Tied to the Treadmill of Life - Ecclesiastes 1:2-7

Forgot to sign the new utterance teaching that class or writing that computer code or washing those dishes or mowing the lawn.

The smallest thing to the most signification things are equally designed by our sovereign God and his purposes that we can't even begin to fathom. So in the meantime, whatever your hand finds you doing with all your mind, to the glory of God. What you do give it everything you God times. We have tasks or responsibilities that seem futile and unimportant. King Solomon had the same experience. He looked at others and his own life and summarized what he saw with the word vanity.

In fact, to use the word vanity 37 times in Ecclesiastes and five times in just the second verse. This is wisdom for the heart. In today's lesson Stephen Devi takes us to Ecclesiastes chapter 1 verses two through seven. He warns us that if we keep our gaze down here on earth. Life is called to live differently and you'll learn how next you might get a little discouraged with life.

Like the way I read about recently, a pastor wrote an article about a mother who was who. I walked in on her five-year-old son.

He was in his bedroom getting ready and he was crying and she said what's the matter, and he said I could tie my shoes now all by myself. She said that's wonderful. You're growing up so big. But why are you crying he said, because now I have to do this every day for the rest of my forget is already feeling the pain of growing up tedium of life responsibilities like tying your shoes maybe picking up your toys while you're at it is picked up on that sentence that you get in at five years a day is already a little disappointed having one more thing to do, that all or is the life that it just an ever-growing list of tedious chores responsibilities repetitions tickets going to grow up and even ask questions. The human race is been asking their harder questions, he'll find the words for them like what I did. It really matters in life is doing the lasts. Am I condemned to simply repeat the cycle duties and responsibilities all over again in my be tied down to a treadmill called life. Five-year-olds are the only ones bothered with that idea 15-year-olds are asking 35-year-olds 50-year-olds 85-year-olds the same as anything in life really have any meaning beyond the endless cycle RR are we all like gerbils trapped in a cage on that little wheel spinning and running and racing getting nowhere. As an old man who wrote the same questions down in his journal got evidently want us to be exposed to his questions. His answers and learn from them. That included his journal on the record of Scripture is called the book of Ecclesiastes.

We just began our exposition through this book. Solomon is just beginning to ask some hard questions sound a lot like that five-year-old kid to go there you have it already were. Chapter 1 where you pick it up at first to where we read vanity of vanities, says the preacher, vanity of vanities, all is vanity now.

Anytime you find one word repeated five times in the same verse the audit notice. You might even want to circle, five times the question is what is vanity mean and I gotta tell you that it took a long time and a lot of reading to discover this is one of the hardest words in the Hebrew Bible to translate to get to the bottom, and still pretty close. Here I am writing, but he goes back to a little challenge for us as English readers. In the fourth century, a man by the name of Jerome translated the Hebrew Bible, much of it in the Latin using the word you could pronounce exotic tasks or Bonita is you can see the word vanity in it.

It's just simply been transliterated vanity in English translations for centuries since the problem is only English reader hears the word vanity. We think of someone who is vain weaving of someone who is stuck on themselves, their opinion there alive. Everything about themselves that they can't they can't wait to pose that selfie there so they is the idea by that famous song you know the lyrics you're so vain.

I'll bet anything. This sermon is about a week to the little bit to make it work in the church. Through this we better get to the right meaning of the word� Word that you look it up in your Hebrew lexicon. Discover the word primarily means vapor or red secondary meanings can refer to fruitless nests or transient Solomon is gonna use a word that's actually elastic is going to describe using this word, futility and frustration and senselessness and desperation. So when you see the word vanity you need to understand that it's no one's is going to be determined by the context, you know use it in a variety of contexts in his private journal is it's really a lot like being with finds. We have a lot of word like that right. It takes the context of what we mean by we sort a lot like that. You guys I say I love my wife and you also might say I love football. Hopefully it's not the same level of commitment you say I love climbing I love shopping, scrapbooking, and I love I love reading I love coffee now so it didn't notice here. The Solomon is putting a lot of emotion into this expression stating it as a superlative and is this is the highest degree possible notice vanity vanity vanities right thing is so to the highest degree life is vanity 20 means of the highest degree by the way you run out of superlatives in your Bible reading, you've read holy of holies that's a really really really holy place. It affected us to the highest degree, the holiest point he is king.

That means he's really is the highest king. There is not fire him. He is the Lord Warwick.

That is, he is the Lord above all other so-called lords. There is a higher degree than his sovereign Lord.

The idea so Solomon, in his opening line is essentially claiming that everything on earth. Everything in life to the highest degree can be described as an entirely meaningless, totally hopeless, absolutely futile is opening line.

Are we depressed yet there's a workshop we can take evidently coming meet Solomon next to deliver this question. He should arrive that people are still asking if this day. To this day. Verse three what does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun. The word gain is a commercial term at the business word. It means profit to my right in the margin. The word profit. It refers to something left over after you've invested all that toil what you had to show for what he's asking, why do we have to show for all our hard work under the sun. There's a clue. Note that under the sun. It's another favorite expression of Solomon's right under the sun 29 times in his private journal. In fact Ecclesiastes is the only book in the Bible uses that expression under the sun. And that's a clue. By the way I did in our last study last Lord's day. Solomon eventually will take us chapters later to remember our creator God.

K will get there because we bring that into into the first chapter is essentially saying that without God who reigns over the side who were on the client says chariots and determines the orbits of planets and stars.

He is personally named, without creator God.

Your perspective is still under the sun. Now that's all you get. If this is all that matters. That kind of perspective.

Solomon is going to show us is going to lead us to ultimate desperation and frustration and fear.

One popular journal not too long ago asked the question to its subscribers and got a lot of answers back on 31 of why are we here, why are we here I drink you want by taxi driver.

He just got it right to the chase.

He he answered where here just live and die in the meantime, I do some fishing take my girl out pay taxes, do a little reading. Then get ready to drop dead is a delightful man.

I'm sure he goes on to say life is a big thing to face the only cure says the world's illness is nuclear war.

Wipe everything out and start over, be afraid to get this taxi frankly I on my way to dad dying in the meantime, the little fishing pay a few text my girl who's telling the truth about life under the sun. We just would be simple to put in more philosophical terminology that may be little plight just sparing Leo Tolstoy. He was an amazing author wrote one piece and and that was considered to the states claim one of the greatest works in the literature is nominated numerous times about price of literature in the early 1900. He writes in his later years, and I quote the age of 50 brought me to the verge of suicide question without any answer to which one cannot believe is this what will come of what I am doing today or tomorrow. What will come of my whole life. Why should I live why wish for anything, do anything. Is there any meaning in my life that death does not.

This this is all life is. I tie my shoes over and over and over again to get on it right now Solomon in his bestseller says it that way when we get profit we really gain through this life of toil under this was the answer is nothing, we gain nothing rhetorical question. That's the answer. The end of empty and frustrated and then it's over is not getting us to the answer yet chapters later on just bringing that perspective back in here what is going to do is put her nose in the truth of this in anything he's going to look the bus up to take us on a field trip to say I want to show you how small and futile and unimportant. We are by looking around us at the world of nature to get on the bus. Notice verse for a generation goes in a generation calms but if you noticed your remains forever and Solomon is saying if you notice how the earth seems to remain as steady as ever. But we do nothing but calm go and payroll taxes will officiate God efficient upon the deer just seems that keep on rotating doesn't seem right. Essentially what he saying is that we can get out of the funeral procession.

It's quite a procession since the fall of man that the hundred and 58,904 people died, on average, every single day that's at the rate of two per second. And guess what the earth does he keeps revolving it doesn't seem to be bothered. If it stays in its orbit 24 seven, 365 days a year and it doesn't seem to care that last year. Last year, as it may just one revolution around the sun 55 million people die and we made absolutely no impact on earth fact or something else or spend a few minutes on the thing that really studying this a lot longer than I probably probably should, but I think he's hinting at something else or this terra firma.

The surface dirt this land stays and people come and go, they come and they're gone and the dirt remains the earth remains as it has always been verse five, the sun rises and the sun goes down and hastens to the place where it rises fact that you change that you make a dent in and I think is also applying as interesting as he uses the verb for hastens literally pants can't wait can't wait to get up in the morning you can't wait to be on his course as if to imply, by contrast, the older we get, the harder it gets to get and get moving and get on our cars but not the sun rose this morning at 6:40 AM and it's going to set tonight at 7:41 PM. Set your clock by steady doesn't Mrs. be.

You have nothing to do with it. Even you can set your watch by seemingly unchanging and it cars it doesn't seem to be winding down. We are so I want to see something Ellen Sullivan says. Notice verse six the wind blows to the south goes around the north around and around goes the wind and audit circuits. The wind returns given influence over that, by the way, I think this is fascinating because before Solomon could ever observe global circulation of the atmosphere before he could ever scientifically prove the existence of the great jetstream birth run in circles exactly what he's writing here Solomon by the way, in this journal is fascinated with the wind mean several different things as we work our way through it. He observes that mankind really doesn't change the direction of main idea it keeps on blowing it keeps on circulating. He's even referred to the wind and he dies in the song of Solomon. Only one time in the proper six times, but in this particular journal for the win for teen time as he sat on his rooftop spouse must've just observe the effects of it in and have great help big help masses how powerful. Even the wind was and how little we see the earth keeps spinning. The sun keeps shining the wind keeps below is a look at the rivers. Verse seven all streams run to the sea. The sea is not full. That is incapacitated to the place with a streams flow. There they flow together again is the sense of cycle and repetition reference. By the way to streams or rivers is a reference to winter stream that is are taking their water to the sea in the next year they can have an abundance in the can do it all over again and finally the verbs in this paragraph.

These participles communicate the idea of perpetual motion. It's it it it it it just keeps moving the earth keeps abiding. The sun keeps rising Sun keeps setting, the wind keeps circling and blowing the rivers keep on flowing.

Solomon started generations keep coming and generations.

Keep going.

People keep on dying.

It's is tied to a male, and we can't escape we mix a little different after all the toil when it's a little profit.

Remember, beloved Solomon is writing from the perspective of someone stuck in their perspective under this he's telling the truth about the tedium of a life down here if your perspective never gets liberated by the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus. What do he entered this fall. World he got on the treadmill of humanity. He toil under the sun to get splinters in his carpenters fingers and calluses in his hands. He grew weary and hungry and thirsty. His schedule was governed by sunrise and sunset, but he entered he joined this race so that he can Demos from a broken life that is bound up in and focus only on life under the sun that there's more. By the way. In the meantime, he also shows us the value of work and integrity and excellence and how even the smallest acts of kindness like giving a topical water to somebody and in need can bring out the glory of his character and his kindness and his his grace here is the issue in a three out of the setting of forces we gather altogether without God, life is pointless with God. Life has purpose.

Without God, life is a series of accidents with God. Life is a series of appointments you are here for such a time as this even is Rogerian. The tedium of those charms can be given to him as an offering of praise for assigning you and you do those assignments wanting to bring him glory that was what Paul says to the Corinthian believers. He's is therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast in movable. That is, stay the course where you been assigned, always abounding in the work of the Lord, you know that means it means always keeping at work assigned you by the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in what they is an empty is futile life under the sun can seem like vanity of vanities, brief, meaningless, futile tell you when you give your life to Jesus Christ, who is King of Kings and Lord of lords that Jesus, God the son will prove it. For he will stand in that boat, and he will say to the wind and he will save the waves � literally � he still saw our perspective of this is gonna say there's nothing really become to him to become a new creature you're heading toward a new earth and new heaven. Because of this new covenant and a new spirit new heart.

Don't stay stuck your perspective is an indication of your trust in the King of Kings and Lord of lords so that repetition of life around those cycles of life that toil of life whatever God designed the new. Whether it's tying your shoes all by yourself are teaching that class or fixing that machine or writing that computer code or washing those dishes or mowing that lawn.

The smallest things to the most significant things are equally designed by our sovereign God and his purposes that we can't even begin to fathom.

So in the meantime, give everything you've got to whatever God is given.

Whatever your hand finds to do it with all your mind, to the glory of God. Whatever you do give it everything you've got, because it is been given to you by God only say one more thing.

Think of it this way for us. The newer believers in Christ do we belong to the one who was above the sun and controls everything below the on life as a sacred purpose as you take your vanity of vanities, what is it that's probably what seems tedious, repetitive, futile, do it, to the glory of God.

And when you do it that way you are taking your vanity of vanities are moving into the holy of becomes the presence of God and to the surrender of your Lord over here without him.

It's just vanity vanity. When I surrender to him.

I move it over into the holy without God, you're running in circles with God invented a race. It isn't just a cycle is linear is ultimately you're not. You're not. You're not a prisoner to that trip your own children is ultimately taking