What Do People Live For?
1The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem: 2“Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher; “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” 3What does man gain from all his labor in which he labors under the sun? 4One generation goes, and another generation comes; but the earth remains forever. 5The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hurries to its place where it rises. 6The wind goes toward the south, and turns around to the north. It turns around continually as it goes, and the wind returns again to its courses. 7All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full. To the place where the rivers flow, there they flow again. 8All things are full of weariness beyond uttering. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. 9That which has been is that which shall be; and that which has been done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. 10Is there a thing of which it may be said, “Behold, this is new?” It has been long ago, in the ages which were before us. 11There is no memory of the former; neither shall there be any memory of the latter that are to come, among those that shall come after.
Ecclesiastes was written by Solomon around 935 BC. Looking back over the years he had lived, its author concluded that everything was vanity of vanities, even though he had lived in far greater ease and plenty than others. For every season we have passed through, happy or unhappy, looks like a fallen petal when we look back on it in our last years. A beauty that once burst into bloom and moved all who saw it is trampled underfoot once it drops to the ground. A petal, watching people tread on it, might feel that the time it spent giving them joy had been in vain, and Solomon would have seen his own life in the same light. He also saw that some people, unlike him, lived happily even in poverty and hardship, serving God and content with what they had. He had come to understand that an abundance of possessions does not make a human life happy, and that living as a king does not make anyone satisfied.
I want to look at what kind of life Solomon calls a blessed one. Ecclesiastes is said to have been read at the Feast of Tabernacles, one of Israel’s appointed feasts. In Israel no rain fell until the fruit had been harvested, yet remarkably, when the time came to sow the grain, the rainy season set in. Through these turns of the weather the people believed that God was protecting them and working on their behalf. Ecclesiastes was read aloud at this hopeful festival of gathering fruit and sowing seed, and that tells us the book is not a pessimistic one but a message of hope.
For all the love it had received, Israel failed to remain faithful. Solomon wrote these words near the end of a life that had drifted far from God, and because he had lived without God, he could call that life empty. But if we listen to what he says and serve God, we can live the very life Solomon truly wished for us.
Solomon had enjoyed to the full all the wealth and glory the world could offer, and still he reproached himself for failing to serve God. Some of you may think he talked this way only because he had never known hardship, reasoning that a man who had lived in want, or as a slave, or hunted by his enemies, would never have said such things. But king, slave, or commoner, anyone who stands at the threshold of death will say that a life lived so fiercely, driven by effort and hope and hatred, was all vanity.
What are you striving so hard for right now? What Solomon wanted to say, in the end, was that he longed for us to realize there is no hope apart from God, whatever we may possess. His own life, lived at a distance from God, had ended in regret, but he wanted those who still had days ahead of them to serve God well. Over the course of his life Solomon learned that it is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting, and that there is nothing new under the sun.
Life is, in the end, a journey toward death, the wages of sin. Once we realize this, we see that whatever shape our lives take, each is a pilgrim’s road, and however hard we labor, we gain nothing, because we can take none of it with us. To put it simply, let us think of a child’s toy blocks. However hard a child works to stack them, when night comes the tall tower has to be knocked down and put back in the box so that the child can go to sleep. Then in the morning the child builds it up again and knocks it down again, day after day. This was life as Solomon saw it.
In this world, where birth and death go on and on, only the names change; the same buildings are put up on the same spot and torn down again, while the earth remains forever. Why, then, has God sent so many people into the world over so long a span of time, knowing that because of sin they must die? We ought to ask why he keeps sending to this earth people who see that they will one day return to dust and who shudder at an emptiness like a hollow room. To find the answer, people have gone on asking to this day, “What do people live for?” And they have built whole disciplines to study the first principles of humanity and the world and the essence of life. For thousands of years multitudes have agonized over these questions, as though they amounted to some profound knowledge.
But the answer is surprisingly simple. If people come to know from the Bible who God is, their agonizing can be resolved in a moment. For though a human life, from birth to its last day, is futile, the Bible shows us the true reason that life is needed. So wisdom lies not in studying what life is but in knowing God.
When people misread Ecclesiastes, they are in danger of being steeped in negative ideas, seeing the world only in a dark light, and sinking into pessimism. But that comes from failing to understand Ecclesiastes rightly. Solomon certainly laments that life is vanity of vanities, yet what he writes is that through this vain life we must find the right way. We have understood the book rightly only when we can see Solomon’s heart, his conviction that life in the flesh is necessary if we are to reach the Kingdom of God. He is urging us not to waste our lives apart from God as he did, but to walk with God and live a holy and blessed life. And he wanted us to know that although the body returns to dust, the faith a person holds in this life is bound up with eternal life.
Solomon, the author, was not only the king who built the temple and dedicated it to God; he was also a singular man who received heavenly wisdom as a gift. With the wisdom God gave him he wrote the Song of Solomon, Proverbs, and Psalms, so that they would guide God’s people in living by faith. He is the king who, when two mothers each claimed the same baby as their own, handed down the famous verdict that returned the child to its real mother’s arms. He was also a king of renown who labored for peace with the nations around him and caused his people to enjoy a glory no other nation could match.
When Solomon confessed that his wisdom and wealth had come from God and gave all the glory to him, God was pleased with him and gave him riches and honor in overflowing measure. But this same Solomon, who had received such great grace, fell into the sin of welcoming the idols of every nation in order to keep his worldly wealth and power. Even a people who serve God can fall to Satan’s temptation in an instant, and for that reason we must always be on our guard.
Just as people readily leave God once Satan plants in them a greater desire for wealth than for God, Solomon too abandoned God to protect his land, his riches, and his power. His choice bears out what Jesus said: no one can serve both God and Mammon. Led astray by a great many women, he worshiped the gods they had brought with them and corrupted the people of Israel with a mixed religion. As his life went on without the glory of God, he came to see that it was like an empty vessel. However much worldly wealth and power he held, none of it could give him the peace and rest of soul that are found only within God’s grace and glory.
A person who does not live by the word of God is like an animal that lives by instinct. If human beings cast aside the will of God and live as they please, even a king who rules a nation is no better than a mindless beast. However clever a baby may be, its thinking only reaches so far; in the same way, people who have left God may know a great deal, but because their thinking has limits, they can never make wise judgments and decisions.
Everyone returns to dust; this is the law God has set. We take medicine and arrange good surroundings in order to live longer, but all that does is keep us a little healthier while we are here; when God calls us to come, we must lay down all our labor and go. When God created human beings, he gave them a heart that longs for him. But people were too busy chasing their own desires, pursuing vain things all their lives, to listen to what a good conscience was telling them, and it was for this reason that they left God. Because of Adam’s sin, the moment we put off the tent of this body we will dwell in one of two places, heaven or hell. Even a life of vanity upon vanity, then, matters greatly, because it is while we live that we must receive Christ.
Solomon knew for certain that there is life after death, and he hoped others would not end up as he had, given chance after chance and still turning away from God. Blaming his own folly for failing to understand the heart of the God who had always given him another opportunity, he wrote Ecclesiastes with an earnest longing that his people would live lives that exalt God. To live is to leave our possessions behind in the end, those with much wealth and power leaving much, those with little leaving little. Putting money in the grave once someone has breathed their last, or setting out the food they loved in life, is vanity of vanities as well. Only while we are clothed in this body can we covet anything or own anything. Since we cannot live on earth forever, only by laying aside greed and holding to a contented faith while we live can we enjoy peace both here and after death.
Solomon had at times served God closely and at times lived as he pleased. When he looked at the world through the failures and successes gathered over many years, and through true faith, he came to see that there is nothing new under the sun. The word he uses for “vanity” is the Hebrew hebel, which means an emptiness that cannot be grasped, like wind or vapor, something hollow within. Can you feel his heart as he looks at life this way? The futility felt by Solomon, who had enjoyed wealth and glory such as no one else ever knew, was the emptiness of a soul that had left God. His must have been tears of regret, shed when he realized too late that nothing could fill that void.
In this generation, too, more people than we can count are sacrificing themselves to gain power and honor. Those whose power could once make a bird fall from the sky take their own lives; others sink into pleasure and corruption and, unable to bear the turmoil within, come to depend on drugs. Watching the businesses and the power they gave their whole lives to building come crashing down, I have wondered how empty and how bitter their hearts must have been.
The world is like the tower of Babel: however high you build, there is no satisfaction. That is because the tower was meant to climb up to where God is, so from the very start it was built of human sin, raised toward a goal that could never be reached. Solomon realized too late that, although he had gained his wealth by the grace of God, he had fallen for Satan’s schemes and wasted his life. Because of that, the years behind him seemed empty, and he was afraid of the God who had been watching him all along. He would soon have to meet God, so his remorse must have been great.
Ecclesiastes 1:5-7
5The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hurries to its place where it rises. 6The wind goes toward the south, and turns around to the north. It turns around continually as it goes, and the wind returns again to its courses. 7All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full. To the place where the rivers flow, there they flow again.
Solomon says that however many ages pass, every creature still obeys God just as he created it. People may seem to have invented and discovered new things, but nothing is new, because when God created the world he had already made even those things.
You must have studied the geological ages at some point. As scholars study the earth’s strata, we come to know much about people of ancient times whom we knew nothing about. When archaeologists examine the layers of the earth, they find fossils that appear only in certain layers, and from those fossils they can tell what life, the environment, and the climate were like in that age. The people of that age lived just as we live now. There were heroes, and there were the poor and the greedy; and those who grasped at everything as though they would live forever could not overcome death, and all of them returned to dust.
Verse 4 tells us that one generation goes and another generation comes, but the earth remains forever. However long the ages run, the earth stays where it is, while generations keep passing away and others keep arriving. When human sin overflows, God will surely judge it. He covered with a flood a world gone rotten with sin, and saved only the family of Noah, a righteous man who obeyed his word, by bringing them into the ark. Noah and his family would have stood in fear of the God who had destroyed the world in a moment.
Noah and his sons, then, ought to have kept far from sin and lived uprightly. But human beings, whose original sin had not been dealt with, were not good at the root. No sooner had the waters that covered the earth receded than sin began to stir again. Noah got drunk and fell asleep naked, a shameful thing, and then came the incident in which he cursed his son Ham, who had mocked him. This is the true face of human evil.
Just as the earth remains where it is, the sin of people in the flesh did not disappear but stayed with them. So unless we receive Jesus Christ, who atoned for our sin, that sin remains, and we cannot enter heaven.
Matthew 24:35
35Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
This verse means that the world, which seems as though it will last forever, will pass away at the time God has appointed, but his word will remain forever; we must therefore live by it. When we stop clinging to a world and a life that will one day vanish, and instead obey the word of the eternal God, our lives go on as holy lives even beyond death. But those who live only for themselves, even if they discover after death that their choice was wrong, will have no chance to turn back then, so their regret will come too late. Someone may have left a famous name in the world, rescued their country from crisis, or been a millionaire with vast estates, but once they put off the body, the life they held so dear has nothing more to do with them.
After death, what decides the judgment is not how much or how little we possessed but whether we received Christ in our lives. Even the famous are forgotten by the next generation once they leave this world. Someone who adorned themselves with every kind of jewel returns to dust, and the jewels pass to someone else. As the years go by, a body once young and healthy is bound to grow old. One who commanded the world turns to dust as lifelessly as an inanimate object. Only those who see this and grasp how hollow and fleeting life is can live without regret. We are moved by a sunset, we are glad at the sight of maple leaves turned red, and we feel overwhelmed before the rolling sea, yet these too are feelings the generations before us knew.
Everything you have seen, heard, and touched, every event you have lived through, is only a repetition of what earlier generations went through. Because the next generation will go through the very same things, there is nothing new in the world. Do not cling to a life that will vanish like mist; prepare for what lies beyond death by living every moment with a holy and upright faith. If we live by the desires of the flesh, we cannot receive eternal life, and so, to cast off sin, we must receive Christ, the Lord of life.
Solomon took his pleasure with more than a thousand women and had the power to make alliances with the nations to gain wider territory. But though he had all he could ever wish for, he felt that something was missing from his life, and unable to bear that emptiness, he counted himself unhappy. Like a puffed pastry that is large on the outside but hollow within, his life looked impressive on the surface, but inside there was nothing at all. As you look at this life of Solomon’s, you must understand that without the grace of God a life is as useless as a burst balloon. Like a balloon, a life that is all show looks only to the earth, whether it is full of air or burst, and so it will be emptier still.
Time flies like an arrow. An arrow that has left the bowstring can never come back, and time that has passed can never be recovered either; so we must live well from this moment on. Just as an arrow that has missed the target cannot be shot again, a life that has missed the mark does not easily find a chance to repent. Think of a battle in which the enemy fires arrows in great volleys and the soldiers raise their shields and catch every one. If they then shoot those arrows back at the enemy, they will win a great victory.
In the same way, when we are spiritually full, we think our faith, devotion, and faithfulness are more than enough to stand against Satan. But Satan, a spiritual enemy, knowing that this fullness will soon cool, bides his time; then he turns the very faith, devotion, and faithfulness we threw at him back against us and mocks us. “Is this the faith you showed me? Is this all it comes to? Is this what became of your resolve to be faithful even to death?” he sneers. So know that the words you spoke and the things you did today will not come back, any more than an arrow that has missed the mark, and hold fast to your faith even if it costs you your life.
This very hour in which you are worshiping cannot be brought back either. Whether you have worshiped God with all your heart in this hour, or have fallen to Satan’s temptation and spent it with no thought of God, your own faith will tell you. Life is as swift as an arrow, but if you have done your utmost to proclaim the gospel and save lives, then on the last day the Lord will throw open the gates of heaven and commend you for a work well done.
We must live well now for the moment when God, seated on the throne, opens the gates of heaven and takes us into his arms, for that eternal Kingdom is the very reason we live. The Bible says that our years are eighty if we are strong, and we who live in the modern age have at most a hundred; we must not keep God at a distance for the sake of so brief a life, but live today by faith so that we may live with God, the Lord of eternity. May you leave behind Solomon’s lament that life is vanity of vanities. May you fill your life with the worship of God, and heap joy, hope, and happiness upon that vanity until it overflows.