Vanity of vanities. Says the preacher. Vanity of vanities. All is vanity. And so begins the book of Ecclesiastes. It begins with the statement that everything in life is hollow and lacks any meaning or purpose.
That might seem like a bleak picture, and were it not for the grace of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ it would be. Apart from Jesus, this world is filled with hollow and shallow things, that if disconnected from the God who gives them and creates them, they would are exactly that – they are hollow. They are vain. They are meaningless.
Our Old Testament lesson for today is from the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes. While the book doesn't specifically say who the author is, it is widely assumed that the book was written by King Solomon.
If you will remember, Solomon became king after his father David. When Solomon took over the throne the Lord came to him and promised to give to him anything that he would ask for. Solomon could have asked for great wealth or long life or the defeat of his enemies but instead of all of these things he asked God to give to him wisdom. God promised to give Solomon wisdom that surpassed that of any who had ever lived because his request was pleasing to God, God also granted to him those other things as well. God made Solomon exceedingly wealthy and powerful in addition to granting him wisdom. The bible record the story of the queen who traveled a great distance to see Solomon because she had heard rumors of his great wealth and the beauty of Jerusalem. As she was preparing to leave she commented that his wealth was even greater and Jerusalem more beautiful than what she had heard.
During his lifetime, Solomon had been greatly blessed by God – the legend of his wealth and his notoriety can attest to that. He had great wealth and wisdom and power. By earthly standards Solomon was someone to look up to. And while he is renowned for his wisdom, and while his request for wisdom from God is notable, the life that was chosen by Solomon was less than notable. Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, was no different from the rest of us. Solomon, just like you and me, was plagued by old-fashioned-same-as-everyone-else unfaithfulness and sin.
In the first 2 chapters of Ecclesiastes, Solomon outlines the details of his life. Solomon tells us that he kept from himself nothing that he desired. He indulged in food and drink, he built for himself nice homes and planted them with lush gardens, he surrounded himself with male and female slaves, he had 700 wives and 300 concubines, anything that he might desire he had. Yet after achieving all of this and after indulging himself with all of this, he concluded that all of these things were no more than a striving after the wind.
Having found no satisfaction in pleasure, he next devoted himself to hard work and to toil. In his hard work and labor he became famous and made a name for himself. He fame and renown was widespread. Yet in spite of his notoriety, he discovered that this too was hollow. He describes it also as vanity.
Finally he set his sights on wisdom. He devoted himself to the pursuit of wisdom and the application of wisdom. He saw that wisdom was better than foolishness, but still even wisdom was meaningless and vain because in the end, both the wise man and the foolish man die. It did not matter, for all of the things that this world has to offer, that Solomon devoted himself to possessing and achieving, in the end, they are all alike, they are all meaningless and vain.
The irony with all of this is that the world that God made is not meaningless. If you read the Genesis account of the creation, after every day of that very first week God stopped, looked at what he had made and he commented “it is good.” God did not make his creation to be meaningless. He did not make work to be a burden or toilsome. He did not make life on this world to be vain and pointless. God made his creation to be good.
The preacher of our text is commenting on the reality of living in a sinful and fallen world; that is, living in a world that has changed from the way that God made it. When God made this world our work was to be a joy. Our toil under the sun was designed to make us rejoice and be glad and fulfilled. It is only due to sin that lives in us and that lives in the world that our work becomes meaningless.
Solomon worked hard in his life. He achieved many things. Israel became a great nation under his direction. But Solomon was a sinful man. He was lead astray by his pagan wives. God had commanded that Israelites not marry these pagan women because he knew that their false gods would tempt his people to wander from the truth. This is exactly what Solomon did. He began to participate in the worship of these false gods. He constructed holy places and temples for these false gods .Solomon, in spite of his great wisdom and understanding fell prey to foolishness and he became yet another victim of our fallen sinful human nature.
Taking note of Solomon's error provides a warning for us – sometimes Christians believe that if they obtain wisdom, if they have lots of discernment and spiritual insight, that will keep them from wandering from the faith. Solomon was the wisest man that ever lived – if wisdom was going to save anyone it should have been him, yet he was no more wise than any one of us – he was just as foolhardy a sinner as we are. Faithfulness to God has nothing to do with how wise we are and how much we know and how diligently we study. Faithfulness to God has everything to do with recognizing our inherent meaninglessness, our weakness and foolishness because of our sin, confessing that sin and receiving from God his forgiveness and salvation.
While it might sound strange to say it, Our faithfulness is God's work. He leads us to repent of our sin. He leads us to his word and sacraments where we receive forgiveness for our sin. He leads us to the salvation that he bought and paid for when he died for our sins on the cross.
Solomon was exactly right as he wrote the words of our text – everything that we might pursue under the sun that is separate from Jesus is meaningless. It earns us temporary fame and fortune but in the end we still die.
This is essentially the point of the parable that Jesus tells in our Gospel reading, the Parable of The rich fool. Jesus tells the story of a man who was very prosperous. His land had produced a large crop for him and so in his pride and in his greed he decided that he would simply store up his wealth and keep it for himself. Then one night God came to the man and said to him, “You fool, this night your soul is required of you and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” And Jesus concludes. “So is the one who lays up treasures in heaven for himself and is not rich toward God.“ The wealth and prosperity that people spend their days chasing after doesn't do you a bit of good when you are standing before the judgment seat of God.
While all of these things, apart from faith are meaningless, that is not to say that they have no value. This is not to say that our lives, the work that we do, the places we go, the lives we enjoy are worthless. On the contrary! They have great worth and great value. However we must understand them and make use of them according to their God given design and purpose.
Again, like we have already said, we are sinners. Everything that we say and do, every minute of every day, we live with the fact that we are sinners, that our sin follows us around and ruins everything that we do or that we try to do. We live in the this world that God made and we just want to use it and enjoy it; but because of that sin, our use of God creation and our enjoyment of it is always damaged. So we keep that in mind. We begin every day with that thought – we confess our sin to God every morning.
And what is so beautiful is that every morning God grants to us forgiveness. Every morning God says to us your sins are forgiven. You are set free from your failures. God remembers the sacrifice of Jesus for us on the cross. God remembers that Jesus bled and died in our place on the cross. God remembers that Jesus paid the full price for our sins and so God says to us your sins have been forgiven. We are set free to live our day in joy that has been bought and paid for by Jesus.
If all you had was a job that you went to every day, earned a pay, check that was divvied up between your bills, your taxes and your other expenses, you would work hard, by the sweat of your brow come home at the end of the day. Suppose you did that day in and day out for your entire working career and as you were preparing to retire you would look back at the end of your life and wonder what the point of it all had been. If you worked just for the sake of your paycheck you might conclude that it all had been meaningless.
Now on the flip side, suppose you are a redeemed child of God. He has set you aside to spend eternity in heaven with him in paradise, where you will eat at his heavenly banquet table, where you will sleep in a room prepared for you in his mansion, where you will live as a prince or princess in his heavenly kingdom. This is your guaranteed inheritance that he has given to you. In the meantime, as you are waiting to receive your promised inheritance, he calls you to work for him in his kingdom here on earth. He prepares for you work to be done and asks you to do this work in his name and for his honor. You are a part of his kingdom working for his purpose with his .
Suddenly your work is no longer mundane. It is no longer purposeless or vanity or meaningless. It is a joy to work. It is a joy to serve. It is a joy to wake up every morning go and do the things that God has given to be done. Because God has called us to it and because God works through us to care for those who need to be cared for.
As Solomon looked back at his life, he saw that where he had wandered from God he found nothing worthwhile. It was frustrating for him and lacked meaning and purpose. When he came to his senses he realized the gift that God had given to him in calling him to his work.
“ There is nothing better for a person,” wrote Solomon, “than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, [25] for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?”
As we live our lives in faith, God provides for us the work to be done and rewards us with joy while we do it.
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