Ecclesiastes 1

God, who will bring every work into judgment, has something important to say to us in Ecclesiastes. He brings us His message about the human condition through a narrator. This man is called here the son of David, and a King in Jerusalem. The title he especially uses for himself throughout this great work of wisdom is translated “the Preacher.” He is calling together God's worshiping assembly to pass on these words of wisdom.

The preacher has this to say to us, as he begins his message: “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” The world seems so permanent to us, and it is the only reality we have ever known with our senses, yet the preacher wants us to know that a man's life here is very temporary. It is like a vapor that comes and goes. Someone can work diligently all his days, but his time will come and go. What gain does he get from all that work?

Though the earth itself continues, generations come and go upon it, and they are soon forgotten. Every stream on the planet seems to be teaching us a lesson. Where did all this water come from? Where is it all going? Who can keep track of it? Are the waters from the mountains attempting to fill up the seas below? Why do they never succeed? There is no doubt that someone can observe a mountain stream and have many beautiful contemplations. Yet this story of an effort that never seems to reach its goal will also be told to the heart that is willing to see the truth. The sun and the wind will tell the same story. It is a lesson that we need to hear. A baby is born, and time may seem to stop for a moment. Soon an old man dies, and in just a few generations he is utterly forgotten.

Not only is life like a vapor that comes and goes, there is a weariness to it. Every part of us is continually working at something and never seeming to be finished with that work until we go to the grave. The eye insists on taking in all kinds of seeing, but it is never satisfied. The ear does the same with hearing. The weariness of it all is not only because of the continuous work of all our members. When someone considers the sweep of history as we know it, it would seem that at root that there is nothing new under the sun.

This last observation is hard to agree with. In a world of technological advance it would seem that progress is everywhere. Yet a man may die with the latest invention in his hand, and death will still be death as it has been for thousands of years. Ambition, loyalty, deception, despair, accomplishment, disgrace, and many other significant feelings and experiences have been around for thousands of years. They made life what it was for people back in their day, people who have long since been forgotten.

Many live this life of vapor without much contemplation. They learn enough to work, they labor in their calling until they cannot toil anymore, and eventually they pass away. Through it all they have not cared to consider life too closely. Others have been made to think about life very deeply. Is this contemplation the answer to the dilemma of meaningless? The preacher tells us that it is not.

He has been a thinker over the course of his long life, and he has found vaporous futility in all his own pursuits. God has given thinkers the business of thinking. It has an unhappy side to it that needs to be admitted. The laborer and the philosopher both will discover, each in his own way that this world is fatally broken, and each will feel it in his own life. We try to make crooked things straight, and we cannot quite get there. We attempt to invent things, but the list of what is lacking is an expanding sea of wants that cannot be counted, and with every advance we seem to have discovered or created two new difficulties. We appreciate the new pill for what it can do, but we had not entirely counted on all the side effects. It is the same, if not worse, in the world of ideas. The man who increases knowledge will increase sorrow.

This is the human condition as we know it in a very broken world. The Apostle Paul says in Romans 8:20 that “the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope.” For Paul, and for Solomon, the honest observation of our current futility coexists with the solid expectation of a better day that is coming. This day has been revealed to us in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

It is wisdom for us to see life under the sun as it really is, and to learn how to live well in a world that God has subjected to futility. Our hope in the midst of brokenness is secured by the fact that our Redeemer has entered this world of despair to bring about a new creation, even at the cost of His own life. He can make the crooked straight. There is nothing lacking in His righteousness and His love.