“Everything is Hevel (Ecclesiastes 1)” | 9/11/22
Ecclesiastes 1 | 9/11/22 | Will DuVal
“Meaningless, meaningless; everything is meaningless!”
Quite a sermon introduction, huh?! If you can’t beat it, STEAL it! Thus begins the famous sermon that we now know as the book of Ecclesiastes.
If you ARE visiting, you’re joining us at a perfect time, as we are launching our new fall sermon series - in Ecclesiastes - this morning. Maybe that’s why you’re here; I had encouraged our regular West Hillians that this would be an ideal time to invite friends to come check us out, at the start of a new series, and especially friends who may be skeptical of Christianity. If that’s you this morning, Ecclesiastes is definitely the book for you! OR perhaps you’re just looking for a solid, biblical church committed to expository preaching, preaching the FULL counsel of God, even the TOUGH books of Scripture, either way, we’re really glad you’re here.
We’ve got a lot to get to this morning: we’ll spend roughly the FIRST half of the sermon considering the context and main idea of Ecclesiastes (that first big bullet point in your bulletin) - hopefully the video was helpful in that regard as well - and then we’ll spend the SECOND half unpacking the REST of chapter 1 - and its 6 additional sub-points that support the main idea. So let’s read, pray, and dive in.
Would you stand with me… Ecc ch1 (hear the word of the Lord):
“The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
2 Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
3 What does man gain by all the toil
at which he toils under the sun?
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.
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.
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.
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.
12 I the Preacher have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. 13 And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. 14 I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.
-
15 What is crooked cannot be made straight,
and what is lacking cannot be counted.
16 I said in my heart, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” 17 And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind.
18 For in much wisdom is much vexation,
and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.”
This is the word of the Lord… Let’s pray…
We begin with 6 points of CONTEXT, to help situate us in the text:
1) First, GENRE. What TYPE of book is Ecclesiastes? As the video informed us, it’s one of the OT’s “wisdom” books. They introduced us to 3 - Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job - most scholars include two more - Psalms and Song of Solomon - but the purpose of ALL wisdom literature, as they said, is to answer the question “How do we live well in this world?”
2) Second, AUTHOR. Who wrote Ecclesiastes? Well, as the video explained, we actually hear TWO voices in the book - who they called “the critic” and “the author”. Now, the author only shows up in 7 verses in all of Ecclesiastes: ch1, v1, and then the final 6 verses to close out the book. The OTHER 215 verses - there are just 4,537 words in the whole book; that means every one of my sermons this fall will probably be just a bit longer than the actual sermon that IS the book of Ecclesiastes; you could sit down and read the whole thing in just half an hour; btw, how many of y’all DID that this week, like I exhorted you to? (Joke: apparently “pastoral authority is meaningless too!”) OK, if you DIDN’T, please do that this COMING week!
We don’t know who the “author” is, but we DO know who the “critic” is. Our ESV translation of v1 - the “Preacher” - is a much better rendering of the Hebrew word there qoheleth. “These are the words of qoheleth.” It’s a participle of the verb meaning ‘to gather or assemble’, so qoheleth is “the gatherer”. And because the word is used primarily in Scripture to refer to gathering people for the purpose of worshiping God, hence the translation: the Preacher.
3) Which leads us to our THIRD contextual question, about the TITLE- Why “Ecclesiastes”? Well, ekklesia is the Greek work for church - a “gathering”, an “assembly” of the people, for corporate worship. So ‘ecclesiastes’ is just the Greek translation of the Hebrew title ‘qoheleth’ here. (Ryken, 16)
But returning to the question of authorship for a moment: we know more than just Qoheleth’s TITLE; we know who this “Preacher” IS, don’t we - who is he? [It’s KING SOLOMON, right?] v1 identified him as “the son of David, king in Jerusalem.” David had a few sons, but the only one who ever reigned in Jerusalem was Solomon. Moreover, the Preacher is gonna claim next week in ch2 that he has more WEALTH and WISDOM than any other king before him. We know from 1 Kings 4:30 & 20:23 - that was Solomon
Now, some think the “author” who recorded his sermon was a contemporary of the king, capturing Solomon’s final words from his deathbed in 931 BC, which would make Ecclesiastes “his memoir - an autobiographical account of what Solomon learned from his futile attempt to live without God,” after being led astray into idolatry by his 700 foreign wives, before finally returning to Yahweh in his old age. (Ryken, 17) Others speculate that a much later scribe simply attributed these sayings to Solomon; the important thing to recognize is that the DETERMINATIVE author here is the HOLY SPIRIT. Because “All Scripture is God-breathed”; GOD is the one, ultimately, who wants to speak to us through all of Ecclesiastes.
4) So, fourthly, and most importantly, what’s his MESSAGE? What does God want to SAY to us, through this difficult book? The main point of ch1, your first big fill-in-the-blank in your bulletin, the driving thesis of the entire BOOK; you ready for it? All we have to do is re-read v2 again, but with a little Hebrew left in this time:
“Hevel of hevels, says the Preacher;
Hevel of hevels. EVERYTHING is hevel.”
That’s his main idea; I sort of ruined the big reveal with my sermon title: “Everything is hevel.”
But that sort of begs the question: what in the world is “HEVEL”?! The video defined it well, but to restate it - because understanding this term is the KEY to understanding the entire book of Ecclesiastes: “Taken literally, the Hebrew word hevel refers to a breath, a vapor, a puff of smoke, the cloud of steam that comes from hot breath on a frosty morning. Life is like that. It is elusive, enigmatic. Life is so insubstantial that when we try to get our hands on it, it slips right through our fingers. Life is also transitory. It disappears as suddenly as it comes… We are here today and gone tomorrow. Thus the Bible compares our mortal existence to a vapor. Our days vanish like a “mere breath” (Ps 39:5; 78:33; Job 7:7).” James 4:14 asks, “What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.” (Ryken, 18-19)
So we discover “hevel” has two important connotations: it is ethereal, and it’s also ephemeral. It is intangible, and it’s also impermanent. It’s both fickle and fleeting.
There’s not a perfect English word to capture both meanings. How many of your translations say, “Vanity”? (ESV, NASB, KJV folks) - that’s pretty good; life is “hollow”, it’s not solid. That’s why we opened with “The Solid Rock” this morning - “On CHRIST, the solid rock I stand; all other ground is [WHAT]…?” It’s HEVEL!
Some of your Bibles have, “Meaningless”? (the NIV and NLT; the CEV translates, “Nonsense”) - that’s LESS good; it’s not that life has NO meaning, makes NO sense; it’s just hard to GRASP it.
But the best translation of ALL here, believe it or not, is The MESSAGE! Everybody loves to hate on the Message translation - “it’s so far from the original text” - well HERE, in at least this ONE case, the Message actually gets closest of all; it translates:
““Smoke, smoke, nothing but smoke. It’s all going up in smoke.”
Hence, our series subtitle! Everything’s passing away; it’s all for naught.
But here’s the really key ASTERISK to that, that qualifies Solomon’s main idea: “Everything is hevel **DOT-DOT-DOT “UNDER THE SUN”.
The word “hevel” occurs 38x in Ecclesiastes (5 times in v2 alone! Btw: in biblical Hebrew, there were two ways grammatically of emphasizing a point; by using a superlative or by repetition. Superlative: “the Holy of Holies” - i.e., the holiest of all places. Or Repetition: God is “Holy, Holy, Holy” - i.e., He’s REALLY holy! Notice how Solomon employs BOTH devices here - “Hevel of hevels; hevel of hevels; it’s all HEVEL!”).
But speaking of repetition, second only to “hevel”, is his repetition of the phrase “under the sun” - he repeats it 30x throughout the book.
So the more PRECISE main idea, then, is THIS: “Everything is hevel UNDER THE SUN”. Which brings us to contextual point #5…
5) His APPROACH. How is Solomon going to lead us to his conclusion, his main idea that “everything under the sun is hevel”? Answer: he’s gonna share his TESTIMONY. Now, if you’ve ever shared your testimony - your personal story of how God brought you to saving faith in Jesus - with someone else, and I hope you have - there were a few weeks in our study through Acts this past year where I specifically encouraged you to share your testimony - but if you’ve ever gotten any instruction on HOW to share your testimony, you’ve probably been told not to focus too much on your life BEFORE Christ - you don’t want to over-dramatize it; make sure they know you were a sinner who was lost, in need of Jesus - but try and focus more on how God MET you in your need, and how much of a difference Jesus has made in your life SINCE you were spiritually reborn.
Well, listen: Solomon never took an evangelism class. Because he’s gonna give us 11 ½ chapters of “these are all the things I TRIED to find fulfillment in, I TRIED to attach meaning to, I TRIED to fill that God-shaped-void in my heart with”, before the author finally steps in at the very end to give us just 5 verses on what Solomon eventually learned, after ALL his wandering, after 11 ½ chapters of hevel. I think about the end of “The Shawshank Redemption”, where Red explains that it took Andy Dufresne 20 years to dig his tunnel and escape the prison, how he “crawled to freedom through five hundred yards of [*poop*] smelling foulness.” Well, imagine the entire 2 hour movie was just Andy tunneling through the poop, with 30 seconds at the end where he emerges triumphantly FREE, dancing in the rain, and that’s essentially the book of Ecclesiastes. Hard movie to watch… hard book to read (you can pray for me this fall - I’m kind of like a “method preacher”; I try and embody the tone and the world of the book I’m preaching; so it’s gonna be hard not to get too nihilistic and depressed this fall)... but MAN, that last sermon in the series though! - those 30 seconds of triumph in the rain - it’s gonna feel UNBELIEVABLE after 11 ½ chapters of hevel, of POOP!
6) And that’s our final word of context: genre, author, title, message, approach, and MOTIVATION. Why study Ecclesiastes at all, if 98% of it is so depressing? Let me offer you 4 quick reasons:
#1 - it’s God-breathed. “All Scripture is God-breathed.” If God sent you an email tomorrow, would you read it? ALL of it? Even the tough-to-read parts? Of course you would.
#2 - it’s HONEST. It’s RAW. I like how commentator Phillip Ryken puts it: “More than any [other book of] the Bible, Ecclesiastes captures the futility and frustration of [living in] a fallen world… Think of Ecclesiastes as the only book of the Bible written on a Monday morning.” (14) Be honest: is your life just one big weekend party? Is every day a vacation in the tropics for you? No? Then Ecclesiastes is for YOU.
#3 - it’s a much-needed WARNING. Ecclesiastes is like one giant “DO NOT ENTER” sign, marking every other path you and I could possibly take in life, other than Christ. Many folks think there are a lot of ways to get to God. You’ve got your path; I’ve got mine. Jesus said, “I am the way - not “A” way; I’m THE way - and NO ONE comes to the Father but through me”. Well, that didn’t stop Solomon from trying just about every other path out there, before he finally returned the right one! And here’s Solomon, at the end of his life, trying to help US, by warning us: “Don’t make the same mistakes I made; let me SAVE you from all the hevel; the emptiness that pleasure, and wealth, and romance, and work, and wisdom, and even RELIGION will leave in your heart, if you try and make it your ULTIMATE thing. Only GOD can fill that void. And that’s the fourth and most important reason to study Ecclesiastes:
#4 - because ultimately, it’s gonna point us to JESUS. The great John Wesley remarked, after he’d preached through Ecclesiastes: “Never before had I so clear a sight… of the grand truth, that there is no happiness outside of [Christ]” (Ryken, 21).
Alright, that’s the 30,000 foot view, the forest. Now let’s dive down and examine some trees…
You should already have point #1 filled in: that Everything is hevel. (By the way, I also intended that as a sort of fun, depressing play on the Legos theme song - **“Everything is Awesome!”; Solomon says, “What world do YOU live in; No - everything is HEVEL!”) But we covered vv1 & 2 already; vv12-15 just reiterate the point later (again, repeated for emphasis):
“I the Preacher have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. 14 I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is [hevel] and a striving after wind.”
Boy, that’s another great word-picture for “hevel” - “chasing the wind”. Friends: if you’re trying to build your life on anything other than JESUS, you might as well go outside right now with a big butterfly net and try to catch the wind. (Akin, 14) Cuz you’re gonna be equally unsuccessful and disappointed. It’s all sinking sand. It’s hevel. EVERYTHING - in THIS life, under THIS sun - is hevel.
And to PROVE it, Solomon’s gonna walk us through 6 popular foundations that people ATTEMPT to build on, and demonstrate the hevel-ness, the hollowness, of each:
*First sub-point in your bulletin, now: WORK is hevel.
V3: “What does man gain by all the toil
at which he toils… under the sun?” - there it is again.
Solomon’s rhetorical question here might remind you of ANOTHER one, from another wise preacher, JESUS, who asked, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but forfeit his soul?” (Mk 8:36). In other words, “If you’re toiling for THIS life, in THIS world, “under the sun”, storing up treasures where moths and rust destroy,” Jesus says, “you can gain it ALL, but what’s it gonna be worth on your DEATH-bed, like old King SOLOMON here?!” You can’t take it WITH you! “No”, Jesus says, store up your treasures in HEAVEN, where there is LASTING, eternal reward; toil for the life to COME.
Because everything HERE, “under the sun”, is like building a sand castle just a few feet up from the shore line at low tide. My kids always wanna build sand castles on vacation. You spend HOURS on this amazing creation, and where is it the next morning when you return to the beach?
Solomon says: “That’s your work.”
All those planes you helped design and build for Boeing - you engineers: they’re all gonna rust and end up in a junkyard one day.
All those KIDS you help teach - you teachers: they’re gonna forget it all one day; they’ll be sitting there at the bar, playing trivia with their friends, trying to remember what you taught them all the way back in the 4th grade, and they WON’T remember; sorry!
All those patients whose LIVES you saved - you doctors and nurses: they’re all gonna DIE ANYWAY, it’ll just be a few years later now.
It’s HEVEL! You ever feel like you toil, and toil, and toil, but it never seems to make a DIFFERENCE? I know for my wife, it’s the laundry. Can I get an “Amen” from my stay-at-home moms in the house?! Nearly every DAY, she’s cleaning, and drying, and folding, and shelving, and by the time it finally gets back ON the shelf, there’s a whole ‘nother LOAD that needs to be washed! So she starts all over again. It’s HEVEL!
For me, it’s the DISHES. No matter how many times you wash ‘em, and dry ‘em, and put ‘em away, those dirty dishes just keep coming, don’t they?
The bills just keep coming.
The grass grows back the minute you mow it.
My facial hair - I HATE shaving…
I hate FLOSSING most of all; if I could pay $1,000 for some kind of operation that would save me from EVER having to floss again… But the plaque always comes BACK!
It’s HEVEL. This is the HAMSTER WHEEL that we call “life under the sun”. Always running, running, running… but it never seems to get you anywhere. It’s HEVEL (some of you, by the end of this series, are gonna start using “hevel” as a replacement curse word, a more biblical expletive, like: “Man, that’s HEVEL-ed up!”)
v4: “A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.”
The church father Jerome asked: “What’s more vain than this: that the earth, which was made for humans, stays - but humans themselves, the lords of the earth, suddenly dissolve into dust” (quoted in Akin, 10).
Solomon says, “You like to THINK that you’re making a contribution; leaving your MARK on the world”; but he says, “LONG after your planes have rusted, after your patients have died, the ONLY thing that’s still gonna be here is the EARTH.”
*So naturally, that’s where he takes us NEXT, #2 - to nature; maybe CREATION is full of meaning and purpose.
[**buzzer sound: EHHHH**] Sorry. Wrong again. It’s hevel too. V5:
“The sun goes UP, it comes DOWN,
And it accomplishes absolutely NOTHING! What’s the point?! What’s the TELOS, the purpose. Maybe you’ve heard of the “teleological argument” for the existence of God - that there MUST be a God, because the world is designed so PURPOSEFULLY.
Solomon says, “REALLY?!” Cuz…
I’m watching the wind blow to the south
then to the north;
around and around it goes…
And it never ARRIVES, ANYWHERE!
If you’re going on a trip, you plug your destination into Google maps, and you follow an intentional course, to arrive at an end goal, a TELOS.
Solomon says, “the WIND doesn’t do that; the SUN doesn’t do that; it ends up back in the same place every single morning! The WATERS don’t do that…
V7: “All streams run to the sea,
but the sea isn’t even full;” – it’s like trying to pour yourself a glass of water, and not realizing there’s a giant hole in the bottom of the cup, so you never accomplish ANYTHING!
It’s pointless. Purpose-less. It’s Hevel.
If Solomon were writing today, with a more modern understanding of creation, he might ask: “What’s the point of vestigial organs, like your APPENDIX?! All it’s good for is bursting and trying to KILL you?
What’s the point of WISDOM teeth?! They grow in, just to get REMOVED?
What’s the point of MOSQUITOES? And TICKS? HORSEFLIES? Anyone here gonna argue they make the world a better place?
No - it’s HEVEL! Creation is hevel.
And “if the sun and wind and mighty rivers have NOTHING to show for all their constant labor (for millennia now!), then what hope could we possibly have of EVER truly accomplishing anything in life? It makes Solomon tired just thinking about it. So he summarizes in v8: “All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it.”” (Ryken, 27)
Well, what about KNOWLEDGE, possibility #3 - after all, the book of Proverbs tells us that “An intelligent heart acquires knowledge” (18:15), that it’s “pleasant to the soul” (2:10), “better than choice gold” (8:10).
Well Solomon, who had more gold than ANYONE, not surprisingly, has a bit more cynical of a take. Knowledge may be better than gold, but to Solomon, the “gold standard” isn’t exactly setting the bar very high. Cuz it’s all passing away! Like gold, you can’t take knowledge WITH you, when you go; in fact, God has a funny way of REMINDING us of this in our old age, doesn’t he? The old memory isn’t what it used to be, for some of you; live long enough, and you won’t remember a THING! It’s HEVEL!
And just like gold, if knowledge is your ultimate thing, then you’ll never have enough of it; v8: “the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing.”
Curiosity - a love for learning - is a great thing. Just like ALL these hevels - work is great, nature is great, curiosity is great. But an IDOL is when a great thing becomes your ULTIMATE thing. And when it becomes your ultimate thing - if your deepest desire in life is a thirst for knowledge, then you will ALWAYS be thirsty. Cuz there will ALWAYS be more to know, to see, to hear, to learn. In the same way that the waters don’t fill up the oceans, all the knowledge in the world won’t fill up, won’t SATISFY your curiosity.
The same holds true, #4 - for PROGRESS. Vv9-10:
“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”?”
Now, some of you want to INTERRUPT here and argue, “YES! Of COURSE there is!” How about the iPhone, for example. I still remember when they came out, 15 years ago, thinking, “Now THIS, is new! It’s REVOLUTIONARY!”
Solomon says, “...Eh.” It’s essentially just a pocket-sized computer… which was really just a fancier stored-program machine… which was just a slightly more evolved Electronic Numerical Integrator… and you can trace it back through the Differential Analyzer… the Analytical Engine… the Jacquard loom… all the way back to the ABACUS of the 2nd millennium BC! Truly, there is nothing “NEW” under the sun; just slightly updated versions of the “same old, same old” over long periods of time.
And especially in today’s ever-progressing world, just as soon as something “new” comes along, you can wait about 15 minutes and be sure that something even new-ER will be right behind it to REPLACE it! By the time you get your shiny new iPhone 14 Pro out of the box, they’ve already rolled out the iPhone 14 Pro MAX, and made yours obsolete. You get “new” for about 15 minutes these days, before it becomes old. Remember when FACEBOOK was new and exciting?!
Gen Z is like “What’s Facebook?” I’ll tell you what it is, kids: it’s HEVEL. Facebook is hevel.
You know what ELSE is hevel? #5 - Your Legacy is hevel.
Any of you remember that song, “Legacy”, by Nichole Nordeman - “I want to leave a legacy; how will they remember me?”
Solomon says, “Let me stop you right there, Nichole, and answer you: THEY WON’T!” Your song topped the Christian charts not even 20 years old, and already a majority of the church-world has forgotten it. NO ONE will remember Nichole Nordeman 100 years from now, and she’s quasi-famous.
How about Queen Elizabeth - her death is all over the news right now; she was pretty famous. History will definitely remember her, for a while. But 100 years from now, most people will not. She’ll be just another trivia question that ¾ of the bar will get WRONG.
Friends: what does that say about you and me? Any of y’all know your great, great grandmother’s name? 100 years from now, my great great grandkids can try and Google for me - or whatever “new” search engine that replaces Google, on the chips they’ll install directly in kids’ brains by then - someone could “GLORP” for “Will DuVal”, and I would show up in 0 of the results. “There will be no remembrance of me… of you… of the former things”
Are you starting to feel DEPRESSED yet? Like you’re desperately searching… **grasping for MEANING and PURPOSE in this fleeting existence we call “life”, but it’s like trying to catch the wind? Like trying to grab smoke?
But Solomon saves his BEST candidate for last. #6 - WISDOM. If ANYTHING under the sun can offer us real meaning, lasting hope, it’s GOT to be wisdom. Scripture says, “Blessed is the one who finds wisdom” (Prov 3:13), “whatever you get, get wisdom” (Prov 4:7); even Solomon himself, in ch8 of Ecclesiastes, will admit: “Who is like the wise? A man's wisdom makes his face to shine” (8:1).
Wisdom is a good thing. A VERY good thing. But once again, it’s not the ULTIMATE thing. V16:
““I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” 17 And I applied my heart to know wisdom… and I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind. 18 For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.”
Any of you check the news this morning, before you came to church? How’d it make you feel? Did it cheer you right up? You KNEW more; did it make you HAPPIER? It’s like they say, isn’t it: “No news is good news”.
But even WISDOM - wisdom is a specific kind of knowledge; it’s knowing how to live life WELL here, under the sun. Solomon says, “If being wise means you’re really good at navigating THIS world, this broken, upside-down world of ours where sin and chaos reign, then more wisdom really just means more VEXATION. More trouble, more distress. That’s why Corrie Ten Boom said, “Look around at the world and you’ll be distressed; look within and you’ll be depressed; but look to JESUS, and be at rest.”
You may have noticed I skipped over just one verse, in our exposition. V15: “What is crooked cannot be made straight,
and what is lacking cannot be counted.”
In Solomon’s day, that was TRUE. But 9 ½ centuries later, God would finally send His Promised Messiah, who Isaiah had prophesied would “go before you, and MAKE the crooked places STRAIGHT” (45:2).
The One who - while we “LACKED” the ability to atone for our own sins - “was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities… the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (53:5-6) Jesus PAID it all, for YOU, IF you trust in Him today for the forgiveness of your sins. Don’t wait another minute! All other ground is sinking sand.
It’s HEVEL. Don’t waste your life trying to build on smoke. Learn from Solomon’s example. Learn from MINE.
The hevel of Having the Perfect Family (Collapse)...
The hevel of Hating God…
The hevel of Hedonism…
of Achievement and Perfectionism…
of People-Pleasing… People-Pushing…
of Hopeless Romanticism…
of Intellectualism… of Deconstruction and Atheism…
of Marriage as a Cure-all… of Ministry as a Savior…
and beneath all of it, the hevel of trying to be the Lord of my own Life.
Hevel of hevels. It’s ALL hevel… under the SUN. Life under the SUN - S-U-N - is hevel. But friends, life under the SON - S-O-N - Jesus! - is hope-filled. (Skip Heitzig, “Ecclesiastes” sermon).
Life under the SUN is empty; but life under the SON is eternally life-giving.