Hospers PCA



WHAT DOES MAN GAIN?

(Ecclesiastes 1:1-11)

SUBJECT:

F.C.F:

PROPOSITION:

INTRODUCTION:

A. James Russell Lowell was an American poet and lawyer in the 1800’s. A graduate of Harvard, he is considered the most intellectual of American poets of his day. He was an abolitionist. His Christian commitment is unclear. One of his most memorable poems written to protest the US war against Mexico has found its way into our hymnbook, the poem he titled, “The Present Crisis.” It begins this way,

Once to every man and nation

Comes the moment to decide

In the strife of truth with falsehood,

For the good or evil side.

B. In truth, that “moment to decide” does not only come once, but many times. Will we follow God’s way faithfully, or will we fudge a bit, or even forsake it altogether. Young people brought up in the church inevitably come to a time of decision. “I know what my parents and grandparents and my church say, but is that really the way to happiness? There seems to be a whole lot of life out there that these church people seem to be missing. What if I tried a different way for myself?”

And when that time comes, a time that all Christian parents know is coming, because it came for them as well, we hold our breaths, say our prayers, and believe for the best.

But we have a strong ally in the Word of God. We have this book of Ecclesiastes in which the richest and most powerful and most famous man of his day, the toast of royalty from all around, chose to depart from the way of godliness and let himself go into every form of sinful, sensual pleasure. He had the wealth and the raw power and authority to do whatever he wanted. He went wildly over the top. He amassed a harem of 300 wives and 700 concubines, which are sex slaves. He indulged in whatever his eyes could see and his mind devise.

And did he find what he was looking for? No, he found the opposite. He found the very opposite. He found sheer and utter despair, a life not worth living. And that’s very odd, because most people today would kill, literally, for a chance at what Solomon had.

And he comes back from the brink, from the end of the world, having seen and done it all. And his eyes are hollow and weary, his step is heavy and faltering, his voice is only a husky hoarse whisper. He stands in the middle of the road to the end of the earth and pleads: “Don’t go! There’s nothing out there! There is no life, satisfaction, meaning, or hope.”

But we’re like the guy who continues to waste his money hoping for the big jackpot. He’s been told a thousand times, “Money can’t buy happiness!” But he lumbers on, thinking, “Maybe it can in my case. For me it will be different. I at least want to give it a try.”

C. So what is the wizened Solomon’s warning to us at the end of his life? What would make him conclude that a life of dissipation, of letting himself go, of living entirely for self is “Vanity of vanities?” What he found is that living the life of the unbeliever, living for self instead of living for your Maker, living not “coram Deo,” before the face of God, but living “under the sun,” trying to exclude God from all your deliberations and calculations, seeking to enjoy the gifts without acknowledging the Giver, he found that that kind of life produced no lasting profit.

3What does man gain by all the toil

at which he toils under the sun?

What is life like if you try to live without the knowledge of your Creator? What can we make of such an existence in which we came from nowhere, are going nowhere, and serve no ultimate purpose? What we find is that there is no ultimate basis for either meaning or morality. I’m teaching a class on ethics at the college in Sheldon. The textbook, as you might imagine, approaches ethics from a secular viewpoint. So the author, a professor of philosophy tries to dismiss the idea that religion or even God could be a competent basis for ethics, for determining right and wrong. I’m not a great philosopher, but I do know a bit about logic and reasoning and discovered that in order to dismiss God as a basis for ethics, the author had to employ no less than four logical fallacies. I pointed these out to my class. Then I asked why an obviously smart man like this would have to resort to logical errors in order to write off God? The only reason I can think of is because he must have some other motivation, other than pure logic and reasoning, intellectual honesty. And we will discover that this is the case.

D. So Solomon has conducted this experiment, the experiment of apostasy and hedonism, and has lived to tell about it. And here in the first chapter, he gives four quick reasons, fascinating reasons, why life “under the sun” is not worth living.

I. SUCH A LIFE IS AN UNENDING CYCLE.

A. Life just keeps rolling on and on with no end in sight, heading nowhere, with no conclusion or point or purpose.

4A generation goes, and a generation comes,

but the earth remains forever.

5The sun rises, and the sun goes down,

and hastens to the place where it rises.

6The wind blows to the south

and goes around to the north;

around and around goes the wind,

and on its circuits the wind returns.

Life is like the sunrise and sunset. It keeps on going and going but never goes anywhere. It’s like the wind, first it blows all the air to the south. Then it turns around and blows all the air to the north, around and around, unending. It doesn’t make you dizzy, but it does make you nauseous.

B. This is fascinating to me because last fall I taught a class on world religions. Now the authors of that textbook, with a view called “comparative religion,” believe that religion has merely evolved. There really is nothing to it. But frightened people have always grasped for answers, and so have sought comfort and explanations by inventing a spiritual realm. Religion began quite simply with animism, with people believing that the wind blew or coconuts fell because there were spirits everywhere.

This view evolved into believing that some spirits were greater than others, and these became gods. And there were many gods at this stage, all which need some devotion, a view called polytheism.

I won’t bore you with the details, but this school of thinking suggests that monotheism, the belief in only one God, the Creator of all who is supreme over all, was quite late. Of course, they will say, finally we’ve evolved to the point that we can understand everything without resorting to a pretend spiritual world, and so monotheism is being replaced by atheism. But even that is not the last stage of evolution, but cause atheism is a pretty harsh and unforgiving reality, and so atheism is now giving way to secular humanism. We are the gods we used to worship. There is nothing greater than us!

And yet the evolution of religion can never be complete, so what’s going to replace secular humanism? Because of the glowing affirmation given to animism, and especially because animism has been reinterpreted as so peaceful and especially environmentally friendly, respecting all life forms, not just humans, I think the authors of the textbook are hinting that the next stage of religious evolutionary development will be to go back to animism! Maybe we’ll start all over again.

C. I belabored this point to just to say that Judaism, because it is so clearly and stubbornly monotheistic must be quite late, according to these scholars. We can’t have the polytheistic Hinduism in India coexisting at the same time with a stridently monotheistic Hebrew religion revealed to Abraham or given by Moses. So, in their view, monotheistic Judaism must be much later than Hinduism.

What’s fascinating is that the heart of Hinduism and its cousins Jainism and Buddhism is that life is a dreary, endless cycle, much like that what we find in Ecclesiastes. For all of these Asian religions, Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism, the problem is the same: endless existence, reincarnation, this continual treadmill called “samsara,” birth, death, and reincarnation. On and on it goes. And the goal is somehow to escape it, called “moksha.” The way to salvation varies slightly between Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism, but the goal is the same: escape the continual treadmill of existence.

D. The reason I’m pointing all this out is because I think that this is what anyone would discover trying to live without God’s revelation. Hindus found the endless cycle and hated it. And Solomon complains about the same. Life is not worth living because it keeps traveling but never arrives anywhere. There is no point, goal, purpose or meaning.

4A generation goes, and a generation comes,

but the earth remains forever.

5The sun rises, and the sun goes down,

and hastens to the place where it rises.

6The wind blows to the south

and goes around to the north;

around and around goes the wind,

and on its circuits the wind returns.

II. SUCH A LIFE PROVIDES ONLY UNFULFILLED DESIRES.

A. Solomon next tells us that life “under the sun” is not worth living because it provides only unfulfilled desires. In a clever turn of words, he tells us that life “under the sun” is both empty and full.

7All streams run to the sea,

but the sea is not full;

to the place where the streams flow,

there they flow again.

8All things are full of weariness;

a man cannot utter it;

the eye is not satisfied with seeing,

nor the ear filled with hearing.

Solomon tried feasting and riches: and he was never full. He tried sexual pleasure in the shocking extreme: 300 wives and another 700 sex slaves, but it wasn’t enough. Every brook, stream, and river flows to the sea, every one! And the sea is still never full. And that’s the human heart.

It’s the law of diminishing returns. The first time you enjoy an experience is the most potent. The next time it takes more, and the pleasure is not as great. Every drug addict knows full well the law of diminishing returns. The first hit of the drug is the most intense. It always wears off, and then it takes more of the drug to get a fraction of the effect. But the drug itself, the experience it gives, the high or the dulling of pain or of memories, becomes necessary, physically and psychologically.

B. At the same time that life under the sun is never full of satisfaction, it is always full of something else: full of weariness. And whether this is due to the constant seeking and striving without ever finding fulfillment or the growing, hopeless fear that it will never be so, the result is the same: a harried, harassed, hollow fatigue. Our Lord Jesus came and specifically addressed such weariness. In Matthew 9:36 we read about his compassion for our condition: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” What people often forget in their foolish bid for freedom, by rejecting God and trying to live life “under the sun” they become like sheep without a shepherd. Jesus came to be the Good Shepherd we need. In Matthew 11:28-30 he gave this promise: “28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

III. SUCH A LIFE IS UNINSPIRING DULLNESS.

A. It’s the curse of our times: boredom. I cannot tell how many young people who have told me, “I’m bored. There’s nothing to do around here.” All of life is a whimper and a yawn.

9What has been is what will be,

and what has been done is what will be done,

and there is nothing new under the sun.

10Is there a thing of which it is said,

“See, this is new”?

It has been already

in the ages before us.

One religion born on the border of India and Nepal was clearly an offspring of Hinduism. The founder of Buddhism was a young prince who was raised in the sheltered luxury of a palace. At one point he left the palace and discovered something he had never experienced before: the reality of suffering. He saw a sick man, an old man, and a dead body. He also saw a happy monk dressed in a robe. He determined that he would find the answer to suffering.

And the answer he found was the goal of escaping suffering by escaping existence altogether. The goal was to achieve nothing, no reincarnation, no sensation, no consciousness. Simply to cease to exist altogether. I cannot think a more depressing religion than the one that seeks to achieve a kind of permanent suicide, to put oneself out of one’s own misery forever, for the greatest and most relentless reality according to this religion is suffering. Life is so dull that it is beyond all endurance.

B. One of the reasons that explains the current epidemic of boredom in young people today, in my opinion, is the constant and pounding stimulation that comes from endless video screens, video presentations, and video games. Real life cannot compete with heart-pounding, white-knuckled Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty, and Skyrim action games or the many forms of Second Life fantasy games. But real life is, well, real life, the only life we can actually live in.

C. But another reason that explains such widespread boredom is the secularization of our culture. Life is flat because life has lost all transcendent meaning or hope. So, there really is nothing new under the sun. With no God and no eternity, no meaning, purpose, goal, or ultimate justice, life is unbearably dull and flat. Is there a thing of which it is said, “This is new”? No, not really, it’s the same old dull song, second, third, millionth verse.

IV. SUCH A LIFE OFFERS ONLY UNREMEMBERED EXTINCTION.

A. Under the sun, without any purposeful intent to our existence, life is only the endless treadmill offering infinite desires that cannot be fulfilled, leading to uninspiring boredom, and then you die, and eventually, no one ever remembers you and you leave no trace whatsoever of your utterly meaningless existence. This is the utterly despairing conclusion we find in verse 11:

11There is no remembrance of former things,

nor will there be any remembrance

of later things yet to be

among those who come after.

B. Are you glad you came this evening? Let me remind you that this is not the message of the Bible. This is the only thing we can come up with if we follow the logical conclusion to the end of the road, the road that begins with trying to discover a life “under the sun,” without the foundation of the living God as our Maker. Life is completely meaningless, then you die, and even your meaningless life is forgotten, even though it wasn’t worth remembering. So if there is only life under the sun with no God and so no ultimate meaning, purpose, goal, or justice, then the Buddhists get their wish and don’t need to do a thing to achieve it. It’s lights out, but completely out, as though there never was any light nor any reason for light to shine.

CONCLUSION

Why would anyone in their right mind ever desire to chase this kind of meaningless life to its meaningless end? Why would anyone choose to believe that there is no God and no purpose? Most, I think, have not actually done what Solomon has done and worked it out to the end. They see only a shining billboard and go whizzing toward it, and then see another shining billboard, and go whizzing toward it. And after many, many miles down the road, they may begin to see that the billboards never keep their promises and are only growing more tattered and tawdry and outrageous, but they courageously step on the gas pedal and only rush further and further until the plunge off the end of the road into the yawning abyss never to return.

Some have actually worked it out, seen the depressing despair ahead, but march on. Why? Dinesh D’Sousa notes a possible reason why anyone would embrace the dull and dismal universe of the atheist by quoting famous atheist Aldous Huxley:

“I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently I assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption….For myself, as no doubt for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was…liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.” (270) D’Sousa comments:

“It is chiefly because of sex that most contemporary atheists have chosen to break with Christianity. ‘The worst feature of the Christian religion,’ Bertrand Russell wrote in Why I Am Not a Christian, ‘is its attitude toward sex.’ [Atheist Christopher] Hitchens writes that ‘the divorce between the sexual life and fear…can now at last be attempted on the sole condition that we banish all religions from the discourse.’ When an atheist gives elaborate justification for why God does not exist and why traditional morality is an illusion, he is very likely thinking of his sex organs. It may well be that if it weren’t for that single commandment against adultery, Western man would still be Christian!” (273)

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