The Quest for Purpose
Ecclesiastes 1:1-11
“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for,” writes Fyodor Dostoyevsky in Brothers Karmazov. Ralph Waldo Emerson writes, “The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” While the Dalai Lama on the other hand would say, “The purpose of our lives is to be happy.” How would you answer that question, “What is the point of life? Have you ever answered that question for yourself? Why are you here? Why do you exist?
One of my preaching professors in seminary always challenged us to make sure our sermons passed the three am test. The three am test is simple. If someone woke you up at 3 am on a Sunday morning and asks you, “What is the point of sermon on Sunday?” you should be able to give them a clear, succinct answer. If you can’t provide it at 3 am, your hearers probably won’t be able to tell you at 12:30pm. So, could you solve the 3 am test for your life? If I woke you up at 3 am and ask you, “What is the purpose of life?” would you be able to provide a clear, succinct answer.
We begin our study in one of the most challenging books of the Old Testament, Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes has been called a baffling book, alien among the other books of the Old Testament, the most problematic book of the whole Hebrew Bible, and an embarrassment to the Old Testament.[1] And yet, the message of Ecclesiastes is as timely today as when it was written. This book helps us take an honest and realistic look at life and helps you find meaning in the complexity and confusion of life, as the writer puts it, “under the sun.”
We are going to begin by asking four questions of these opening 11 verses. The first,
What is the Point?
Let us start by asking what is the point of studying Ecclesiastes. Philip Ryken gives us 5 reasons why it is valuable to study Ecclesiastes which I believe are especially timely in our current climate. First, the book is honest about the troubles of life[2]. We will see how the Fall of humanity in Genesis 3 frustrates and distorts every aspect of life. Secondly, it asks the biggest and hardest questions that people still have today.[3] Why am I so unhappy? Does God really care about me? Why is there so much pain and suffering and injustice in the world? Questions, I am sure many of you are asking, and if not you, someone in your life will need help thinking through these questions. Thirdly, a study in Ecclesiastes helps us learn what will happen to us if we choose what the world tries to offer instead of what God has to give.[4] There are two ways to live for God or for this world. In our increasing secular age, more and more people are choosing to accept the philosophy of this world and more and more people are becoming frustrated and disillusioned. The writer of Ecclesiastes had more money, more pleasure and more wisdom that anyone else in the world and will show chasing after those things will lead to emptiness and futility. Valuable lessons to learn.
The last two reasons Ryken offers us is that this book will help you take your eyes off yourself and help you live and worship the one true God. I would add that this book not only teaches you how to live but prepares you to die. This is the one inescapable reality. None of us can escape death. The rich and the poor, the famous and the unknown, the old and the young, all will eventually die. And it is the reality of death, that we are trained to ignore and brush aside, but it is the only reality that can shape the life we have on earth. I would argue that the best way to live is to be prepared for what happens in death. A proper understanding of death will shape how you live.
This is the necessary journey we all must take to answer the 3 am test. What is the point of life? What is the purpose of living? Ecclesiastes wants to help you answer the question, but it will not always come easy. It is going to take some work, and I pray that you will work and pray with me so that you and the those who you love are prepared to die and thus prepared to live.
Now, if the Preacher would be aroused at 3 am and asked, “What is the point of it all?” He would provide a gut punch in verse 2, “Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” The New International Version, the translation where I first read the Bible, has it as, “Meaningless! Meaningless,” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” Life is vanity; meaningless; futile. The Hebrew word used there is hebel. The word appears 38 times in the book (and only 32 times in the rest of the Old Testament) appearing both at the beginning 1:2 and at the end 12:8 implying this word is central to understanding the theme. It has a range of meaning in the Old Testament. It has been translated worthless/false, no purpose or useless, nothing/empty, fleeting, or breath/vapor.[5] A common way of describing this word is that it is like smoke.
Imagine sitting around a campfire. The sweet smell of wood burning, the orange glow of the fire, with the smoke rising above the flames. The smoke is there for a moment and it is gone. Each strand looks similar yet different. If you try to reach out and grab it, it is gone. It is fleeting and temporary and cannot be grasped. In essence, life is like smoke. We cannot fully and finally figure out all the events in it. Things happen that we cannot fully explain. Life is temporary. James 4:13–16,
[13] Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—[14] yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. [15] Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” [16] As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.”
Have we not learned that lesson over the last 3 months? We do not know what will happen tomorrow. Life is a mist. It is a vapor. Smoke. It appears for a little time and then vanishes. James says that when we live as if we know what tomorrow holds we are living in arrogance and pride. This boasting is evil for it removes God for our lives. We must hold on to those four little words, “If the Lord wills,” or if four is too many, we can shorten it to two, “Lord willing.”
Life is fleeting and a mere breath or vapor. It is mere smoke, because of sin. Romans 8:20, “For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” The world was subjected to “hevel” because the world’s first humans tried to live against God’s words. Adam and Eve took of the fruit and ate and God was good and just kept his promise, “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day you eat of it you will surely die.” The world is not subjected to futility so that we would find it empty and meaningless if we remove God from our lives. The world offers joy and pleasure and happiness, but the world cannot fulfill its promise. The world, apart from God, leads to frustration and confusion and vanity. God has done this so that you would see the emptiness of sin and hope for something more.
Friends, God does not want you to live meaningless and frustrated lives. He wants you to see the meaningless and the frustration that comes from life in a fallen world and have you look beyond this life to life that is everlasting, full of pleasure and joy, and will never bring frustration or tears. Let the Preacher of Ecclesiastes help us penetrate our longings and our frustration so that we may truly find a life that is satisfying. A life that has a point and a destination and goal. A life worth living.
Who is the Preacher?
There has been much scholarly debate on who wrote Ecclesiastes. The book begins, “The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.” Most scholars believe that Ecclesiastes was written by king Solomon. He was a son of David and a king in Jerusalem which fits Solomon. The book begins and ends in third person while the bulk is a long sermon given in a first-person by the Preacher himself. The word for Preacher is translated, “Qohelet.” It is based on the meaning to assemble as a Preacher (normally) does in gathering people to teach. The Qohelet teaches to the assembly which I believe makes the translation of Preacher most effective.
We cannot be one hundred percent certain if the Preacher is King Solomon. Although he is the most logical choice. He was the direct son of David who served as king in Jerusalem. He is known for great wisdom, great wealth, a builder of a great empire, a pursuer of all kinds of pleasure and one who definitely lived life chasing after the wind. 1 Kings 4:32–34
[32] He also spoke 3,000 proverbs, and his songs were 1,005. [33] He spoke of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of the wall. He spoke also of beasts, and of birds, and of reptiles, and of fish. [34] And people of all nations came to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and from all the kings of the earth, who had heard of his wisdom.
As Solomon began his reign, the Lord appeared to him in a dream and asked what he wanted and Solomon replied, “[9] Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil, for who is able to govern this your great people?” (1 Kings 3:9).
Ecclesiastes was either written by King Solomon or someone who took on the persona of King Solomon. It was common practice in the ancient world for a writer to take on the personality of a figure to teach from his perspective. Although it could have been someone writing from a Solomon perspective, the predominant view throughout church history and the most natural reading of the text is that Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes. Regardless of what human author wrote it, since the text does not make it, we know that it was written by the hand of God. Ecclesiastes 12:11, “The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one Shepherd.” The wise words of Ecclesiastes were given to us by the one Shepherd to make us wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus and is profitable in teaching, reproving, correcting and training us in righteousness so that we may be complete and equipped for every good work in this life.
What does it Profit?
The next question comes directly from the text and it is the key question that the Preacher wants to answer for us. Ecclesiastes 1:3
“[3] What does man gain by all the toil
at which he toils under the sun?”
What does man gain by all his labor? Or what does he profit? The word “gain” is the Hebrew word, “yitron,” which is a commercial term used for profit gained in business. It is the question that all of us want to answer between Monday and Friday, “Is this worth it?”
We all want to see the fruit of our labor. And yet, at the end of our lives, we return as we entered, “with nothing.” The Preacher here wants us to see the same thing Paul does in his first letter to young Timothy, he writes in1 Timothy 6:6–7, “[6] But godliness with contentment is great gain, [7] for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world.” As aptly John Piper says, “There are no U-haul trailers behind hearses.”
The Preacher in Ecclesiastes answers the question, “What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?” by pointing to the brevity and short-lived remembrance of our lives. Ecclesiastes 1:4–6
[4] A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.
[5] The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
and hastens to the place where it rises.
[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.
We would say, “a generation comes and a generation goes,” the Preacher on the other hand, says, “a generation goes, and a generation comes,” highlighting our soon departure from this life. We like to focus on that which is coming rather than on us leaving, but such is life. We are called to look to the earth. The sun rises and sets, the wind blows north and south, and wind circles the earth. We labor for 80-90 years and we have not changed the rising and setting of sun, the oceans boundaries haven’t changed, and the mountains are still standing. Jerome said, “What is more vain than this vanity: that the earth, which was made for humans, stays—but humans themselves, the lords of the earth, suddenly dissolve into the dust?[6]
This is not meant to depress us, but it is reality and an important one. We spend so much of our time working and laboring for things that we will not be able to take with us. We long for meaning and satisfaction from the things of this world, but those things were never meant to give us meaning and worth. All the things of this world are meant to be enjoyed and serve as a window to see the kindness of God. Rather than rejoice in our daily labors, we experience weariness. Hear how the Preacher describes this, Ecclesiastes 1:7–8,
[7] All streams run to the sea,
but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
there they flow again.
[8] All things are full of weariness;
a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing.
The Jordan River continuously flows into the Dead Sea and the Dead Sea never overflows. This is life. It is monotonous. We do the same thing over and over again. It is tiring. I have to cut my grass every week. Last week I cut my grass and it was looking beautiful, only to have a storm come in that night and cause a bunch of leaves to cover it. I was walking into the house with my son and said, “Can you believe the leaves are all over the yard? I just cut it yesterday.” He wisely replies, “Next time we will ask the tornado to come when it is convenient for you.” We clean the den and the kids mess it up. We do the dishes and they get dirty again. Our children need to eat three times a day, “Didn’t I just feed you?”
We all experience this monotony and there is something in us that desires something new. And yet, we know fundamentally all is the same. There may be new forms of technology that help us communicate, but communication is the same. There may be new forms of transportation, but transportation hasn’t changed. The Preacher writes, Ecclesiastes 1:9–10,
[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.
[10] Is there a thing of which it is said,
“See, this is new”?
It has been already
in the ages before us.
Every age believes it is ushering in something new, but it has been already in the ages before us.
There is a part of us that wants to challenge that claim. We think, “really? Nothing is new?” David Gibson in his book, Living Life Backwards, helps us understand the Preachers point,
A new government is still a government, and we’re all familiar with those. A revolution heralds a new era, and we’ve seen it all before. A new baby is still a baby, and the world has always been full of them. Even landing on the moon still a form of adventure and exploration that has been with us since humans have walked on the earth. Indeed, space travel is a good example of precisely the Preacher’s point. He doesn’t mean no “new” things are ever invented in the world, for clearly that is not true. He means there is nothing new we can ever discover to break the cycle and so satisfy us. When we conquer our solar system, humanity will then try to conquer the galaxy beyond it. We never have our fill, and that basic human impulse that led us to space in the first place “has been already in the ages before us.[7]”
We are constantly trying to find something new because we struggle with monotony. Endless hours of strolling on social media, hours trying to find a new show to watch, or new vacation destinations to help us escape, all are helping to reveal our longing for something new.
I think it also reveals how we get bored with the good gifts that the Lord gives us. Ecclesiastes wants to teach us to slow down and appreciate what is in front of us. Maybe our struggle with monotony reveals more about us than our world. I love how G.K. Chesterton puts it,
It might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.
What does a man profit from all his toil? The goal is not profit in stuff, but pleasure and purpose in God. We work for the Lord and for his glory. We can rejoice in the monotony of dishes and the cutting of the grass and the filing of paperwork because we are living beyond this life.
What is your Perspective?
How do we get there? How can we rejoice in the present? The only way we can rejoice in the present is with a proper perspective of the future. The Preacher writes,
[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. (Ecclesiastes 1:11)
We will not be remembered. We do not know the stories of our great grandparents. We may not even know the names. We barely remember the things in our own lives let alone in the lives of others. A “new” documentary came out on Michael Jordan’s last season, and one of my children asked, “Who is he?” The most famous sports figure in the world will be forgotten and so will you. We will be forgotten.
Life is a vapor. We live. We die. We are forgotten. Now this could depress us or it could awake us. Our perspective must look beyond, “life under the sun.” Is this life all that there is? The Preacher ends his book with these famous words which we must keep in our minds as we study this book, Ecclesiastes 12:13–14,
[13] The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. [14] For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.
When all is said and done, we all we stand before God and he will judge every deed, seen or unseen.
The worldly perspective is to live for life under the sun. Eat, drink, be merry for tomorrow we die. Live for pleasure and wealth and fame. Friends, we are called to live for more than life under the sun. There is a life that is to come. Ecclesiastes is meant to show us that life is frustrating if you only live under the sun. We are called to live for above the sun. Jesus makes this point in a parable in the gospel of Luke 12:15–21,
[15] And Jesus said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” [16] And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, [17] and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ [18] And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. [19] And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”’ [20] But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ [21] So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”
Are you prepared to die? Are you prepared to stand before God in judgment? Are you living for life under the sun or are you living for life above the sun? Are you laying up treasure for yourself that you can’t take with you? Or are you living rich toward God rejoicing in all the daily pleasures from his hand?
The only way you will be ready to die is if you realize that this life is meaningless without God. If you live merely with an under the sun prospective, you will not be satisfied. Friend, let the frustration and weariness of this life expose its fallenness. Let it expose your fallenness so you would look beyond this life to the one who rules over the sun. We are sinners and we will die. And yet God has given this world hope. God has promised new life in Jesus Christ. Jesus came to end futility and meaninglessness by giving us hope through his resurrection from the dead. Jesus died to pay for the sins of all who would turn from living life only under the sun to living life for God. He died to pay for our ingratitude and complaining and weariness. He died to destroy the works of the devil. He died to bring in new life. He brings new life through his resurrection from the dead. Hear this promise, 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” Jesus is the only one who makes things new. Friend, repent of your sin and trust in Christ. There is nothing new under the sun, yet everything is new in the Son. Do you want a new life? It’s only in Christ.
What would you say if I wake you up at 3 am and to ask you, “What is the purpose of life?” For my friend, one day, you will stand before God and he will ask you, “What was the purpose of your life?” And my hope is that you will say, with me and all the saints who have found life meaningless, that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Or you may answer the question like the Apostle Paul who said, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” Friend, you will only find true purpose in life if you are ready for death. Are you ready?
[1] Richard Belcher, Ecclesiastes: A Mentor Commentary, pg 13.
[2] Ryken, P. G. (2010). Ecclesiastes: Why everything matters (p. 14). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.
[3] Ryken, P. G. (2010). Ecclesiastes: Why everything matters (p. 14). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.
[4] Ryken, P. G. (2010). Ecclesiastes: Why everything matters (p. 14). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.
[5] Belcher, 54.
[6] Ryken, P. G. (2010). Ecclesiastes: Why everything matters (p. 26). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.
[7] Gibson, David, Living Life Backwards, 26.
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