Does Anything Matter?

ECCLESIASTES 1:1-11
1 The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem:
2 “Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”...

3 What do people gain from all their labors
at which they toil under the sun?
4 Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever.
5 The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises. ...

6 The wind blows to the south
and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
ever returning on its course.
7 All streams flow into the sea,
yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
there they return again....

8 All things are wearisome,
more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
nor the ear its fill of hearing.
9 What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun. ...

10 Is there anything of which one can say,
“Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.
11 No one remembers the former generations,
and even those yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow them.

LEADER: This is the Word of the Lord


PEOPLE: THANKS BE TO GOD

Does Anything Matter?

Ecclesiastes is great example of how many parts of the Bible are exceedingly relevant and wise, but
NOT SIMPLE AND STRAIGHTFORWARD

WISDOM BOOKS:

• Job
• Song of Songs
• Proverbs
• Ecclesiastes

WHO WROTE THIS ANYWAY?

Qoheleth

SOLOMON BY THE NUMBERS:

• 40
• 3000 / 1005 / 3
• 7 / 13
• 700 / 300

CLIFF'S NOTES VERSION OF THE BOOK:

1. HUMAN LIFE is MEANINGLESS
(Ecc 1:4; Ja 4:13-14)

"HEBEL"

• meaningless
• emptiness
• vanity
• mist / vapor
• [ 37 times ]

ECCLESIASTES 1:4
"Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever."

JAMES 4:13-14
"Now listen, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.' Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes."

2. EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD is MEANINGLESS
(Ecc 1:5-7)
(Rom 8:20-22)

5 The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.
6 The wind blows to the south
and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
ever returning on its course.
7 All streams flow into the sea,
yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
there they return again.

ROMANS 8:20-22
20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.

3. This is true of life UNDER THE SUN
(Ecc 1:3,11)

"UNDER THE SUN"

• [ 28 times ]
• life w/o connection to God
• life w/o revelation from God
• "the world"

ECCLESIASTES 1:3
"What do people gain from all their labors
at which they toil under the sun?"

ECCLESIASTES 1:11
"No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them."

WHAT ABOUT JESUS?

In Ecclesiastes, Christ is revealed not so much by His presence, but rather by His ABSENCE

KEEP THIS IN MIND...

Ecclesiastes is not an old book, it is an
ETERNAL BOOK

"Our cultural value systems today are among the least spiritual ever offered to a human community. Basically, the meaning of life has been reduced to an unconscious operating mode: get a job that will enable us to buy what we want, pass through life with a minimum of pain and discomfort. The fulfillment offered to us is the fulfillment of being good and intelligent consumers, effective seekers of pleasure. We will have to repress many of our desires in order to eventually satisfy a few of them. Yet, even if we are free to fulfill our desires, we still lack something to fulfill and give meaning to our lives."
-Kabir Helminski

“I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among those in the second half of life -- that is to say, over 35 -- there has NOT BEEN ONE whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given their followers, and none of them has really been healed who did not regain his religious outlook.”
― C.G. Jung

“I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life. They seek position, marriage, reputation, outward success of money, and remain unhappy and neurotic even when they have attained what they were seeking. Such people are usually confined within too narrow a spiritual horizon. Their life has not sufficient content, sufficient meaning. If they are enabled to develop into more spacious personalities, the neurosis generally disappears.”
― C.G. Jung

MATTHEW 11:28-30
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

Does Anything Matter?