Warns Worldly Ambition Kenwood Baptist Church Sermon Series: The Way of Wisdom Pastor Palmer October 20, 2019

TEXT: 1:1-18

Thomas Kuhn was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He graduated from Taft High School. He became aware during this season of his life of his great interest in math and physics and went on to obtain his bachelor’s degree, then later a Masters and PhD from Harvard University. After graduating from Harvard, he went and taught at the University of California in Berkeley. There he taught in philosophy and history and was named Professor of the History of Science in 1961, the same year that this sanctuary was built. In 1962, he published his most influential work: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Whether you've heard about this book or not, this book affects all of us. This book is actually the most cited work in the social sciences. This work has introduced new vocabulary. In this work of Thomas Kuhn, he didn't coin the term, but popularized the term, of a paradigm shift. When we talk about changing our point of view dramatically, we are influenced by Thomas Kuhn's work. In this work, Kuhn argues that science does not advance by a linear accumulation of knowledge. In other words, it is not step-by-step, ever upward, no matter how much we all tend to think that's how progress is made. He says that actually what happens in science is a periodic revolution that takes place, that creates an entirely new paradigm, a whole new way of seeing the world. Kuhn says that science proceeds

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the way life proceeds, that we have a way of viewing the world. We see the world through a paradigm, through the structure of reality, and in this structure of reality, we conduct ourselves, we make decisions, we do research. He says this can be very productive; it can be very successful. It can seem that this way of seeing the world has always been and will always continue, but as we live, as we make decisions, as we observe the world around us, every once in a while, Kuhn observes, there is an anomaly or something we see that doesn't quite fit our perception of reality and how the world is. When you encounter an anomaly, Kuhn says that scientists’ initial reaction is to suppress it. It's what all of us do. Something happens, you experience something in this world that doesn't fit your categories, and so you just deny it. But then you have another and another anomaly, and these anomalies start to accumulate and create disequilibrium in how we view the world. Enough anomalies take place and it emerges into a crisis, and this crisis resolves in a paradigm shift in what Kuhn calls a “scientific revolution.” It's a change in the way we see the world.

The book of Ecclesiastes invites you into a scientific revolution. The book of Ecclesiastes invites you to go to the next place of the wisdom literature. We have journeyed together this fall through Proverbs, a father speaking to his son, how to live, that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. We can never forget that lesson number one. We moved through the sweep of Proverbs in September, and then we stepped into that tumultuous sea of love and spent a couple weeks on love. We saw that men, you are supposed to write poetry, and women, you are supposed give your heart in response. But, this morning, we turn to the third book of the wisdom literature, and this book is called Ecclesiastes. :1 in the ESV tells us that “this is the words of the Preacher.” In Hebrew, this term preacher is Qohelet. Qohelet is the Hebrew participle for to gather. It’s the one who is gathering the assembly. The speaker in the book of Ecclesiastes is the gatherer of the community, the gatherer of gathering, the assembler of the assembly. This is the meaning of the term Qohelet, and yet it's difficult to translate. Some translations, the first translation we have of the , the translation, renders this term in Hebrew Qohelet, as the gatherer, as the Ecclesiastes, where we get the word ecclesia, or church, the gathering, the assembly. The Septuagint translation renders this as a title: the gatherer, the assembler, and the name of this book, like many of the names of books of the Bible, follows the Greek tradition. That's why we call this book Ecclesiastes. The Ecclesiastes is the one who gathers the assembly in order to address them. Some translations in English try to help us out by rendering this as preacher. The ESV, the NIV, and several others render this as the teacher. But, the speaker of Ecclesiastes 1:1, we know more about from the last half of the verse: This is “the son of David, king in ,” the wisdom voice of Ecclesiastes, the voice of who is addressing the gathered community. We call it Ecclesiastes, as the one who speaks to us all. It's a mature voice. It’s a voice filled with wisdom as we will discover, but it’s a voice that wants to introduce anomalies or at least point

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out the anomalies that you have experienced already. For some of you, this morning, you’re in the early stages of disequilibrium. You’ve had a few things happen in life that don't quite fit. The architectonic plates of your experience are just moving slightly. Some of you, though, are living in a 9.5 experience on the Richter scale. Your paradigms are shifting, and you are open to this voice. This is a mature word.

Let's move on to Ecclesiastes 1:2 where the translation difficulties rise exponentially. This verse in ESV says: “Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” Again, the preacher is Qohelet, Solomon, speaking. This verse is one of the most difficult verses to translate in the , and we see evidence of this right from the beginning of the translation efforts. The Septuagint translators, who worked 250 years before our Lord Jesus, rendered this expression ματαιότης ματαιοτήτων. Mαταιότης is the Greek word for empty, futile, or temporary, transitory, fleeting. The Hebrew expression of verse two is one of the key motifs of the book of Ecclesiastes. Thirty-eight times in the book we have this expression that is havel-havelim is the הֲב ל הֲבָלִים֙ unique to Ecclesiastes. It’s expressed in the superlative. Hebrew expression. Havel in Hebrew calls to mind breath, like a vapor. Eugene Peterson's translation, The Message, translates this as “smoke.” It's like the mist that rises up; it's like a puff of air in the winter time. You see it and then it’s gone. My uncle used to serve in the military in Alaska, and I asked him how cold it gets in Alaska. He said, “Really cold.” I asked: “Can you help me understand that?” He said, “Well, it’s when you walk outside and you breathe and your breath crystallizes and falls into your hands.” That's cold! But it's really the Latin translation that has shaped and influenced the English ones even more. Jerome studied Hebrew and was one of the early church fathers who knew Hebrew. He translated havel- havelim into Latin translation as vanitas vanitatum. It is the Latin term vanitas that influences most subsequent translations. The Latin Bible was the translation of the church for almost 1,000 years. The Latin term vanitas means it's empty or it’s temporary; it’s short-lived. This voice comes to us, warning us, in this opening thesis that life is short, that worldly ambition is like grasping for the wind, as we’ll see. Some people start reading Ecclesiastes and they think: “What a depressing book!” Actually, it's thrilling. It’s a thrilling book. We wonder, if Ecclesiastes was a cynical curmudgeon, or does he stand on the other side of the scientific revolution that we need as well?

Dr. Elaine Phillips, who teaches Bible at Gordon College, says it like this: “Imagine a puff of breath on a cold day. You see it for an instance, then it's gone.” Breath is invisible under most conditions, and likewise, most lives. Ecclesiastes bemoans the fact that there is no memory of those who've gone before and that we will not be remembered. Life, it seems, is like a breath,

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transient, and Philips argues for the translation of elusive. Now some translations over-translate this, I would say. I love the NIV and use it often. The NIV’s strength is that it’s understandable, but its weakness is that sometimes the translators make too many decisions for you. The NIV renders this expression as meaningless. That’s going beyond what the text says. Instead of utterly meaningless, what the speaker is inviting us to see is that life is like a breath, that our worldly ambition is like striving after the wind. Let’s follow as he moves forward. In Ecclesiastes 1:3, we read: “What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?” Toil, or work, is another key expression in Ecclesiastes. “The work that we do,” he asks, “what do you really gain?” What do you gain from all the exertion; what do you gain from worldly ambition, trying to make a name for yourself, trying to earn as much as you can, trying to move up in the world, to take the next step on the myth of progress? What do you gain? Ecclesiastes’ mature, wise voice looks back at creation. He says in Ecclesiastes 1:4: “A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.” The earth has been here a long time, even if you hold to young earth view, it is still really old. The earth remains. Ecclesiastes 1:5: “The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises.”

Did you ever think that the sunrise Abraham saw is the same sunrise that you see? The sun rises and the sun sets.

Ecclesiastes 1:6: “The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns.” “Where does the wind come from?” children ask.

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We read in Ecclesiastes 1:7: “All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again.” Personally, I find the origin of rivers fascinating. Some rivers begin underground; some rivers course above the ground and then they dive underground and then they emerge. Do you ever wonder where all the water comes from just to keep Niagara Falls flowing? He looks at creation, and he sees it’s big, constant, and stable. The effect isn't too overwhelm you, it's to calm you down, to say this world is big, broader than you. In Ecclesiastes 1:8 he reminds us: “All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.” This world is big, and we come in to proper scale. It’s like what I call the bonsai effect. I used to have a bonsai tree until I killed it through gross negligence and incompetence. But, I actually love to go down to the Krohn Conservatory. They have bonsai trees; they are hundreds of years old. Somehow, looking at a bonsai tree, though it's hard to explain why, puts you into perspective, and that's what’s happening here. Don't get so amped up; don't get ahead of yourself. Worldly ambition is like a breath, because, we read in Ecclesiastes 1:9: “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.” This is one of the most quoted lines from Ecclesiastes. It’s a mature perspective. It's not cynical; it's not a curmudgeon sitting back in his palace fed up with life. It's a wise, mature view that says we should be cautious about the scope of our worldly ambition, because if we live for self, if we live for the accumulation of fame, property, pleasure, as we will see, those things are fleeting and are like a breath. There is nothing new under the sun, and this is really challenging for us, because we live in a culture of novelty and innovation. We thrive on it. I remember being in high school and seeing the first computers introduced into the high school. They were Apple II E computers. My classmates joked: “What a silly name for a computer: Apple!”

I remember the first games that were a dashed line against another dashed line and a square ball that you bounced back and forth. Some of you are nodding, and you are hoping other

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people don't see your nods. Our children and grandchildren don't even know those games. If they do, if they see them, they would laugh at them. The funny thing is that the games people play now, their children and grandchildren will laugh about, and it's hard to imagine that. There's nothing new under the sun. If somebody rushes up to you and says: “See, this is new,” you’d say: “It’s already been done. It’s already been in the ages before us.” Nothing is really new. The Assyrians had a plan for conquering the world and documented it. There had been dramatic innovations of technology long before, but the cotton gin changed the world. People came into the middle of the 20th century and said: “You know, with all the technological innovation that is happening, the critical moral question in the latter half of the 20th century is going to be: “What will we do with all the leisure time, because the work week is going to contract to 12 hours?” Is that what has happened? Or have our innovations just fueled worldly ambition, which Ecclesiastes warns is like a breath, like striving after the wind? There have been dramatic changes in communication in the ages before. What about the transition from cuneiform to an alphabetic script? This was revolutionary. What about Greek as a global language? What about the transition from a scroll to a Codex so learning could be portable? Now we've gone retro and were scrolling again! What about movable type, the printing press? What about the telegraph linking communication instantaneously so we can know if the royals in England have a fever or not? What about text messaging? The first text message ever was “Merry Christmas!” Now we send billions. Digital technology, and what about drone delivery for all things? Now, UPS can be attached to a drone and fly to wherever you are and drop material goods from the sky with your credit card already preprogrammed into it. It’s a new world, isn’t it? Is it really? Making money, striving after the wind, breath of breaths, Ecclesiastes warns. You don't come to this point when you’re young or early. He says in Ecclesiastes 1:11: “There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after.” I think people forget that he wisely says people aren’t going to remember you either. The disequilibrium in Ecclesiastes 1 is heightened in Ecclesiastes 1:12-13 where he says from the position of King over Jerusalem where he has seen and observed life: “I the Preacher have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.”

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He said he has looked at everything that happens. He had a good view, and as king, he was in a position of power. He had the material means to support times of leisure and study; he had people from all over the world showing up in his court to give their perspective and showcase their wares. He says that trying to figure out everything is an onerous task. The ESV says it’s an unhappy business. For me, that’s a unhappy translation. It's an onerous task; it's a hard task to figure out everything. In Ecclesiastes 1:14, he says: “I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.” Everything is a breath; it’s temporary, it’s transitory, it’s fleeting, it’s impermanent, and if you think you want to build your happiness on human achievement in this world, you’re trying to grab the wind and hold onto it. He says in Ecclesiastes 1:14: “What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted.” What is crooked cannot be made straight despite the attempts of Herod the Great to change the course of rivers, despite the attempts in modern society to overpower reality. What is lacking can’t be counted. What a profound word for us today.

William Cameron, in his 1963 book, Informal Sociology, quotes a famous incident attributed to Albert Einstein. Einstein walked into the classroom one day and wrote on the chalkboard: “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” Not everything that can be counted counts? How many things are we counting? I can tell you that I have 74,000 points on my Humana 365 healthcare plan, but I'm not sure what to do with those. I have reward points for Hilton, although I don’t stay there that often. I’ve got thousands of points on airlines, but I can’t keep track of which ones expire and which ones don't. How many things are you counting that really don't count? He says what’s lacking, what's missing within you, you can’t count. You can’t check your 401(k) or your Roth IRA. You can't calibrate your asset allocation and fill up what’s missing. Something's missing; you can’t count it. Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. This disequilibrium, these anomalies of life experience, raise this up to a level of crisis. In Ecclesiastes 1:16-17, he says: “I said in my heart, ‘I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.’ And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind.” In Ecclesiastes 1:18, he says: “For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.”

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You may not use the word vexation often. It's a great word. “You vex me.” You can say that in response to the next telemarketer who wants to sign you up for another program at random. You can say: “This call is vexing me.” We might render it as distress, disequilibrium. The crisis rises, the anomalies pile up. I thought that this life was about all these things. He starts to unravel and unroll his life experience, the things that we think are the key to happiness, the things we think really count. Maybe you’ve moved beyond your reward airline tickets. Maybe you’ve moved beyond grasping for the all-inclusive prize. Maybe you follow his footsteps, where he went.

He unfurls for us in that he tried everything. Pleasure, he tried pleasure. He had the means to support it. He found that it was fleeting like a breath. It was unsatisfying. He tried food and drink, and he found that it was fleeting and unsatisfying. He tried great accomplishments and did really amazing things. He says in Ecclesiastes 2:4-6: “I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees.” He found all these earthly accomplishments unsatisfying. He was a person of great wealth— many servants, many workers, huge herds, gathered silver and gold, entertainers from all over the world. Whatever his eyes desired, he did not keep from them. Then he looked out and found them unsatisfying. Then, he said in Ecclesiastes 2:12: “So I turned to consider wisdom and madness and folly. For what can the man do who comes after the king? Only what has already been done. Then I saw that there is more gain in wisdom than in folly, as there is more gain in light than in darkness.” He thought he could figure everything out, but realized he couldn’t. His quest for wisdom and knowing everything was in itself unsatisfying. The crisis rises to a heightened extreme. In Ecclesiastes 2:20, the assembler, the gatherer, the teacher, after trying everything, said: “So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun,” Some of you know despair. Some of you know it better than others.

Since the introduction of Facebook, teenage depression in the United States has gone up 70%! You look out and you see everything, and you think it doesn't satisfy. This work is speaking with an authentic and true voice, with the opportunity to go in the company of wisdom to say: “I tried it all, and I found it was all like a breath. All worldly ambition, seeking pleasure, learning, status, accumulation of wealth, achievement, fame, recognition, entertainment, comedy, I’ve tried it all, and it’s like a breath.” The paradigm in which he lived reaches a crisis, and then

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comes the revolution. This is the revolution that all of us must experience to be on the other side of the wisdom of Ecclesiastes. The scientific revolution of this work is found first articulated at the end of Ecclesiastes 2. He comes to the realization in Ecclesiastes 2:24-25: “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from Him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?” Toil renders a negative judgment on this. It is more the generic word for work. He looks out on all life experiences, and he says: “You know what? The best thing in life is to have a simple meal, a glass of water, and thank God for what He has given you to do.”

Brothers and sisters, that's actually quite profound, the more you think about it. We need to think about it more, because the paradigm that we inhabit says, “No, no, no, really, worldly ambition, that’s the key. If I could become wealthy; if I could become popular. If I could just get that girl or that guy; if I could just be recognized for this achievement; if I could accomplish my goals, if I could do that,” he says, “it’s just breath, breath, breath.” There's no greater happiness than arroz y habichuela at home, “rice and beans,” a glass of water. Thank God for the job you have, what He's given you to do. That’s it!

It is so strikingly antithetical to what we think, isn’t it? We think: “No, no, no, it can’t be that.” The Hebrew of Ecclesiastes 2:24 is so beautiful that I can't keep it a secret. It is not really a secret, but the idiom that he uses, that the translators render find enjoyment, the Hebrew text literally says: “Cause your soul to see the good in your work.” That’s it. This is not ancient Israelite Epicureanism: “Eat, drink, and be gluttonous, and tomorrow we die.” That is not what he is saying. He’s saying it's just so nice to have a meal and to have something to drink, and then cause your eye, or your soul—it varies throughout the work—just to see the good in what God has given you to do. That’s the key to happiness. The key to happiness is from the hand of God. He gives to you and he gives to me something to do, and we look at it and we say: “God, thank You for what You have given me to do, and I praise You and thank You that I have enough to eat and something to drink, and thank You for what You have given me to do.”

Apart from Him, that is apart from God, who can enjoy anything? If you just race after it, if you try to grab life by the tail, wrestle it to the ground, you will find yourself pinned on the mat. You will find yourself in despair, but this profound, mature word is that actually worldly ambition is like a breath, and the key to happiness is godly contentment. You have enough to eat, something to drink, and “God, I just thank You for what You’ve given me.” God has given us all these different things to do. God has asked me to be a pastor and to be a preacher and a teacher, and I love to thank Him for those things and to see the good. Some of you have work

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that involves staying at home. Cause your soul to see the good in what God has given you to do. We get into such a habit, when we live in this lesser paradigm, of complaining and grumbling because we think that happiness is coming from the success of our worldly ambition. I stopped recently at a service station because my car was handling a little strangely, and I thought one of the tires was low. The manager came out and I said: “I think one of my tires is low, could you just check that?” He said: “Oh, yeah, I can check that because I’ve got plenty of time.” His voice had a bit of an edge to it. I said: “Thanks for doing that.” He said: “Yeah, well we’re not making any money today anyway.” I looked around and saw all these cars up on lifts. I saw the place looked full and it looked like a lot was happening. In each successive stage of our conversation, I kept trying to help him see the good in what God given him, but his heart was hardened against it. The habit of grumbling and complaining, that's actually the old paradigm. As Ecclesiastes seems so other-worldly, it is actually a profound, delightful, and joyful book. Let me show you this as we close.

His thesis, that this world is breath of breaths, striving after the wind, and the key to happiness is godly contentment is so revolutionary to you and to me, and it was him, that this picture is repeated throughout the book. It comes up like a little oasis, over and over. The first one is in Ecclesiastes 2. In :22, he says it again: “So I saw that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work, for that is his lot. Who can bring him to see what will be after him?” Many readers of this book think: “Joyful?” This book isn’t joyful, but it is. It’s to be joyful and do good as long as you live, and to eat and drink and take pleasure in your work. Whatever God. gives you to do, cause your heart, your soul, your eyes to see the good in that and thank God. Christine's grandmother lived to be 100 years old, and she went to be with the Lord last year. She lived at home up to 100 years. She shoveled her own driveway at 97. Her last years, she couldn’t leave the house, and her work was prayer. That was her ministry. She prayed for missionaries all over the world; she prayed for her children. That was her work. Cause your eyes to see the good in whatever God has given you to do. The ancients thought our peak decade was our 50s. I'm looking forward to it. They say: “You’ve lived enough to know something, and yet you still have some vitality to make a difference.” The 60s aren’t too far from the 50s, and neither are the 70s, and with health and nutrition, you can still make an impact. He says it again in Ecclesiastes 3:22: “There is nothing better than to rejoice in your work.” Maybe your work is changing a diaper 14 times a day. He says it again in :18: “Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of his life that God has given him, for this is his lot.” He says it again in :15, and we end here. He says:

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“And I commend joy, for man has nothing better under the sun but to eat and drink and be joyful, for this will go with him in his toil through the days of his life that God has given him under the sun.”

Where do you get the joy he's talking about? You will not get it from pleasure, wealth, achievement, accomplishment, recognition, likes or dislikes. You get it from fearing God and thanking Him for what He gives you and to cause your soul to see the good in what He has given you to do, so that you do your work well. Then, God will sort it out. It’s what He has given you.

So, dear friends, if you are in disequilibrium this morning, at the beginning of it, you have found some anomalies. You may be in the heart of it, and disequilibrium is rising to a point of crisis. You may be discouraged and depressed, and I want challenge you: Why are you discouraged and depressed? Is it because you link your happiness to the breath of breaths and have mistaken the truth of Ecclesiastes? There’s something better than just having enough to eat and something to drink. Just say: “God, thank You for what You have given for me today.” That's powerful truth and wise words for living. Let’s pray.

Dear Lord Jesus, we thank You for Ecclesiastes. We thank You, Lord, for Your work in our lives. We thank You, Lord, this morning, that You have revealed to us in this wonderful, short, wisdom book the key to joy, that is walking with You and thanking You for what You have given us day by day. Lord, help us to not strive after the wind. Help us, Lord, to trust in You in the midst of the disequilibrium and the storm. I lift up those among us this morning, or those listening, who are wracked with anomalies, who are feeling unstable, unsure, for whom the ground is quacking. I pray, Lord, that You would open up a ray of light to their reality and invite them forward into this revolution of wisdom. There’s something better than to be able to eat and drink. It is to thank You, God, and see the good in what You have given me today.

I want to invite you to open your hands to God's eyes, God's presence. Will you stand together with me? I want you, as a prayer, to place the things that are disorienting you—people, circumstances and situations, heart aches, ambitions that haven’t come from our Heavenly Father. Put them in your hands, and as we worship and declare His goodness—that it is well with my soul—you would lift those up to Him and find the glorious freedom, the freedom of godly contentment. Lord, we praise You as we sing, “It Is Well with My Soul.”

In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

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