the wisdom of God led to the disillusion that you find in his life. And later on, it was his wives who turned his heart against the Lord, and we read that he didn't walk with the Lord, according to I Kings 11, as his father David did, with a pure heart. He didn't, and wasn't loyal to the Lord.

Now, we read the rest of the book, at the end -- and we'll get there in six months, I promise. Lord, give us six months, we'll get to the end of the book. And at the end of the book we know Solomon returned to that place of life, and that's a good thing to know, but this was a tough journey. He addresses his concerns, even though God had given him great wisdom, and he becomes the preacher, the "kohelet," the searcher, the assembler of information, a philosopher of life seeking to make sense by human wisdom, apart from the wisdom of God, with this life.

Socrates once wrote, "By all means, get married. And if you find a good wife, you'll be very happy. If you find a bad wife, you'll become a philosopher." Well, that's exactly what Solomon became. He married these many women that turned his heart away from the Lord, and he began to be a gatherer of information. He was out in the world, away from the things of God.

Solomon uses his analysis of life only based on observable 4

data. I say that because his conclusions, and theologians call it natural revelation, are based solely upon what he sees. Not God's revelation of what we know, but solely by what he sees -- which is, by the way, the best that man can do on his own, which is why so often this book, more than any other book, is quoted by agnostics and by atheists to hopefully support their worldly positions. And, you know, many of the conclusions that Solomon draws, at least early on, are incorrect. They are recorded biblically correct. The inspiration in scripture would convince us that it is recorded exactly as Solomon thought and concluded, but the preponderance of the other scriptures around this book would tell us that it is observable data and wrong conclusions that Solomon came to. When you begin to view life without a spiritual component, without God, without God's word, you end up opening a Pandora's box of psychological kind of frustration.

Here's what G. Campbell Morgan, one of my favorite Bible scholars, wrote about this book. He wrote this: "This man has been living through all of these experiences under the sun, concerned with nothing that is above the sun. Until there came a moment when he came to see his whole life, and that there were things not just under the sun, but things above the sun, and when he began to look there, he finally saw clear light or true light." You see, until he came to that decision towards the end of the book, Solomon was only looking at life like everyone does without God: On a very horizontal plane, mind and body. No soul, no spiritual relationship, if you will, with the Lord. Kind of blind and hopeless.

So then, you know, the question becomes, why do we study this book at all? How is this going to help your walk and my walk with God? And there's two things to consider: Number one, I think if you read through honestly and you remember where you've come from, I think this book will resensitize you to the plight of the lost. I think after a while you get saved and you begin to hang out at church and with Christians and believers, and your whole mindset has changed, you forget what it was like before you had a hope; you know, when you didn't know where to look and when there's nothing that was settled in your heart; the things that unbelievers are experiencing every day and we forget about, but they ached to know the truth. And knowing that, I think, will help us to be wanting to reach out to them. Secondly, this book should warn us that if someone like Solomon can take a nosedive, anyone can. I mean, he had more wisdom than anyone 5

who ever lived. He had great advantages, and yet turning from the Lord, his life spirals down to this very low abyss, and he kind of ends up in this quagmire of frustration and uncertainty until he finally just says, you know, what I had, who I knew, where I was, is really the place that I need to be. We're foolish if we will not live up to the light that we've received.

If today you know God's word but you're not doing it, living it, following it, there's no greater foolishness than that. You know better. I remember my father, that was one of his favorite lines, you know better, and I hated it. But it certainly applies, and this book certainly seems to drive that truth home.

So Solomon is the captain of the wisdom department, and yet he's the fellow that just ignores everything that he knows. It really isn't what you know that is so important, it's what you do with what you know. And he ends up on this path of being the fool.

And I'll tell you what: Sometimes your greatest strength can become the place of greatest weakness and stumbling. You know, while the world was partying like rock stars, Noah walked uprightly in God's grace, and yet his stumbling became that day when he got drunk and passed out in his tent, naked, bringing shame to himself and to his family.

It was a lapse of faith in the life of Abraham, the father of the faithful, that allowed him to go to Hagar, produce a son, Ishmael, and the woes that that left with the world are with us to this day. It was Father Abraham, the father of the faithful, who headed to Egypt during a time of famine and lied to Pharaoh, and was rebuked by an unbelieving powerful man for his lack of faith in God, and yet he is known as the father of the faithful.

Moses was known in the Bible as the meekest man that lived upon the face of the earth. That's what the Lord said of him. And yet how did Moses stumble? He got angry at God's people for their demands, which were constant. He lashed out at them. He struck the rock that the Lord had said to speak to. His anger violated God's type, his picture, of speaking to the Lord. He would die, though the rock would be smitten once, and then we would call upon His name, and it cost Moses plenty.

It was loyal-to-a-fault Peter who swore to Jesus that he would 6

never leave Him, that he would die with Him, even if everyone would forsake Him, and yet in a few short hours from then it was Peter who three times denied the Lord out of fear of a servant girl and some Roman soldiers who were on a break.

Paul was stubborn, determined, fearless. I don't know of anyone else in the Bible that would be dragged out of town and stoned and left for dead, and then get up because you didn't die and go, Well, we should go into town and get a hotel for the night. That was Paul. You couldn't drive Paul away. And yet that same dogged kind of determination hampered Paul on his second missionary journey as you read through the book of Acts, that he just began to go, Do I go left? Do I go right? Do I go straight? And he tried every way to go where the Lord didn't want him, and you hear the Holy Spirit stopped him at every spot, and it wasn't until he finally ran out of land that the Lord says, come to Europe. But it was that same Paul. His strength had become his enemy.

So, you know, Peter, a man of courage, became a coward. Moses, a man of purity, was pushed over the edge with his drinking. Moses, the man who was meek, you know, lost his temper. Abraham, the man of faith, gave up his faith. Paul, with extreme courage, had trouble just letting God move him forward. So here's Solomon, the man of God, the wise man of God, he plays the fool, for years, to his own detriment.

When we are weak, we usually will seek the Lord. When we think we're strong, we are often very vulnerable to the enemy. So learn from this book, that Solomon with all of his wisdom, if he doesn't heed the word, his strength, his gift, his understanding becomes his downfall, and it can become yours.

Near the end of the book, in Chapter 12, we will read Solomon admitting his journey to the depths was the wrong place to go. But God will use, I think, these lessons to teach us, and they're very good to outline. I think they're very straightforward. I think they touch us where we live. It's an inspired book by the Holy Spirit, but look, it's a troubling journey to go with Solomon, because I think you'll see yourself in a lot of these verses. Here am I. This is what I did. One thing for sure, reading this book should set you straight and deliver you from chasing the proverbial shadows of worldly promises that won't satisfy. Every road he went down, every rabbit trail that he chose, ended up empty. So if you'll study well his journey map in God's word, you'll end up on the only road that leads to life, the one 7

that you should stay on, and not even turn left or right. Just keep your eyes on Jesus and go forward.

Well, verse 2 gives us the motto of the book. Notice what it says, "'Vanity of vanities,' saith the preacher. 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.'"

The word "vanity" kind of sums up his thinking during this period of his life. He uses this word 37 times; five times in this one verse alone. Now, if you hear the word vanity, you probably think to yourself, you know, someone looking in the mirror and saying congratulations, you're beautiful. You know, that kind of vanity. But that's not really -- the word "habel" is a word that means to be empty or to be futile, or to be meaningless or transitory or unsatisfactory. Hebrew poetry, in order to emphasize something, can't underline or bold or put something in quotes. It simply repeats the word, and so you'll find this repeating is kind of a -- you know, you could say Solomon learned that life in the world was empty to the max. He was an extreme pessimist by the time he got done.

You know, I -- you probably have heard about the optimist and the pessimist. Maybe -- I don't know what you are, but -- you know, the optimist who says, "Isn't it beautiful outside and sunny?" And it'll be the pessimist who says, "Yeah, but it's going to scorch the crops," you know. And I remember reading of an optimist who took his friend duck hunting, and he shot the duck and he said to the dog, "Go get it!" And the dog walked on the water and got the duck. And the pessimist said, "Well, you have a dog that can't swim, don't you?" Well, that is kind of the way pessimism works.

Solomon remembers looking back. This book was written after the fact from notes that he took in the process. So here's his statement before he presents to you his material, and he says, you know, looking back, and very pessimistically, everything was vain, everything was empty and useless and unsatisfying.

Well, here's his first kind of presentation. And by the way, down through verse 18 there are three points that he makes. They're very bleak. We'll look at two of them quickly this morning, and we'll save the next one for next week, Lord be willing. But in verse 4, 5, 6, and 7 he says here's the monotony of life. Nothing changes. And then in verses 8, 9, 10, and 11 he says, and there is nothing new to discover. And finally, down from verse 12 to the end of the chapter he 8

will say, and you really can't understand what's going on anyway, we're in the dark, which we'll look at next week.

But let's look at verse 3. "What profit has a man for all of his labor in which he toils under the sun?" The word "profit" means just that, what gain? What is left over? What is the surplus, the advantage? In light of everything that we have to go through in life, and the toils, what advantage really is there from this life? What do we have to show when it is all said and done? If you're looking for satisfaction, what does life leave you? What is left over? And he will conclude that there is no profit of life under the sun.

And again, I mentioned it once, but remember that word "vanity," but remember this little phrase "under the sun," which is very familiar. It's used, I think, 29 times in this book. It speaks of life under the sun, horizontal perspective, an earthly view devoid of God's wisdom, devoid of God's revelation. Once in a while Solomon will pull his head up around the clouds and he will see the Lord for a minute, and then he'll drop back to the earth and go, oh, I'm back to this again. But for the most part, under the sun will refer specifically to Solomon looking for life and its purpose here.

Solomon will mention God about 40 times, but he will always use the name for God Elohim, and the name Elohim means that glorious God of creation, who exercises sovereign control. It isn't a personal name. It's a name of an imperial kind of impersonal God, far removed and unable to be known. When the Lord speaks to us about our relationship with Him, He most often uses the word Jehovah, or Yahweh, which is a God of covenant and intimacy, a God that you can know well. But under the sun, Solomon in looking around can only even acknowledge the God Elohim.

The reason nothing satisfies, of course, is that he's just looking horizontally. At the end of your life, when the lights go out, when you wipe your hands from burying your loved ones, when everything that is done to life can be done, what do you have left? That's a good question. What do you see? What have you accomplished? "What profit has a man from all of his labor in which he has toiled under the sun?" That's his question.

Like Solomon, even folks who have had financial kind of wherewithal to chase down their dreams always seem to find 9

empty pots. You know, it was Alexander the Great who at 31 in Babylon began to weep that he had nothing else to conquer. This is all there is to life? That's all I can do? Einstein wrote to a friend of his in a letter, "It is strange to be universally known, and yet so lonely." So Solomon on his throne, universally known, wise, powerful, rich, and yet he saw life as empty. I think it was Carl Sandburg, the American poet, who wrote that life is like an onion: You peel it one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.

Well, any serious look at life, any dealings with this question with which Solomon begins, shows that life is pretty futile. It's short, it's unpredictable, it's difficult, it's out of balance, and if you don't have God's perspective on it, you're going to end up very pessimistic and very depressed. The good news is for you and I, we have the Lord living in us. We have His word in our hands. We have His love. Jesus said to me and to you, "The thief doesn't come but to steal, and kill, and destroy. But I've come that you can have life, and you can have it much more abundantly." Paul when he wrote to the Corinthians in Chapter 15 of the first book said, Look, just be steadfast and immoveable. Always abound in the work of the Lord. Know that the labor that you put out in the Lord is not in vain. In other words, there's no emptiness when you begin to walk with God, but here's Solomon trying it on his own. Life without the Lord is empty. Life with the Lord is filled with substance. And that's exactly what Solomon will conclude.

Now, here in verse 3 he uses the word "labor." There are, I think, 11 different Hebrew words for labor. This one in particular, "amal," is the word for working to the point of exhaustion. In other words, you're all in. You've given it your all. This is all that you can do, and yet you can give no more. You're ready to drop, and yet you can't find the profit. The idea is to carry forth, you know, a frustrating kind of wearing out effort. It is what Moses used in Deuteronomy 26 when it says that he cried to the Lord, "Lord, look upon our labor and our oppression." Or David wrote in Psalm 90 about our days being 70 years, or by reasons of strength you get to 80, he said then we can boast all of our labor and sorrow. It's just the grind life can be; right? And if the Lord isn't involved, what does that really leave you with?

Notice he says in verse 4, "One generation passes away, and then another generation comes; but the earth continues to abide forever. The sun rises, the sun goes down, it hastens 10

to the place from where it has arisen. The wind goes towards the south, and then it turns towards the north; and then it swirls around continually, and it comes again in its circuit. And all the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea isn't full; to the place from which the rivers come, there they return again."

Solomon, what profit is my life, and then he says, look, there's some monotony in life. There doesn't seem to be -- you know, it's a vicious circle. Nothing changes. And he looks at the cycle of nature with very much cynicism and fatalism and predictability. You know, today, at least statistically, about half a million babies will be born into households somewhere. Great joy. And about 200,000 people in the world will die. There'll be funerals planned, and sadness and tears. In homes around the world you'll find great joy and tremendous sadness, and they both occur at the same time. But look at Solomon's description of life on that horizontal plane. He says, and he's stuck with the idea, that people are born and they die. People come and go. The earth doesn't seem to change. It remains the same. Nothing ever changes. There's summer and fall and winter and spring and summer again, and one generation to the next. The earth abides, but God's crowning achievement doesn't.

You know, the redwoods were growing when Jesus was born, and so were the olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane. Mountains were here long before you arrived, and if the Lord tarries, they'll be here long after you're gone. We drop in, we drop off. The world seems to continue. Something is wrong here, and that's Solomon's point. His view horizontally, what's my life really mean, and how does it really fit into this monotonous kind of endless searching for meaning?

You know, Hallmark dreams up a new holiday every year, I'm pretty sure to sell cards. I'm not sure. But I have a suggestion for them: How about we have cemetery day? Get a card, walk around the tombstones, and agree with Solomon, this is your life pretty soon. This is where you're headed. Your life is brief, your death is certain, and everyone comes and goes -- the rich, the poor, the powerful, the weak. Nothing changes, all while the earth and its seasons just kind of continue unabated.

He even looks, notice in verse 5 and 6 and 7, at the universe, and his conclusion was, look, this is just exactly what happens, this monotony, to the universe. He saw the world 11

as order and organized, and yet predictable. This daily race of the sun from east to west and back again.

The word "hastening", by the way, is panting to get back to the starting point. Monotony. The wind blows here, it blows there, it blows everywhere, and really it doesn't go anywhere. It just kind of ends up where he begins.

And notice even in verse 7, the wise Solomon understood hydrology better in his years than anyone before. Scientists tell us today that at any one time 97 percent of the water of the earth is in the ocean, and only 1/1000th of 1 percent of the water is in the atmosphere ready to drop down as fresh water, and yet with the cooperation of the winds and the tide, the sun, you have evaporation and the movement of moisture, you know, we get drinking water, and yet eventually it ends up in the rivers and it ends up in the ocean, and back it goes where it began.

So from Solomon's viewpoint apart from God, he saw motion, but not promotion. You know, this monotony of life was his first argument to say life wasn't worth living, at least not from his view under the sun. But you and I are different. God has saved us. We have a Father in Heaven, and with serving the Lord, life is exciting. You never know what He's going to plan next. And what might be monotony to you, I can't wait to see what God is going to do next, because He has a plan. He is involved. But life without a vertical component, horrible.

Forget about the hydrology cycle, think about the laundry cycle. I've actually started to help out doing the laundry a couple times. I'm not good at it, so don't ask me to do your laundry. A lot of my clothes don't fit. Has nothing to do with gaining weight, by the way. It has everything to do with my bad skills. But think about laundry. You clean, you get dirty, you separate, you wash, you fold, you hang up, you press, you iron, and you start again. Never stops. Or the business guy who goes to work five or six days a week, gets up at 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning, puts in long days, comes home, you know, takes a shower, eats, watches some T.V., does it 49 weeks a year, gets a couple two or three weeks off. You know, 40 years of that, and then he can retire, get a gold watch, go home, and sit around and wait to die. Pretty boring, pretty uneventful, if that's your only view of life under the sun.

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Solomon adds this, as we'll close our first look at this book, verse 8 he says, "Man cannot express it. The eye isn't satisfied with seeing, the ear not satisfied with the hearing. That which has been is what will be, that which is done is what will be done, there is nothing new under the sun. There's nothing any one of which it may be said, 'See, this is new.' It had already been in ancient times before us. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of the things that are to come by those who will come after." In other words, his second point of these three is, look, there's not only a monotony of life, but there's nothing new to discover.

You know, we all want new things. I think we like something new. You know, everything in life seems to weary in the long run, unless you getting some new. Paul described the Athenians in Acts 17 as a group of foreigners who sat around thinking of nothing more than telling some new thing. You know, they have a new idea. I am sure that our clothing industry, our entertainment industry, the car industry, they owe their existence to the fact that man is, because of sin, dissatisfied in his heart.

I remember eight track tapes, and then the cassette, and then the C.D., and then the mini C.D., and now, you know, we have a million ways to listen to music. Now we got Bluetooth. But look, it's never going to stop. The next greatest thing. The minute I buy a new T.V., I missed out on the latest one. I just can't keep up. Who can afford that? Well, Solomon could. Solomon could.

There is a verse in Chapter 3, when we get there, verse 11, where the Lord will say to us that God has put eternity into the heart of every man, because only in eternal things can we find satisfaction. That's what the lesson of the book is.

Moody wrote years ago: "If it is new, it's not true. And if it's true, it's not new." Edison said his inventions were simply discovering the secrets of nature and then applying them for the good of mankind. It wasn't new, it just had to be discovered. Then you open your Bible and you read of you: God has made you a new creature. He's given you a new heart, given you a new life, put a new song in your mouth, have you looking one day for a new Heaven and a new earth. You see, in the world, life's going to drone on. There's no reward. There's no hope. But in your relationship with God there's all of those things.

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Can you imagine, verse 8, Solomon just kind of seeing and saying, you know, life is just filled with labor. What a hassle. What a drag. No wonder we never are satisfied. There's this restlessness that comes with dissatisfaction. He even says there, there's something wrong here. This isn't right that man can't just be satisfied. Everything that's been done will be done. If it's going to be done, it's been done before. The ancients have done it. No one remembers it. The only reason it seems new is because you don't remember it's old. What a great argument. What a good argument.

I think Paul wrote to the Romans that God had subjected the creature to futility because it was subjected in hope that He would deliver us from the corruptness that is in us. In other words, our flesh just leads to being futile. We'll never be satisfied. There's a hole that God has created in our hearts which He alone can fix.

So he writes in verse 11 here that we simply think they're new because we refuse to remember; or if you will, maybe this is the best way to put it: We refuse to remember reading the minutes to the last meeting. It well could be said the ancients sold all of our best ideas. Things aren't new.

Take a test for yourself. Who won the Heisman Trophy nine years ago? I'll bet you don't remember. Or who was president 81 years ago? Unless you are really good at history, you probably don't remember that either. Or what did you have for dinner three weeks ago Tuesday? See, that's more of a difficulty for me. Things are not new; we just forget about them. 100 years from now you and everyone else will be virtually forgotten. Ah, the good life. But the fruit that you can leave behind as a believer, that's another story.

So maybe you are struggling with the purpose of life this morning. Then I hope that you'll follow along with us, either this way or until you can sit here in the sanctuary with us in person, and maybe the Lord can bring you back to the path that leads to life. We start out life clueless. Hopefully we grow in the process.

I heard a story a while ago that I really liked of an ensign on a ship who was given by the captain the command to take this ship out to sea, and he was so excited. Never been given the authority before. And so he got on, and in record time, barking out orders with great diligence, he got the ship out 14

of the port and out of the berth and out to sea, when the phone rang, and he answered and he got this congratulatory call from the ship's captain. He said, "You did it, young man! You did it in record time and by the book. I commend you. You did so well. However, you broke one of the ship's first rules." And the ensign said, "Captain, what is that?" And he said, "You should never leave the dock until you make sure the captain is on board. Now come back here and get me!"

So I think that's Solomon's -- you know, I think he would write that in his book. He's going to run out to sea very quickly, have all the opportunities that he can, full speed ahead, but if God's not on board, that's not very wise. So under the sun life was going to have a hard time being found, but in the Son there's tremendous life. And I hope that we will discover that together in the weeks to come.

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