Vapor

Good morning, Church.

Today's scripture is from Ecclesiastics 1, 1 through 11.

The words of the preacher, the son of David, King in Jerusalem.

Vanities of vanities, says the preacher, vanity of vanities.

All is vanity.

What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?

A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.

The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises.

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.

All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full, to the place where the streams flow, where they flow again.

All things are full of weariness.

A man cannot utter it.

The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.

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.

Is there anything of which it is said?

See, this is new.

It has already been in the ages before us.

There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

It is a pleasure to gather with you this Lord's Day to gather and worship and seek the face of our Lord.

Let's pray together.

Father in heaven, you have made the boundaries of our lives.

You are in control of all things, and all things work precisely according to your sovereign plan.

Lord, it is an indiscernible life that you've given us.

And it requires unthinkable wisdom to be able to operate in it.

And at the borders of our wisdom, we discover that it can barely be understood if it can be understood at all.

Lord, you also promise us that if we ask you, that you will give us wisdom.

So, Lord, we seek wisdom from your word.

All scripture is inspired by God.

And Lord, it is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

Lord God, we pray that you would use your word today to build up us, your church, that we might be adequate for the good works that you have called us to.

Lord, teach us to be wise, so we might live in ways that honor you.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

All right.

Well, today is the beginning of our new series in Ecclesiastes.

And I've heard from several people since I announced that uh uh we'll be preaching through Ecclesiastes that this is many of your favorite books, which tells me that you're probably depressed.

Uh this is uh I've been to many concerts, the type of people that I like to uh the type of music that I like to listen to.

It's usually just like sad singer-songwriters that uh played, you know, acoustic guitars and weep.

And I've heard at their at their show, I went to a Ryan Adams show uh a while ago at Red Rocks, and he was like, you guys are all at Ryan Adams shows.

That means something's terribly wrong with you.

And that's kind of like you're all uh excited about an Ecclesiastes series, means there's something terribly wrong with you.

Uh but this is our this is the first time that I've preached through wisdom literature, and I I'm excited to do it, but I'll tell you what, it is daunting because wisdom literature um to interpret it takes uh, you know, wisdom.

Yeah.

Uh that's right.

This is the beginning of wisdom.

Get wisdom.

It's a helpful proverb for you.

You should remember that one.

Uh and so uh today we're we are beginning this um excerpt of of wisdom literature as we're moving through Ecclesiastes, and this is a particularly strange one with uh with some uh uh it can be it can be very hard to discern, but that's sort of the point.

Our graphic for Ecclesiastes.

Uh does anybody know what that is?

What's going on there?

Who that is?

Yeah, Sisyphus.

Um now Sisyphus is the um uh king of Corinth.

He twice cheated death, which frustrated the gods.

So be careful if you've only done that once.

You've got one more, and then they'll be frustrated with you.

And he was cursed then by the gods uh with this eternal fate to roll a stone up a hill every day, and uh he would get to the top of the hill at the and then at the end of every day the stone would roll back down the hill.

And that was uh the the fate that the gods had given him.

Uh this is like doing uh uh data entry uh all day long, and then at the end of the day, uh the power goes out and you lose everything that you had entered.

And I think that the gods each day they told him uh the work is mysterious and important, is uh what they told him.

Yeah, there you go.

Now, that story is not really a moral tale.

It's like what's the moral of Sisyphus?

It's not that type of story.

Uh we're used to, and we have this bad habit, even with scripture, of thinking of everything in terms of a moral.

We read it like Aesop's fables.

It's not really a moral story, it's more of like a just so story.

A uh description of just the way things are.

Look at how the gods treat us.

Isn't this what life is like?

Isn't it fundamentally feudal labor that amounts to nothing?

Now, the myth of Sisyphus was popularized by uh, well, repopularized by Albert Camus in his story about Sisyphus, and he reframes Sisyphus as a heroic character.

And he sees that uh the what is to be done when you recognize that life is absurd is to embrace the absurdity.

And then even to see that perhaps this absurdity, the fundamental meaninglessness of life, is actually uh liberty.

And if we see that life means nothing, then we should embrace it as uh as liberty.

And so that it's in our culture, Sisyphus has been sort of reframed as this heroic character.

And I think that uh Camus, in his recognition that everything is is absurd, and then his reframing that as positive, that there's actually liberty in the absurdity.

That's a fantasy that our culture has embraced and tried to live out.

Uh that but what it what it results in is this this even more fundamental decay and this attempt to live as though the world has no constraints, has no boundaries.

And while that's been uh offered to you as liberty, those who really try it realize that it it uh becomes disintegration.

You're not able to interact with the things that you find most fundamentally important anymore.

So it was given to you as liberty, but it's actually this trick.

This theme of constantly repeated futility seems like something that all of the most wise people in history arrive at.

Camus was not the first one to pick up on it and to try and reframe it as something uh heroic to be embraced or as something that's like liberty with the lack of constraint to be embraced.

Nietzsche explores this theme in The Gay Science and in Thus Spake Zarathustra, which is a fun one because you get to say spake.

It's a good one thing that that book has going for it.

Uh it's also the theme of 2001, a space odyssey.

That's why that movie begins with the song Thus Spake Zarathustra.

It's also the theme of Groundhog Day, uh, which is uh a book, but both of those, uh all of those are about eternal recurrence.

And Groundhog Day is explicitly riffing off of Nietzsche.

Um and Nietzsche had this in had this understanding of the world of eternal return of the same.

And so his question for you is if your life were to be repeating itself ad infinitum with every detail exactly the same as it is now, how would you relate to your life?

And his answer to that was you'd just embrace it.

You'd embrace it.

Solomon's answer to that is you'd hate it.

I think Solomon was right.

Solomon is going to lead us down this same path.

You know, it's uh it's tempting when you go through Ecclesiastes because you it like I noticed around every turn, I was like, this is like this person who said this, or this is like this other person who said this, or this is like, and it's because we're seeing like the maximal worldly wisdom possible.

And so all of the wisest people through history that we still read even after thousands of years, and that's a small set, right?

But they're the ones that time hasn't filtered out yet, the ones we still find relevant.

They are driving us towards this desperate conclusion of futility.

But our graphic, Sisyphus, it's misdirection.

That's not the theme of this book.

And Ecclesiastes itself is misdirection.

It's a sleight of hand, it's a trick that Solomon is playing on us.

When he is driving us to this deepest conclusion, this most fundamental conclusion of absolute futility, that he will back you into a corner over and over again.

When you think you found a way out of this conclusion of futility, he will make sure that you do not find a way out.

And then there, like a like a bolt of lightning, will crash in something from outside the system which which begs you to conclude it's not futile.

There's some meaning here, but I I'm not quite sure how to how to get there from here.

When you first read through Ecclesiastes, I think the conclusion that you come to is this is a book about futility.

But if you read more closely, and what I hope to show throughout the series, is that this is a book most fundamentally about joy.

Ecclesiastes is a book about joy.

But it's about real joy, not drunkenness on next achievement, not being uh uh not under the hallucination that joy is something that you can merely cultivate for yourself if you organize your life in the right way.

He goes to the outer limits of wisdom, where wisdom starts to break down and where things don't make sense anymore.

He goes to the edge of the map, and at the edge of the map, you know, here be dragons.

And he goes there.

And at the at this edge of the map where all normal ways of operating and all normal wisdom no longer works anymore, he says, here you start to see, and only here can you really start to understand that there's a deeper joy that's available even amidst the futility.

So that's the trick of the book.

Now, if it can't be grasped, if it can't be reasoned to, if you can't stand on the ground and work your way up to this glory of a transcendent joy, then that means that the glory of the transcendent joy, in order for it to be participated in, it can't it can't be an act of mere reason.

It can't be an act of building, it can't be an act of works.

Your joy, the joy that Solomon is commending to you, cannot be achieved.

It can only be received by faith.

So he goes to the outer bounds of wisdom, and he and he shows us that it breaks down.

And then he shows us that there is a joy here, and it can only be received by faith.

This is a great argument for salvation by faith alone.

So let's go into the mist, let's go into the vapor with Solomon.

He is our guide, and he will take us down this road.

So let's begin.

Ecclesiastes 1-1.

The words of the preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

So Ecclesiastes is written by Solomon.

It is cool to say that it isn't, but it is.

Ecclesiastes was totally written by Solomon.

That is my argument.

He introduces himself as the preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem, son of David, king in Jerusalem.

That's your clue.

Solomon was David's son, and he was the king in Jerusalem.

I uh the the gymnastics that people do to say that this was not written by Solomon, I'm just gonna go with it says it.

He is described in our translation, and we're we're gonna realize that like our translations are they don't do us many favors.

I think they I think, but anyway, we'll we'll get there.

He's described as the preacher.

Now, for obvious reasons, I'm partial to this title, but he's more likely, or perhaps better translated as the convener.

He's the one who is gathering everyone together.

And that's appropriate because that's what the king does.

At the times of the festivals, it is the king who would gather the people together to celebrate them.

And so that's his role there.

And so he's he's uh teaching his people from a kingly uh uh perspective.

And uh other evidence that this is Solomon is in verse 16 of chapter one, where 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.

The wisest man who ever lived, except for Jesus, was Solomon.

He requested wisdom from the Lord and he received great wisdom, wisdom beyond anyone else.

So there's nobody else who could come after Solomon and say that he was the wisest person, that he was the wisest king, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before him, that could only be referring to Solomon.

Now some say, but isn't it strange to say that he is surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before him?

When isn't all both?

Isn't all Saul and then David and then Solomon?

And they'll say, see, so it couldn't be that, but that that's not true even scripturally.

Like we have other people who we are told were king of Jerusalem.

This is kind of a trivia question, but who who else was king of Jerusalem?

Melchizedek.

Melchizedek, exactly.

Matthew Haggerty.

It's not trivial when Matthew Hagerty's in the room.

So we have other we have other kings of Jerusalem in scripture.

And so he's surpassing Melchizedek in his wisdom.

That's impressive.

King of righteousness.

So this is Solomon.

Now, Solomon has another book on another book that's in the wisdom literature in scriptures.

It's Proverbs.

And Ecclesiastes comes right on the heels of Proverbs.

Now, Proverbs, you read through that, and your takeaway should be life can be understood.

It is complicated, it is difficult, but by wisdom I can understand the world that I'm living in.

And this should be your conclusion when you read the Proverbs.

I can I can operate within it in ways that are sensible and meaningful and effective.

That is the book of Proverbs.

It tells you the rules of the game, and it says, if you fear the Lord and you understand that He has created things in a particular way, and He has created you in a particular way in order to relate to it, then you can approach the world by wisdom and live effectively in it.

Now that's true.

It's in the Bible.

Proverbs is also true.

Proverbs teaches you the rules of the game.

If you roll doubles, you get to go again.

If you pass go, you collect$200.

If you go directly to jail, do not pass go, then you go directly to jail, and then you have to roll doubles to get out of jail.

It tells you the rules of the game.

And if you play by those rules and you get a boardwalk and park place, and you build hotels on them, then you'll take all of your friends' money.

And that is called winning.

Ecclesiastes comes in and it does it, so Proverbs teaches you how to how to win the game.

Ecclesiastes comes in and it asks these horrible questions as it stands uh out over your shoulder, and the annoying friend that showed up late and and uh asks you, why are you playing?

Why are you even playing that game?

And you're like, Well, I'm getting I'm getting money.

I've got houses already on some of these.

I own all the utilities.

And you're wondering why, and then Ecclesiastes says, Why are you even playing that game?

What I I got a question for you.

What happens if you win the game?

And you say, Well, I get all the money.

And Ecclesiastes says, Well, now that you have all the money, the game, the game ends, right?

Yeah, the game ends.

Where does the money work?

Well, just in the game.

So if you win, you get all of the money and the game ends.

And the money only works in the game.

And so the so it why are you playing the game?

And then you look up and it's like, who invited Ecclesiastes?

It presses you to the limits of wisdom.

And if you press far enough into the limits of wisdom, what Solomon is showing us is that what was so discernible before and what was so effective within the game, if you press to the limits of the game, you will discover futility.

You will discover that the game that you were playing was vapor.

It was monopoly money.

It didn't matter anyway.

So he introduces us to this futility in three themes, three themes that he will uh expound on throughout the whole of the book of Ecclesiastes.

And these three themes are introduced to us in the first uh three verses of the book.

In verses two and three, he begins this poem.

It's like a like a song of futility.

And you I just imagine when he had written this scripture and he's distributing it through Israel, probably around the time that he's uh undergoing this great building project of building his palace and building the temple.

That uh this is getting passed around Israel, and they're they're like, What did Solomon just write?

What do we do?

What do we do with this book?

This is very different than the Proverbs we had received from him.

What do we do with this book?

And he begins and says, Vanity of vanities, says the preacher.

Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?

Three themes in this.

That word vanity, which the ESV translates vanity, Hebel, translated in the NIV as meaningless, meaningless.

Everything is meaningless.

Here, vanity of vanities.

Everything is vanity.

I think that neither of these translation choices are good.

I I uh wasn't consulted, and they're very good at their jobs.

They could probably talk circles around me of why they are the right choices.

I'm going to argue that they're not the right choice.

First of all, the NIV is meaningless, meaningless.

Everything is meaningless.

How many of you grew up hearing it that way?

That's the way I heard it.

Now I think meaningless is not the right word.

Because it's because it's an abstraction.

And Solomon is not dealing with abstractions.

In fact, the scriptures rarely talk in abstractions.

They talk in concrete images.

And then we try and take them and we make, we turn them into these abstractions.

Meaninglessness is like an existential experience.

And so we think that because we're all existentialists, you know.

You know?

We're talking about our feelings.

We're all talking about our feelings.

Validating them to each other, saying it's valid that you're feeling that way.

We all know to say that now, to each other.

So we're all existentialists.

But the meaninglessness, he's not talking about like an existential angst.

He'll describe the feeling of it, but he's not describing like here's the way you feel about the world.

He's saying, this is the way the world is.

Do you see the difference?

In meaninglessness, I think it has this uh connotation of how you're feeling about it.

It's not what he's saying, it's worse than that.

He's saying it it is this way.

The second one, the way our uh translation that we're using, um the ESV translates it is vanity of vanities.

Now, the reason that I don't like that word is because it has this sense of uh hubris or pride.

Like the problem with his pursuit that what he discovers is that there's actually this pridefulness about everything.

And there's this hubris in pursuing the things of the world.

But that's not what he's talking about either.

Vanity has this sense of like um uh, you know, vanity is is the the hiddenness of makeup.

And then it's wiped off, and you see, okay, there's real substance underneath.

You know, there's there's there's a some sort of substance underneath.

Vanity is like, it feels like this gloss on top of everything.

And it what you so what it implies sort of in your mind is if you were to if you were to scrape off that gloss that's over everything, the shiny, the shiny outer layer, you would look below below and you would see, oh no, it's actually dull and it's not it's not shiny beneath.

That's the connotation of vanity.

But that's not, he's not saying there's just some surface level misunderstanding that's going on.

The word, the the word itself is vapor.

That's what it literally means, or mist.

That's the word.

It's it's vapor.

That's a that's a a concrete thing.

That's something you can actually experience.

You know, it's vapor, it's the thing which is uh on hovering over the grass in the morning.

And then the sun comes up and it just goes away.

And if you were to reach out and try and grasp it, you can't grasp it.

And if you were to try and control it or move it where you would want to move it, you can't move it.

And if you were trying to try and gain any substance from it, something that you could use or manipulate in any way, it couldn't be used or manipulated.

There's no satisfaction in it.

It just goes away.

That's what he's saying, it is vapor.

So you can hear it vapor of vapors.

It's like the the vapor's vapor.

You know, what would vapor be to vapor?

That would be vapor indeed.

If even the vapor is as vapor to you, that is, then how vapor is that vapor?

Very.

All is vapor all the way down.

It doesn't feel like vapor.

This feels like this feels solid.

Your chair doesn't feel like vapor.

Your wife, when you hug her, doesn't feel like vapor.

Your your children don't feel like vapor.

You're and he's he's saying, it's vapor.

It's vapor.

It's all going away.

It can't be controlled, it can't be grasped.

Don't even try.

It's vapor.

So that's the first theme.

All is vapor.

This is a horrifying claim.

All is vapor.

The second theme, which he will describe to us, is gain.

You can hear it.

What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?

It's profit.

It's really the word for profit.

And the the question is, what do you have to show for it in the end?

If you add your labor to things, then at the end there's there's something to show for it.

We you know that spot in your life that's in between the sidewalk and the road?

And you and it's like, what do I do here so I won't have to weed it constantly?

Well, I have one of those in my life.

It's right in between the sidewalk and the road.

And Megan kept perpetually saying, like, you've got to fix this, you've got to fix this.

It looks horrible.

Our neighbors are looking at us.

We went to a dinner party with one, some of our neighbors last week, and she was like, Can you tell them that we're gonna weed it?

That we plan on weeding it, and I didn't.

I got too nervous to say that.

But uh that uh that what happens though, it so finally this week afterwards, I uh dug up all the pea gravel that was just looked like weeds and uh made piles of it to get rid of and laid got some bought some topsoil and put some grass seed, and now I'm waiting.

So I applied my labor to it, is the point that I'm making.

And then by the application of labor to it, then I'm hoping to get something from it in return.

This is what you're doing with your lives.

You're applying your labor to events and circumstances, and then at the end, you're you're hoping that there will be some gain.

And what Solomon is doing in the midst of this uh incredible building project where he's negotiated these international trade deals, and there's been tariff wars, and there's been the Day of Liberty or whatever it was with graphs, and he's uh and he's explaining uh all of this to uh in order to build the temple and to build the palace, and and so in the midst of this, he's zooming out and he's saying, What do you gain from all your toil at which you toil under the sun?

And his what he'll explain in this book is by the application of your labor, in the most fundamental reading of it, you gain nothing.

That's where he will bring us in this book.

The most fundamental reading of the application of your labor, you'll gain nothing.

So that's the second theme is gain.

So vapor and then gain, and you can see how they're related.

And then the last is in this phrase what does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?

Under the sun.

This is the context of Solomon's exploration throughout the whole book.

The whole context of his understanding, of the wisdom that he is trying to describe to us, takes place under the sun.

Under the sun is where you are now.

It is this present age.

It is the context in which we live.

It's not a geographical thing.

It's not like, well, he didn't know that we were just on the cusp of interstellar travel.

And once we finally break through to the new physics, which allows us to do interstellar travel, well, we'll be able to throw away Ecclesiastes.

Because we'll no longer be under the sun where all those problems were.

It's not a geographical or stelographical or whatever term.

It's about time.

Now, of course, it's about time because the sun is created on the fourth day.

The sun and the moon and the stars, they're to rule over the light, and they rule over times and seasons.

That's what the sun is about in scripture.

And so what he's showing us is that time will destroy everything.

Time is this great eraser that you are trapped in and it keeps ticking away, and there's no stopping it.

And in this time, because you are stuck in time in the way that you are, then the way to understand life is that it's just a fleeting vapor.

It just goes away.

And anything that you add to it, you gain nothing from.

Because you can't add to it from within the system.

You know, you can't, if you're down in monopoly, you can't pull out your wallet and be like, okay, use these instead.

Doesn't work here.

Your real money only works in real world.

In monopoly, only monopoly money works.

You can't add to the system.

That's where you are under the sun.

And so he's inhabiting this under the sun perspective, which you should think of as an as a perspective of total imminence with no transcendence.

So, from all that you could know about the world, just by observing the world, you must conclude that it is all vapor, that there is nothing that you can gain.

That is what the perspective of under the sun requires.

And so this poem that he describes, it describes all of those, all of those things.

The rivers, they flow into the sea, and the sea is never full.

The winds, they they they blow, and then they just continue on their course and then they blow again.

And what does it what does it satisfy again?

And then he takes this analogy of creation as itself as you would observe it, and then he applies it directly to you, and he says, your eyes are never full of seeing.

It's not like you see, and then it's like, oh, that's enough.

Seeing stuff stuffed from seeing.

Your ears are never full from hearing.

You never, you're never finally satisfied.

My brother-in-law is super into fish.

You know, the band Fish.

And so I went and saw fish at Folsom Field a couple of weeks ago.

It was wild.

And the folks, everybody that you meet at a fish concert, it's like their 50th fish concert.

Because they just follow, they just follow fish around.

Because the the in the concert that I went to, it was like, that was awesome.

I get it.

I want to go again and just get guitar face melted in like 15-minute songs that they assure me are different from one another.

Why do they have to keep going back?

Why do we have to keep going back?

Because it didn't, it didn't work, like it didn't take.

We're gonna have to do those poor fish guys, you know, that are getting old now and they're gonna have to get up and do this again because that last concert, well, it didn't really take.

Their ears aren't full.

Nothing will be remembered.

It will all go away.

Do you know your great-grandparents' names?

Raise your hand if you know your great-grandparents' names.

That's not many.

That's not many.

Great-great-grandparents?

We're down to two.

That's where you're that's where you come from.

Your existence hinges not that many generations back.

Gone.

Gone.

Not remembered.

Nothing that happens later will be remembered.

This is the frame that he, and I think he does it in a song, you know, because he wants this to stick.

And so he's like, it's like smelling salts or something for us.

He's snapping you out of your normal mode of thinking, and he's like, look, what if you really look?

It's vapor, it's futility, it's not remembered, it doesn't matter, goes away.

No control, no satisfaction.

So he goes on a quest.

This is where his quest begins, and he seeks to sort of prove this to you.

In Ecclesiastes 1.13, he describes the quest that he's going on.

He says, And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven.

This is what he's trying to do.

Going to seek and search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven.

Under heaven, under the firmament, the sun and the moon and the stars are placed in the firmament.

This is the same phrase.

Under heaven, under the sun.

This is the context, the temporal context.

And he's going to seek out by wisdom.

He's got it in spades.

Might as well use some of it to understand all that is done under heaven.

All and here's what he sees right away.

It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.

Unhappy is a generous translation.

The word is ra, which you can is a great Hebrew word because it sounds like what it means.

It means evil.

It is an evil business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.

It's like Sisyphus.

It's a punishment.

Do this every day, accomplish nothing.

It's horrifying.

It's futile.

It's cruel.

Solomon says it's evil.

It's almost nerve-wracking going to the places that Solomon takes us.

He causes you to face and stare at uncomfortable things that you can't believe are in the scriptures.

So he sees that the way that God, and he's it's not like a secular perspective, you know, like he is thinking, he is he's a true Israelite.

He's a Christian, we'd call him.

He believes in God.

He's saying, God is doing this.

It's all in his hands.

It's all in his hands.

And the work that he has given us under the sun, it's an evil, it's an evil business.

Accomplishes nothing.

And so on this quest with this statement, it is an evil business that God has given the children of man to be busy with.

Well, he starts down this journey.

And he begins where you would think he would begin.

He begins with creation.

You can tell that his thinking is guided by Genesis 1, because here's the first little conclusion that he offers.

In Ecclesiastes 1.15, he says, What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted.

This is a Genesis 1, very beginning of creation sort of phrase, because it's about formlessness and void.

In the beginning, the Spirit of God is hovering over the waters, and they are formless and void.

That is what God observes of the creation in the beginning.

So formless, it means it has no shape.

There's no structure.

So what is crooked cannot be made straight.

What has no form, I cannot bring into form.

Then he says, and what is lacking cannot be counted.

That's about void, void emptiness.

How much, how much think of it like this, at the beginning of creation, before God had formed things and filled them, how much was lacking?

How much was lacking in the void?

And you'd say, like, I probably couldn't count that high.

What is lacking cannot be counted.

And so he sees this is the state of things.

It is formless and it is void.

And God has set things crooked and empty.

What is lacking cannot be counted.

You can't prove a negative.

And then he continues on, and like God, as he in fact, as Solomon in fact explains to us in the Proverbs, God sets about to address this issue of formlessness and void by wisdom.

In the beginning, wisdom was there.

And it is by wisdom that God made the heavens and the earth.

So, of course, Solomon, recognizing the formlessness and void, he applies himself to wisdom.

But here are his initial conclusions about wisdom.

In verse 18, it says, For in much wisdom is much vexation.

And he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

In much wisdom, well, wisdom is how we understand things by applying wisdom to them.

In much wisdom is much vexation, confusion.

We don't say vexation much.

We should, it's cool.

In Gladiator, when Walking Phoenix says, I'm vexed, I'm very vexed.

When I was like 13 years old, I saw that and thought, that's a cool way to say that.

Still think that.

In much wisdom, in when you're applying your greatest understanding, when you get to the limits of it, what you find is I can't there's paradoxes and confusion here.

Well, maybe it's because I don't know enough.

You know, it's it's because we have this hope right now, where if we just get enough a big enough data set, if we think of data sets in the trillions, then what will be able to emerge is a final theory of everything.

If we get the right, the big enough data set with the right model, then we'll we'll be able to interpret it.

And finally there will there will be enough.

But he's saying that as knowledge increases, you know what increases with it?

Sorrow.

Vexation, sorrow, confusion, and despair.

These are the limits of wisdom.

But remember where we are.

You have to keep remembering where we are, because Solomon treats us as he writes this as though we've read what has come before it.

Where are we when we're drawing these conclusions?

We're under the sun.

And that's what time is like, right?

Time is this paradox.

There's always this remainder.

It can't be.

You can't finally pin it down without having some data over here that doesn't make sense with the rest of the model.

And that's like it's what time is like.

You know, it time is a time is a flat circle.

A lot of references this morning, which is hard not to do with Ecclesiastes.

But time is a flat circle.

That's um from True Detect.

But it's uh it was originally made famous by Nietzsche, who initially makes this claim.

And and uh time in scriptures is always circular, it's cyclical.

And of course it is, because it is, you know, days, seasons, I just keep cycling and erasing, cycling and erasing.

Now, what happens if we took a circle like that and we tried to add a straight line to it?

Let's imagine we took a circle and we drew a straight line across the dead middle of the circle.

And then we'd say, okay, see, now we've got some structure here in the circle, with this straight line across the middle of the circle.

Now all we have to figure out what to do is we'll just relate that straight line, that structure across the circle.

If we're able to just relate that to the circumference of the circle, then we'll then we'll have a unifying theory.

And we'll know how the structure relates to the circumference.

All right, how could we do that?

Well, let's see if they divide into one another.

You know?

What if we like took the circumference and we divided it by the diameter?

What do you get when you do that?

Pi.

And that number goes on forever.

It's a remainder.

It's a you see how this is built into the fabric.

This is what it's like out here.

That's what time is like.

The Sabbath is like that.

It's this remainder.

Six makes sense.

Wouldn't it make perfect sense if you took radiuses and they laid out six times around the circumference of a circle?

They don't.

So you have this seventh.

There's there's this limit of your wisdom.

And you, okay, well, maybe we could find the smart enough person who can recite it far enough out.

Or if we get it a fast a better and faster computer, it's not, it's it doesn't end.

It doesn't end.

What do we call that number?

What do we call numbers like pi?

Irrational.

Irrational numbers.

Huh.

I didn't know we'd discover.

What's more rational than math?

And then there are certain numbers, numbers, the nerve of them, that are irrational.

These are the this is the limits of wisdom.

The limits of wisdom.

You can see it's related to time.

So he turns to wisdom, and what does he discover?

Vexation.

God turns to wisdom, he creates the world.

Solomon under the sun turns to wisdom and he discovers vexation.

Ecclesiastes 2, 1, he says, so he starts this other project when he discovers the vexation of wisdom.

And the next project is exactly, it's a Genesis 1 type of project.

He says, I'll build a world.

And that's what he does.

And of course he does.

He's a person.

This is what we're meant to do.

We are in the image of our Creator God.

We're meant to build worlds in the very way that our Father did.

And so in Ecclesiastes 2 1, he said, in my he says, I said in my heart, Come now, I will test you with pleasure.

Enjoy yourself.

But behold, this also was vanity.

He says, of laughter, it's madness.

He says, of pleasure, it's useless.

Wine and folly, he tests.

He's looking for something good for the children of men to do in their days under the sun, their few days.

He builds great works, vineyards, and houses, and gardens, and parks, and forests, and pools.

He like God, he has people, he has slaves, and his slaves have have children in his home.

He has people.

He has uh uh herds and flocks and silver and gold, and he has cupbearers that bring him wine, and he has singers, male singers and female singers.

The full octave range that humans can hear.

I got a singer for that.

Says Solomon.

This is not sin.

It's not sin what Solomon is doing.

And this is where the translation of vanity leads us astray.

Because you might, here's the way that you might think of this is yes, I it was a vain pursuit for him to try and create a world which reflected his glory back to himself.

And so you can think, okay, I've tr I've learned the trick.

I won't commit myself so fully to producing such glorious things.

Because that's that's it will become like prideful.

That could inflate my pride.

That's not what's happening here.

What Solomon is doing is good.

It was right for him, the king over Israel, to make it beautiful and glorious.

In Kings it said, everybody, it when Solomon was ruling, everybody ate and drank and was joyful.

That's a good king.

He made it like that.

This was the right thing for Solomon to do.

It is right for you to build worlds that are good and wonderful and glorious.

You you buy a new home, you get in a new apartment, and you look and you say, you know, maybe I could paint that wall here, and I could add some wallpaper, and I'll, you know, we'll redo the bathroom and put this tile in, and we'll and it that's not, that's that's exactly right.

That's a good thing that you should be doing.

And Solomon is not sinning here.

This is not an exploration of sin.

Solomon is wise and God-fearing.

He knows that there is no life there.

Don't you see this conclusion is worse than that?

You can he's saying you can't what I'm saying is you can't get out of it by thinking that this was vain.

Vain in the way that we use it.

And thinking, like, well, I'll approach things, but I won't be so vain in doing it.

That's not what's happening here.

It's worse than that.

It's vapor.

All the way down.

It's vapor.

It will just go away.

Not not grasp.

There's no control in it.

It doesn't last.

It doesn't satisfy.

It it just stokes a longing.

And at the end of it, what is left?

There's nothing left at the end of it.

This is what I'm saying is this is this is a worse conclusion than him standing back and saying, oh, I just did it wrong.

I was just vain when I did that.

What I should have done is approached it with humility.

No, this is not, this is not a moral tale like that.

We're at the limits of wisdom here with Solomon.

This is him standing back and saying, that that was good stuff I did.

And it was useless.

It amounts to nothing.

It's almost hard for us to believe.

Part of why I want to do this is I want to go through this text, especially at the stage of life that many of us are at.

It's a building stage.

Much is being added.

And we can be drunk on that.

We have to see what does the what are the limits of the real wisdom?

How can we make a real assessment of this?

Well, his conclusion of this, he goes into wisdom again, and he said, Then I saw that there is more gain in wisdom than in folly.

As there is more gain in light than in darkness.

This is verses 13 and 14.

There's more gain in wisdom and in folly, as there's more gain in light than in darkness.

Okay, that's good.

Wisdom is better than folly.

He discovers this.

The book of Proverbs exists.

It's real.

And it's better to do that than to have folly.

The wise person has eyes in his head.

The fool walks in darkness.

And yet I perceived that the same event happens to all of them.

The wise person doesn't add a day to his life.

The foolish person dies just like the wise person.

They both just go away.

Why?

Because it's vapor.

It didn't feel like vapor.

It felt pretty solid.

It's vapor.

Under the sun, it's vapor.

The game ends the same for both.

We all die.

Everyone will die, be wiped away, erased, not remembered.

You will die, and you will not be remembered.

Camus, embrace it, he says.

Albert, embrace it like Sisyphus.

There's a liberty in this.

Don't you see it?

If there's no meaning in anything, then you make your own meaning.

This is not Solomon's conclusion.

Solomon in 217 says, So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind.

I hated life, he says.

Trying to make wind go where you want it to go.

In A Confession by Tolstoy, he says this, and I think he is better than Albert Camus.

This is a long quote, it's worth it.

Involuntarily, it appeared to me that there, somewhere, was someone who amused himself by watching how I lived for 30 or 40 years.

Learning, developing, maturing in body and mind, and how, having with matured mental powers reached the summit of life from which it all lay before me, I stood on that summit like an arch fool, seeing clearly that there is nothing in life, and that there has been and will be nothing.

And he was amused.

But whether that someone laughing at me existed or not, I was none the better off.

I could give no reasonable meaning to any single action or to my whole life.

I was only surprised that I could have avoided understanding this from the very beginning.

It has been so long known to all.

Today or tomorrow sickness and death will come, and they had come already to those I love or to me.

Nothing will remain but stench and worms.

Sooner or later my affairs, whatever they may be, will be forgotten, and I shall not exist.

Then why go on making any effort?

How can man fail to see this?

And how go on living?

That is what is surprising.

One can only live while one is intoxicated with life.

As soon as one is sober, it is impossible not to see that it is all a mere fraud and a stupid fraud.

That is precisely what it is.

There is nothing either amusing or witty about it.

It is simply cruel and stupid.

I think Tolstoy gets Solomon.

And then, with no segue, this book is so weird.

Verses 24 and 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?

It's like this bolt of lightning out of a cloud.

Where did it even come from?

It didn't feel like he did any of the work to reason himself there.

How did he earn such a statement?

And think of it compared to the statement that he had previously made.

It is an evil work that God has given the children of men to be busy with in their toil.

God, from the hand of God, we are able to eat and drink and find enjoyment in our toil.

This also I saw is from the hand of God.

There's something above the sun.

The mist.

When God leads his people out of Israel, how does he make himself manifest to them?

Yeah, he's a glory cloud.

Hebel.

He's vapor.

But he can control the vapor.

There's someone who is lord of time.

There's someone outside the story who is lord of the vapor.

He can turn it.

He can make it do whatever he wants it to do.

He is in complete and absolute control over it.

There is one who is outside the story, who's above the sun, who made the sun.

The day didn't, the world didn't start when the sun was created.

The world started three days before that.

And there was someone there even before that.

And there's someone who will be there even after that.

But it breaks into the story.

And it offers us joy.

So what do you do?

How do you relate to this feudal life?

This is just the beginning of a glimmer that He will show us.

Well, for now, 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.

Not going to take any questions today, because there's a place, there's exactly the place where this sermon needs to end.

This sermon needs to end with eating and drinking and finding enjoyment that comes directly from the hand of God.

It's the only place the sermon can end.

In Matthew 26, verse 26.

Matthew 26:26

Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it, broke it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat.

This is my body.

And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them and said, Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

I tell you, you will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.

So on the night before he was betrayed, Christ Jesus, who is the Lord incarnate, took the bread and he broke it, and he said, This is my body which is broken for you.

Take and eat.

And he took the cup and he said, This is the cup of my blood in the new covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

And he offers us and he says, Come, take, eat, find enjoyment.

Now we can do that because his blood is poured out for the forgiveness of our sins.

We are atoned in his sight.

He would lay his life down in death, and it would look like the confirmation of all the futility that we had known, but then he would take his life up again.

And he calls us, come, take, eat.

You'll do this again in my father's kingdom, which will be an eternal kingdom.

You are called in by him to eternal life.

That's not under the sun.

There will be no sun.

Because we will be, we will have the light of the glory of God that will be our Son.

Jesus Christ is the resolution.

He is the one who breaks in like a lightning bolt from outside the story and draws us into the eternity that the pain that we feel in recognizing the futility calls out for.

So come.

To all of you who've been baptized, confess Christ Jesus as Lord, take, eat, find enjoyment in your toil.

There is someone who makes meaning of it all.

It is Christ Jesus.

Let's pray.

Holy Father, we pray that you would show us your wisdom in your Son.

Lord, that we might see the absolute necessity of Him coming from outside the story to us, joining us under the sun, that He might grab us by the hand out of this futility into your glorious kingdom.

Lord, we pray that we might participate in that by faith.

How could we participate in it any other way?

But we must just receive this by faith, Lord.

That way we might have a portion of that joy that you promise us in the future, that it we might be able to participate in it even now by your Holy Spirit, in the toil that we are in now.

This also I saw is from the hand of the Lord.

Lord, we praise you.

That us feudal creatures you would call into your eternal glory by the great cost of your Son.

Pray that you might be glorified in it.

In Jesus' name, Amen.