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Exchanged Glory IV: A Time for Every Purpose
“No matter what you do, sin and death will mess it up in some way!”
"Vanity of vanities," says the Preacher, "vanity of vanities! All is vanity.”
The Hebrew word from which we get the name Abel, ‘hebel,’ appears in this verse five times and is translated ‘vanity’ or ‘vanities.’ Unfortunately, ‘vanity’ doesn’t bring across the full impact of what Solomon describes in Ecclesiastes. I think that ‘disappointment’ might do better, but Solomon’s message goes beyond even that. ‘Ungraspable’ gets about as close as any single word – it means that everything in life is outside of our reach. We can touch it and enjoy it for a time, but we can’t bring it under our control and make it our own.
I find it best to sum up all of these words with a phrase: “No matter what you do, sin and death will mess it up in some way!” After a lifetime of research, this was Solomon’s conclusion. He was frustrated with God, people, and life in general. The phrase, “All is vanity” was his way of saying, “Nothing ever works out the way I feel it should!”
Does Solomon tell us how to handle this problem? I believe He does. Ecclesiastes 3 is a marvelous revelation from the heart of God that shows us what we should do to find meaning and satisfaction in spite of “vanity.” Before we look at it, however, we must first understand more of what Solomon means when he writes about the hebel of life, the curse of sin and death.
One reason for Solomon’s dissatisfaction was that he saw how sin warps human nature. When we are bound by it, we are never content no matter how much we acquire.
The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
A man may gain all sorts of possessions, but they won’t satisfy him. Weaknesses within himself and others will keep him from being able to enjoy them.
He who loves silver will not be satisfied with silver; nor he who loves abundance, with increase. This also is vanity. When goods increase, they increase who eat them; so what profit have the owners except to see them with their eyes? … the abundance of the rich will not permit him to sleep. …All his days he also eats in darkness, and he has much sorrow and sickness and anger.
Sin sabotages us in many ways. We become upset over what we can’t have, don’t appreciate what we do have, foolishly lose what we should hold on to, and hold on to what destroys us. We may find great success in one area only to find that it tears apart the fabric of our lives in others. For example, attaining wealth may destroy our family. Abundance may rob us of sleep. What we love may lead to an unquenchable thirst for more. Then even if we control sin in our own hearts, someone else’s sin may wreak havoc against us.
We weren’t designed to find fulfillment apart from God. Only He can untangle our heart from its own deception. If we don’t find His answers, we are left with the madness of our misled thoughts followed by a sad death – basically, “Life stinks, and then you die.”
Truly the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil; madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead.
Solomon didn’t like what he saw, so he looked for some way to change it.
I, the Preacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I set my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all that is done under heaven; this burdensome task God has given to the sons of man, by which they may be exercised. I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and indeed, all is vanity and grasping for the wind. What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be numbered.
In the end, Solomon concluded that the plague of sin would continue for as long as God’s present order of the universe remained. What is crooked cannot be made straight. There was no way around it; trying to change it was like grasping for the wind. He concluded: “All is vanity!” (i.e. “No matter what you do, sin and death will mess it up in some way!”)
Suppose a man makes good choices in his life and is able to insulate himself from the worst of the sin of those around him. He finds a good job, raises a pleasant family, and lives in a nice neighborhood. It looks like he has escaped from the ravages of the curse, but can he hang onto what he has attained? Of course he can’t. Sin is only the first part of the problem. Death is the other, and it will eventually catch up with him.
So I said in my heart, "As it happens to the fool, it also happens to me, and why was I then more wise?" Then I said in my heart, "This also is vanity." For there is no more remembrance of the wise than of the fool forever, since all that now is will be forgotten in the days to come. And how does a wise man die? As the fool!
Few people are remembered past their own lifetime, and even fewer are remembered correctly. Some will try to get around their own death by building works that will last for many generations. They want to “live on through their accomplishments.” Or they may place their hope in the future of their family, business, or country – but there are no guarantees. All of the good that we accomplish in the earth may be ruined by some fool a short time after we leave.
Then I hated all my labor in which I had toiled under the sun, because I must leave it to the man who will come after me. And who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will rule over all my labor in which I toiled and in which I have shown myself wise under the sun. This also is vanity.
Along with these frustrations, there is the emotional trauma of death. When a close friend or relative dies, we can feel as if a part of our heart has been taken from us. Our entire lives may be thrown into turmoil as mourning, grief, and loss turn our world upside down. Disease can have an even worse effect. Imagine learning that you have a terminal condition. Nothing will ever be the same; all of your plans and ambitions will be reorganized by mortality.
This is the hebel of life: “No matter what you do, sin and death will mess it up in some way!”
Why didn’t Solomon place his hope in eternal life? Surely a vision for treasure in heaven is essential for dealing with the disappointments we experience on earth. And an eternal hope is a obviously a key ingredient for interpreting what happens under the sun.
I have already given part of the reason Solomon didn’t place his hope in eternal life; his heart had turned from the Lord. So he, at least for a time, missed the conclusion reached at the end of Ecclesiastes:
Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man's all. For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil.
The knowledge of God’s final judgment should have comforted Solomon, but his disobedience clouded his vision. There was more to his depression than disobedience, however. At the time in which he lived, God had not yet revealed much about life after death. It wasn’t until Jesus came that the truths about immortality became clear.
… our Savior Jesus Christ, who has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel …
Solomon expressed his ignorance on the subject.
All go to the same place. All came from the dust and all return to the dust. Who knows that the breath of man ascends upward and the breath of the beast descends downward to the earth?
(Ecclesiastes 3:20-21, NAS)
We tend to look at this verse and think, “Didn’t Solomon believe that people go to be with the Lord when they die (2 Corinthians 5:8)?” The simple answer is that when Solomon lived, they didn’t do that. In Old Testament times, people didn’t rise; they descended into Sheol.
Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol, to the lowest depths of the Pit.
This was true for both the righteous and the wicked. For example, righteous King Hezekiah spoke of going to Sheol at the time of his death (Isaiah 38:10). Even Jesus descended into Sheol before ascending into heaven (Ephesians 4:9), but by doing so He changed life after death forever. He made it so that when a believer dies he or she will go to be with the Lord.
… to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.
Because of these limitations, Solomon’s vision was focused on life on this planet. As I mentioned before, however, we shouldn’t think that he was totally selfish in this. His hope was in this world, but he wanted to make the world a better place for everyone. He studied the problems we face and looked for ways to fix them.
Yet he realized he couldn’t solve our most pressing problems, those caused by sin and death. They would continue for as long into the future as Solomon could see.
That which has been is what will be, that which is done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.
He concluded that the hebel of life was more than a match for him …and for any human being. What hope did others have if he, one of the most gifted and powerful men who ever lived, couldn’t do anything about it? He had influence and insight that would rarely be duplicated. If he couldn’t solve the chief plague of mankind, who could? Adam and Eve had made the world crooked, and nothing we could do could make it straight (Ecclesiastes 1:15).
Solomon’s words in Ecclesiastes spoke to me while I experienced the events I have described in this book. Even though I hadn’t turned from the Lord as he had, I saw in his statements the same frustration that gripped my soul. I found life increasingly unbearable. I had tried for years to fix, escape, or work around problems, and though I could see many benefits from my quest, the strain of it was overwhelming me.
The book of Ecclesiastes gave form to the vague force that was sabotaging my efforts. It was called hebel, the curse of sin and death. It had led Solomon into misery, and it was doing the same to me.
Fortunately, I had Solomon’s memoirs to help me make sense of what was happening. The book of Ecclesiastes, which previously had seemed out of place in the Bible, now became my point of contact for honesty with God. In Ecclesiastes, Solomon laid his bleeding heart out for all to see, and I found comfort as I learned to do the same. Through the process of expressing my pain and frustration to God and listening for what He had to say about it, He was helping me to decipher my inner angst.
I saw that my previous approach to the hebel of life was doomed from the start. Any attempt to cut the curse out of my life by isolating myself from its pain or beating it into submission was a vain pursuit. It had been imprinted on our planet with indelible ink. It was within me and within those around me; we couldn’t escape it.
But what approach would work? I gained perspective by looking back on my life. I considered my parents to see where I had come from. They had dealt with sin and death by working hard, enjoying themselves, smoking, and drinking. Their hard work gave them some control over the worst near term effects of sin and death, and the enjoyment, smoking, and drinking gave them feelings of peace and happiness.
Their example was my starting point, the style of living that came most naturally to me. It was why I still wanted to medicate myself even after over twenty years of abstaining. I had left their addictive behaviors behind, but I hadn’t yet fully changed the mindset in which their addictions made sense.
I had made progress, however. There had been major breakthroughs on several occasions. For example when my sexual sins had overwhelmed me as a young man, God brought an amazing deliverance after eight years of floundering.[91] I had been stuck in a battle with sin and death that should have destroyed me, and my efforts had all seemed like disappointment and frustration, yet Jesus met me and changed me! At least this one time, I had found an answer to the hebel of life.
Years later, sin and death attacked again, and I found myself unable to handle my job. I was stuck in insecurities that left me angry and anxious, and once again there seemed to be no answer. I found God leading me to develop my ability to think and make sound decisions, which led to faith, hard work, and dying to my sinful desires.[92] This had resulted in years filled with many blessings that had once again brought answers to a piece of the curse.
It was clear that I had made progress in the past, but that progress had only brought me part of the way to my destination. My slow descent into resentment made it clear that I was still missing something important. The hebel of life was still overwhelming me from more angles than I could hope to avoid.
It was so frustrating and unexpected! I was a Christian! I was supposed to find God’s joy in life! Why wasn’t that happening? Why, in spite of my best efforts, did Solomon’s epitaph still hang firmly over my head: “Vanity of vanities – all is vexation and grasping for the wind?”
I began to recognize an answer that God had been birthing in my heart for years. The book of Ecclesiastes was now helping it to take form in my mind. How should I handle the attacks of sin and death? I realized that in each skirmish, I had to do what Ecclesiastes 3 said to do – to find God’s appointments. It was in them that He would reveal His meaning, satisfaction, and victory for my life.
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