Everything Is Meaningless without Jesus

The task is never done; it just repeats itself again and again. There is no satisfaction under the sun. The universe is trapped in a meaningless cycle that never ultimately accomplishes anything, and human experience as a whole mirrors this. Our existence can be characterized as one of monotony and pointlessness. It is the same old, same old. We all feel this frustration from time to time, do we not? You walk into the kitchen and the sink is full of dishes, so you roll up your sleeves, clean them, and put them away. You walk back into the kitchen the next morning, and what is there? Dishes! The laundry basket is overflowing with clothes, so you throw them in the washing machine, then the dryer, and then you fold them and put them away. You walk into your closet and what do you see? Clothes piled high in the laundry basket. These are the facts of life: more bills, more e-mails, more haircuts, more grass to mow, and it never ends. People try their own ways of “breaking free” from this monotony, as Kelly Clarkson sings about in “Breakaway” and Reba McEntire in “Is There Life Out There?” People have midlife crises, affairs, and career shifts trying to break free from the dissatisfaction in their lives. Swindoll is right: such people are simply “chasing the wind” (Living on the Ragged Edge, 25).

Even Christians try to deal with this and often not in helpful ways. I remember listening to a preacher talk about these realities, and he called people away from the dissatisfaction of their lives to try something new. While it was not his intent, I remember walking away from that sermon thinking to myself that people walked into this room dissatisfied with their spouse and now think they may need to find someone else, or dissatisfied with their job and are now thinking of quitting under the faulty notion that they will easily find a “job they love.” But like the sea you are never full, it is never enough, and you are never satisfied. You move on to another relationship, and the same dissatisfaction persists because you never dealt with the lack of contentment you had before. You just rearranged the pieces. You are at your new job and just as bored as you were before. The grass is always greener, and you could always get more money, another partner, a bigger promotion, a nicer house; but just as the sea is never full, it will never be enough for you!

Therefore, Solomon concludes in verse 8 that our existence is full of weariness. He gives three behaviors to parallel the sun, wind, and sea. He contends that we cannot say enough, see enough, or hear enough. We cannot say enough words to find meaning in the midst of this monotony. The eye will never be able to see it all. There are always more sights to see, experiences to take in, and pictures to look at. For some there is always one more pornographic image to try to find pleasure in because the experience does not last. And the ear has never heard it all. There is always more gossip to spread, songs to hear, jokes to listen to, or flirtatious words to enjoy. Nothing we can say, see, or hear can bring meaning to this redundancy.

As the Rolling Stones song says, no matter how much we try, we “can’t get no satisfaction.” Our desires are never satiated. We are not happy, nor are we content. We always want more. We think if we could just get two floors up in this building, or if we could just get the bigger house in the gated neighborhood, or if we had more gadgets, then we will have arrived (Begg, “Word to the Wise”). We keep waiting for a change in circumstances that will make us happy, and honestly we live our entire lives like that. You are frustrated under the lack of freedom in your parent’s house as a child and think to yourself, I cannot wait till I get my license and go to college because then I will be free and happy. Then you get into college and think, I cannot wait till I get out of all this boring studying and start doing a job that I really love. Then you graduate and take the job and say to yourself, If only I could find someone to love and get married, then I would be happy. Then you find someone, fall in love, get married, and think, If we could just have a family, then life would be complete. So you have kids and then think, If I could get promoted so I could make more money to provide for my family, then . . . The cycle never ends. You keeping thinking, If I can just get “there,” everything will be different, but when you get there nothing is different.

The author makes this point clear in verses 9-11. There is nothing new under the sun; nothing ever changes. People object to that truth; they are wrong. Technological advances, for example, do not discount Solomon’s contention. As Begg points out, yes, we put a man on the moon, but there was nothing for him to do there except stare at the earth (“Word to the Wise”). The fundamental events of life remain the same: birth, marriage, family, work, and death (Garrett, Ecclesiastes, 288). We use the phrase “nothing new under the sun” in our own parlance, and we do not use it as a pronouncement on inventions but rather to say, “The more things change, the more they stay the same” (Kidner, Ecclesiastes, 26). The human race is the same bunch of sinners it has always been, and nothing we have done really makes a difference.

Solomon says that no one will ultimately be remembered. Again, someone might object that we remember some figures from the past, but the vast billions who have lived on planet Earth never gain lasting renown. Most live and die unremembered. We do not remember our great, great-grandparents. Nothing really changes for anyone. You punch in and punch out over and over till you punch out for the last time. And when you retire, your company will throw a party, give you a gift with a plaque, and the next day someone else will replace you. The sun will rise, the business will go on, and eventually you will be forgotten. The business will carry on without you. Those are the facts of life under the sun. It’s all meaningless and frustrating. What value is your life?

People try to find meaning in an individual’s life at their funeral by saying, “She made the world a better place” (Keller, “Problem of Meaning”). But the Teacher says, “Nonsense.” You did not really change anything. That’s why Les Miserables raises questions such as: Will you be remembered when you die? Do your life and death really have any meaning? Could it be that your life is one big lie? Despite the claims of Jay Z and Fall Out Boys that they will be remembered for centuries, they will not! We are here for a few decades; then we are all forgotten.

Death is the great equalizer, and that is the ultimate absurdity. We all step on the treadmill of life and try to outrun death with all of our activity but to no avail. The Grim Reaper is faster than all of us. He catches us all. All of our “new” innovations have only allowed us to postpone death for a little while longer. So, faced with this bleak reality, Solomon searches for meaning and satisfaction, but . . .

Ecclesiastes 1:12-18

Solomon moves from what he has observed in nature to what we can learn from his experiences (1:12–2:26). He gives personal testimony that he tried everything and nothing satisfied. Everything was meaningless. He says, “I, the Teacher, have been king over Israel in Jerusalem” (1:12), which seems to indicate that he is older now with life experience. He goes on a wisdom search of the world, and he concludes that it is a miserable task that God gave to “Adam’s sons.”^[2]This language recalls the imposed curse of Genesis 3 where toil becomes burdensome and our activities in the world are under this curse (cf. Rom 8:18-21).

All of our activity is like chasing the wind. Our girls love blowing bubbles outside on a warm day. Like all kids, they run around trying to catch the bubbles and the moment they touch them the bubbles disappear in their hand. That is the idea here. Our efforts in this fallen world are like trying to catch the wind in our hand. What would we do if we went outside and found a man with a net in the parking lot trying to catch wind? Call for a psych evaluation? Yet all of our exertion to find meaning and satisfaction in things like pleasure, possessions, money, or success are just that crazy. Sure, they look like worthwhile pursuits, but Solomon exposes them. They are grasping at the air. Solomon says that it does not matter where or in what you try to find meaning, you will fail. He has seen and done it all, and he came back empty.

As with Psalm 73, the author is teetering on the edge of skepticism. Faith does not seem to be working like it should. A few years ago I met regularly with a guy I was mentoring. He and his wife were struggling with infertility. One day we met early at McDonald’s, and he came in very upset. He told me that a guy at his work came into the factory cussing the previous day because he had accidentally gotten his girlfriend pregnant. My friend was distraught because he and his wife had begged God for a child, and here was a guy who did not even want a child but was going to become a dad. Many of us face this kind of faith crisis. Some think walking with God means things will go well in this life, and then the crisis comes. We get cancer at a young age, lose a job, or face some kind of hardship. We have to understand the reality of life in a cursed, fallen world. Walking with God does not mean everything will come up roses. Things do not always work out immediately as they should.

Solomon gives a proverb to explain this situation when he says that what is crooked cannot be made straight and what is lacking cannot be counted (1:15). Crooked is a metaphor for sin or moral brokenness in the wisdom literature (Prov 12:8; Job 33:27). Why is the world in this broken state? The world is perverse because of human sin. Ecclesiastes 7:29 makes this clear: “I have discovered that God made people upright, but they pursued many schemes.” Humanity has gone its own way against God’s design. So because of others’ sin and our own sin, we live in a messed-up world, and we can do nothing to fix the situation according to the proverb. It will take a miracle from outside of us to fix what is broken. As Alistair Begg points out, we are trying to line up the squares on the Rubik’s Cube with a couple of colors missing (“Word to the Wise”)!

When humanity departed from God’s design, God imposed a curse on the world (Gen 3; Rom 8). Therefore, everything is broken in our world and in our lives. We try to find ways out of the brokenness but only end up more broken and frustrated. We turn to possessions and pleasurable experiences and status and relationships and even to religion trying to fix what is broken, but it is futile. No amount of pleasurable experiences, job success, or religious ritual can fix what is broken. As we will see, this reality is part of God’s goodness in our lives. He imposed the futility in hope that we would long for and hope in Him!

Solomon declares that his wisdom surpassed everyone before him in Jerusalem, but he also says he applied his heart to know madness and folly (1:16-17), which in biblical wisdom literature stands for sin, or the wrong way of life. Solomon was wiser than anyone else, and it did not bring meaning in his life. He also partied harder than anyone else, and that did not work either. That is what he is saying. I tried it all. I lived life the right way (wisdom), and I lived life the wrong way (foolishness), and nothing brought meaning. It was all like trying to grab the wind.

People make sudden shifts in their lives in an attempt to find joy. It reminds me of the Little Caesar’s commercial where the guy is having trouble ordering a pizza online, so he screams to his family, “That’s it! We’re going off the grid!” They begin to live an Amish-like existence with no technology, and his wife says, “You should have just gotten a Hot and Ready Pizza from Little Caesar’s.” To which the husband exclaims, “That’s it! We’re going back on the grid!” People think to themselves that if life were simpler or more elaborate, if I had more stuff or if I had the right relationship, then I would be happy. We keep trying things because we think one change will eventually make all the difference, but it does not. We will see in the following chapters that Solomon denied himself nothing—he indulged every desire and fantasy in an attempt to find satisfaction—and it did not work.

Matt Chandler contrasts the wisdom books of Job and Ecclesiastes. People who are in a Job-like state of suffering think, If I had more money or better friends, or if I did not have this disease, then life would be better. But Solomon comes along in Ecclesiastes to destroy that notion (“Sixth Sense”). Here is a guy who had it all, and life was not better. He had all the wisdom in the world, and it only brought him grief (1:18) because he learned through that wisdom that nothing matters. Ignorance had been bliss.

For most of us there was time when we got down on our knees and begged God in prayer for things we now have and take for granted. There was time when we begged God for a spouse, when we begged God for children, when we begged God for a house, and now we have those things and we are still not content. There was a time early in your marriage when you thought to yourself if you could just make $50,000 a year that would be all you would need. You could really be secure. You would not have to fret about finances. Now you make more than that, and you are still not content. The American dream is a lie and a failure. We live in a culture with more money, more entertainment, more pleasurable experiences, more recreation, and more stuff than any previous generation could ever have dreamed, and pain pills and antidepressants fly over the counters of our pharmacies. It’s a miserable world where one of the funniest and richest men the world has ever seen—Robin Williams—kills himself in despair.

Ecclesiastes gives a bleak look on life, but the Spirit had a purpose for inspiring this book to be written. He wants to expose the meaninglessness of life in a cursed world in order to create a hunger for something better (Kidner, Ecclesiastes, 27). Ecclesiastes wants to push us to faith and contentment in God.

Tim Keller points out that the author drives his readers to see that there are only two possible conclusions in life. Either there is a God above with a standard who will judge us at the end based on that standard, or life is totally meaningless. These are the only two options. Either there is a God and our actions have meaning, or there is no God, and as Hemingway said, “Life is a dirty trick, a short journey from nothingness to nothingness.” Keller states, “People think Christians are naive, but if your origin is insignificant, and if your destiny is insignificant, then have the guts to admit that your life is insignificant.” Why work for human rights, or for the common good, or for justice for all, if it is all going to be burned up in the end anyway?! If we are just accidents heading for annihilation, then nothing we do matters (Keller, “Problem of Meaning”)!

Deep in the human heart we know that is not true—we know what we do matters in some way—but we also know the world is jacked up. Why is it like this? God imposed a curse on the world in response to human rebellion with the purpose that frustration would ultimately drive us to Him. The Holy Spirit inspired Ecclesiastes to convict you of your own meaninglessness in your current existence in order to “make you wise for salvation through Christ Jesus” (2 Tim 3:15 ESV). Romans 8 tells us we are groaning for rescue right along with this frustrated creation! That’s exactly what we are directed toward in the conclusion of Ecclesiastes.

Ecclesiastes 12:8-14

Ecclesiastes cannot be rightly understood without the conclusion. The bleak outlook of the parts can only be understood in light of the whole that is wrapped up in the conclusion (12:8-14). The conclusion starts with the main point that everything is meaningless by repeating hevel as a wrap up (12:8), and then it calls the Teacher a wise man who arranged his writing with great care (12:9). The words of the book are delightful and true (12:10), that is, they give a true portrait of how the world works. His words are like goads (12:11). A goad is a herding tool used to poke and prod livestock in the right direction. The author compares the words of Ecclesiastes with this cattle prod because metaphorically the words of the sage are meant to sting and convict, and thus they move the reader in the right direction of walking in wisdom.

The ultimate Author of Ecclesiastes—the Spirit of God—uses the words of the book to convict the human heart of its need for Jesus. These words are given by “one Shepherd” (12:11). Only three other places in the Bible speak of a single shepherd, and each refers to the Messiah (Ezek 34:23-24; 37:24-25; John 10:11-16) (Perrin, “Messianism,” 51–57). Ecclesiastes is therefore a messianic book that points to and longs for the Messiah to come and order His kingdom by wisdom.

Solomon demonstrates this truth even in his closing words to his “son.” A sage warning to his son is commonplace in wisdom literature (Prov 1:8; 2:1; 3:1,11). The father—Solomon—wants to train his son—the crown prince—in wisdom. He tells his son that the words of this book are sufficient and should not be transgressed (Eccl 12:12). The son does not need to add to or subtract from them, which is a common statement in the Bible on its sufficiency (see Deut 4:2; Prov 30:6; Rev 22:18-19). Solomon throughout Ecclesiastes has done his own study and experiments to find meaning in this cursed world, and he has come back empty. By telling his son that study is wearisome and there is no end to making books, he is pleading with his son not to go off on his own quest for meaning and satisfaction as if he could try something Solomon did not already try.

Like many parents, Solomon’s appeal is, “Do what I say not what I did!” Solomon failed to establish the Davidic kingdom because of his idolatrous lusts, and he pleads with his son for a different outcome. But Solomon’s son and all of his descendants would ultimately falter and die. The wisdom literature cries out for a better king who can redeem creation from the curse. Isaiah 11 promises that wise King, and this Greater Solomon is presented to us in Matthew 12. Jesus is the wise King who establishes and orders His kingdom with wisdom—a wisdom that is similar to the wisdom of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes (see the Sermon on the Mount in Matt 5–7).

Solomon’s conclusion points forward to Jesus. Solomon says the end of the matter is to fear God and keep His commandments (Eccl 12:13). Indeed, wisdom is tied to keeping the law throughout the Old Testament (Deut 4:6; Ezra 7:14,25). “Trust and obey, for there is no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.” Reverent awe and obedience toward God is our obligation because it is the whole duty of mankind. That is God’s design for us. Why? The reason to trust and obey is that God will bring every deed into judgment along with every secret thing, whether good or evil (Eccl 12:14). The world is crooked, things are not right, and there needs to be a reckoning to set things right. Ecclesiastes says there will be one. Final judgment is the motivation to trust and obey. Final judgment is what gives every one of our actions meaning in this cursed world. We will be called to account—even for the things we think no one else knows about. Why? God knows, and Jesus says we will answer for every careless word we utter (Matt 12:36-37).

The reality of judgment day is how the Shepherd cares for His flock. In order to convict you, He goads with the truths that you will be judged and then vindicated or punished. The New Testament reveals that the purpose of the law—the purpose of the commandments—is to convict us and bring us to Christ. Solomon and all of his descendants had a problem: they failed and broke the commandments. We have the same problem because we have broken God’s commands and sought satisfaction in things and people other than God. You say, “Well, I know I have made mistakes, but I never had a thousand women like Solomon.” But you have a harem larger than Solomon on your Internet history (Driscoll, “Setting the Record Crooked”). Ecclesiastes says even the hidden things will be brought to light. We will face judgment, and the bad news is that we have fallen short. This reality is meant to crush us in order to drive us to Christ. That is the good news: Jesus lived the life we could not live, a life without sin in perfect obedience to the commandments, and He died the death we deserved to die. He took the entire curse of sin and futility and death on Himself in order to redeem us from the curse (Gal 3:13). By repenting from our vanity and turning in faith to Him, He redeems us and gives us a new and meaningful life. There is something “new under the sun”—those who are made new creations in Christ (2 Cor 5:17). You will face judgment. You can face it in isolation from Christ and receive God’s disapproval, or you can face it in Christ and receive God’s approval.

Our lives are broken by sin, but after you receive redemption in Christ, He gives you life everlasting and life to the full now, so that you can recover and pursue God’s good design for your life. Now, instead of seeking satisfaction in created things, we are fully satisfied in our Creator, our Redeemer. Satisfied in Him alone you can now rightly enjoy the gifts He gives you as a means to worship Him. You do not need a million dollars. You just need Jesus, and He gives you daily bread (Driscoll, “Setting the Record Crooked”). You do not need to pursue a thousand pleasurable experiences because in Jesus at God’s right hand are eternal pleasures (Ps 16:11). Now the seemingly mundane things of life—like scrubbing a dish, working a nine-to-five job, and changing a diaper—are shot through with meaning because Jesus says those who are faithful over the small things are given responsibility over greater things in His kingdom (Matt 25:14-30).

Romans 8:18-21 describes a futile creation that longs for the curse to be overthrown, a creation that longs for resurrection from the dead, and a fallen humanity that screams along with that creation. As Jerome said, what a vanity it is that the earth, which was made for humans, stays while humans dissolve into the dust. The reign of death is strong, and it claimed Adam and Abel and David and Solomon and Rehoboam, and one day it will claim you. But in a world full of grave plots, one grave is empty, and there is one Man whom the dust cannot claim because God would not allow the Holy One to see decay. Jesus is free from the curse, and He graciously offers that freedom to you. Cry out to Him in confession that you have tried to find meaning in something or someone other than Him, and then find your meaning in Him alone (Begg, “Word to the Wise”)! As Augustine declared, “Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”