Please, would you turn with me to Ecclesiastes chapter 1, Ecclesiastes chapter 1, the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes. So the sermon reading will be the entire chapter. I will focus on the sermon on verses 1 through 3 only, 1 through 3. Ecclesiastes chapter 1, starting at verse 1, this is the Word of God. The words of the preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities, says the preacher, vanity of vanities. All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun goes down and hastens to the place where it rises. 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. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full. To the place where the streams flow, where they flow again. All things are full of weariness, a man cannot utter it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. 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. Is there a thing of which it is said, see, this is new? It has been already in the ages before us. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after. I, the preacher, have been king over Israel and 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. I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind. What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted. 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. And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceive this also is but a striving after wind. For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow. Well, thus far the reading of God's word, may he add his blessing to it. Well, I think we've all experienced those moments in life where things are going along pretty well. Maybe you're driving along the road and you've got that hot cup of coffee in your lap. You're texting, you shouldn't be, and you hit the pothole, you hit the speed bump, and suddenly your day is not going very well. You probably don't get very many potholes here, but in South Africa we do. How about the water under the foundation of the house that you discovered after you closed escrow? Or the foundation is cracked? Or how about being set up very nicely for that birdie putt yesterday on the greens only to four putt and ruined your afternoon. Well, Ecclesiastes is getting to those unexpected things when things go contrary to order, contrary to expectation. It's like having that chicken bone caught in your gullet after a very nice meal up until that point. It's the riddle of life. Ecclesiastes is a book that is difficult, if we're honest with ourselves. It's perhaps a book that you don't spend a whole lot of time reading because it hits a low note. It hits a conundrum of a note. You may have even asked, at least privately in your own head, Should this even be in the Bible? But Ecclesiastes forms part of the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. It joins the likes of Proverbs, Job, and the Song of Solomon. In the broader canon, it must certainly is joined with the cruciform wisdom that has come in our Savior. And to be sure, as we do go through, we wade into the murkiness, the messiness of the vanity seemingly of all things. There is the light, there is the high note of the good news of our Savior, Jesus Christ. And so that is where we're going, but we need to have this layer of wisdom in our lives, the wisdom of Ecclesiastes, in order to live well, in order to be prudent, in order to, I would say, have a measure of psychological equilibrium, to have spiritual health. Just by way of background here, so verse 1, historically there has been this conviction that the author of Ecclesiastes, as well as the one being referred to here, is Solomon, the son of David. But we're not necessarily sure about this. More likely that the king being spoken of here is a fictional king. This person is a teacher of wisdom. And this wisdom was given to us probably around 300 BCE, before Christ. And the tone of this book is one of perplexion. Vexation. We read at the end of chapter 1, for in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow. Well, maybe that gives you a sense of relief on one hand, because you can feel vexed in this life. You can feel undone. But what does it mean when the writer says, all is vanity. What is vanity under the sun? What is this lack of gain and this lack of profit that the writer is speaking about? Well, certainly there's much that can be said and I'm going to give you a few angles on this. We really need to work through the entire book, but I think what comes through here in the first three verses and what I hope to communicate is the central thrust of this very important book. And so the one angle I'd like us to take a look at is the covenant that God made with Adam and Eve at creation. So in Genesis 1 through 3, we understand this covenant to have been a covenant of works. God made Adam and Eve in his image, and they were to go about building the temple of Eden. They were to do so under the sun that God had created. They were to pursue obedience. They were to keep the conditions of the covenant. They were to image God in perfection. And as a result, if they passed the test, passed the probation, they would have entered in to heavenly rest. They were to image God by working for six days and then breaking into that higher plane of existence on the seventh. But we know how it ended. Adam and Eve were disobedient. They didn't build according to God's plan, God's blueprint. Rather, they listened to the evil one, the one who came and deceived them. He had a different plan. He still offered them a kingdom. He said, look, come and join me and build, but without holiness, without righteousness. And so, as a result, Adam and Eve were banished east of Eden. And they were cursed along with the rest of the created order. Not surprisingly, Adam and Eve were cursed in terms of their ability to build a family, to build a nation, to build a kingdom. Adam and Eve were to toil among thorns and thistles, Eve and her posterity were to endure pain and heartache in rearing, raising children. But God still provided a way for culture to be made. The creation mandate that was given in Genesis 1 and 2 to continue, although now going forth in the context of sin. And so there's the provision made, isn't there? Early on for the seeds of the state come into being. Cain takes out his brother. He has a mark put on his forehead. It takes on fuller form, if you will, in Genesis 8 and 9. In Romans chapter 13, we know very well that passage where God has instituted the civil magistrate to exercise justice against the wrongdoer. but tempered by forbearance so that they can continue to be work, but now it's being described in Ecclesiastes as toil. It is difficult. It is painful because there are the potholes and much worse. So there's nothing wrong inherently with the created order in terms of the body, In terms of mountains and the ocean and the sun, it's just that now man's will is twisted, perverted. And so it takes the best of God's gifts and really ultimately destroys them. But the whole created order is moving towards this return to dust. Again, because of Adam and Eve's sin. But we do make culture even alongside of unbelievers. The sun rises on the wicked and the righteous alike. Again, there's house and city building. I mean, listen to what we could say is the provisional goodness, the provisional justice, the kind of cause and effect that we do experience a lot of as we're out there fulfilling our vocations. in the marketplace, in the public square. Proverbs chapter 2 verse 6 and following gives us a sense of this. For the Lord gives wisdom from his mouth come knowledge and understanding. He stores up sound wisdom for the upright. He is a shield to those who walk in integrity, guarding the paths of justice and watching over the way of his saints. Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity and every good path. For wisdom will come into your heart and knowledge will be pleasure or pleasant to your soul. Discretion will watch over you. Understanding will guard you, delivering you from the way of evil, from men of perverted speech who forsake the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness, who rejoice in doing evil and delight in the perverseness of evil. Men whose paths are crooked and who are devious in their ways. How about Proverbs chapter 16 verse 3? Now the certainty and the confidence that this kind of wisdom from God gives us and what we do experience out there in the world, commit your work to the Lord and your plans will be established. You're to observe the ants, for example, the industriousness of the ants, and we're to emulate what we see there. If you plan for the future, you save because you want to take care of your family. Well, that's wise and that is good. If you behave in a way contrary to the moral order of God, if you don't bear God's image appropriately. Like going after the wayward women is like carrying coals to your breast. You will be burned. There will be a fallout. So again, there's this equity. There's this cause and effect. There's this symmetry. There's a beauty. There's a predictability to the wisdom that is set forth in Proverbs, we experience it to some degree. Sometimes, depending on God's providence in our lives, we experience it more than others. So how then do we reconcile this kind of wisdom, this kind of expectation, this justice, with the vanity that the writer to the Ecclesiastes, of the Ecclesiastes expresses. Again, it's like that drive you hit down the center of the fairway and then you go and look for it and you can't find it because it plugged into the grass and just disappeared. You don't have your ball. You lose a stroke as a result. It's not supposed to work that way. Take, for example, Ecclesiastes. Again, I'll read it to you to underscore it. This is the third time, but listen carefully. For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow. Ecclesiastes 3 verse 16. Moreover, I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, even there was wickedness. and in the place of righteousness, even there was wickedness. How about chapter 4 verse 1? Again, I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun and behold the tears of the oppressed and they had no one to comfort them. On the side of their oppressors, there was power And there was no one to comfort them. So I think the vanity that is spoken of here, one way to understand it, is it's kind of like an overturning of the wisdom of Proverbs. It seems to contradict Proverbs. It's something inscrutable to us, mysterious. You take care of yourself. Your spouse does. You have a child, and the child is healthy. You're raising that child in the fear and admonition of the Lord. Then the child gets cancer. The spouse is taking care of you, working long hours, faithful citizen, good member of the congregation. It gets hit by a truck. You see, the vanity spoken of here in Ecclesiastes, one way to describe it is it's elusive. It doesn't bring ultimate success. Everything will, unless the Lord comes, or unless before we finish out our days here, through natural aging, there will be death. That is the specter for all of us. You see, the advantage of wisdom set forth in Proverbs, in terms of navigating everyday life in family and in commerce and education and so on and so forth, the wisdom to navigate this life is of relative value, but it is in a sense unreliable. Because we cannot grasp equity and justice, we cannot grasp health in an absolute sense. And so the wisdom that is, in a sense, vanity, the life that we live that is, in a sense, vanity, is like vapor. You see it, the light's right, it's there for a moment, and it's gone. It's like a mirage on the horizon. It seems like there's water, you get closer, it's gone. It's like wind. You can see the effects of wind. I don't think you get as much wind here as we do in Cape Town. It's one of the names for Cape Town is the Cape of Storms. Because you get a lot of wind, and you can see it. You can see the effects, but you cannot grasp it. You cannot contain it. And so beloved in children, children, you can think about that model Lego that perhaps you're working on. You love how good it looks. And you can derive a lot of satisfaction from it. And then there's a few pieces missing at the end. And then it just takes away from the ultimate perfection of that piece of art, a piece of playtime. Or your younger sibling comes along and just whacks it over and it's all destroyed. That's the Proverbs moment. Excuse me, the Ecclesiastes moment. The Proverbs moment is for it to all fit together. And there's reward. You see, there is this vanity under the sun of this present age. The Hebrew word for this vanity spoken of here is chevel. If you can do the guttural of Dutch stock, if you've got an Afrikaans background, if you know Hebrew, then you probably manage it better. But it's what you call onomatopoeia. It's a play on words. It's the use of a word that captures what it's referring to. So chevel is like the sounds, it should sound like what wind sounds like. And you can hear it. You just can't master it. You cannot contain it. But again, this is one layer to the wisdom, the many angles on wisdom that we are to cultivate in this life. If we were to excise it and look at it in isolation, it would bring disappointment, depression, anxiety, because we have no guarantees when we get into our car. We have no guarantees even though we've been given a new contract as an employee and the pay is good. We may not have a job in a year's time. You're cancer-free now, but it doesn't mean you're going to be cancer-free in a few years. Again, this portion of the Bible must be held up in tension with the wisdom found in Proverbs, the wisdom found in the book of Job, the wisdom found in Song of Solomon, but ultimately the wisdom that comes and the wisdom that has come, the wisdom incarnates our Lord Jesus Christ, the wisdom that is seated at the right hand of the Father, the one in whom we live and breathe and have our very being, the mystery of the God-man who came, took to himself the frailty of human flesh, submitted himself to the law, had his Ecclesiastes moments, suffered unjustly, died. And from a human perspective, it just seemed like ultimate vanity, right? That's just the end. This person who comes from nowhere is a humble carpenter, a builder. And through what was seeming vanity has come victory. The vanity of the life of Jesus Christ hid his victory. gave way to victory. And that is the final note we must end this morning as we consider the first three verses of Ecclesiastes. For we too share in the life of Jesus Christ even though our lives oftentimes are veiled, hidden behind a thick layer of vanity. You're sick. You're underemployed. There's tension between you and a family member that brings much consternation. Something just comes out of left field and blindsides you. You can feel the vexation, and you must. We're not Stoics. We go from Ecclesiastes to the Psalms, and we vent. the burdens, with the confidence in the midst of our sorrows that we have the joy of union with Jesus Christ. And so here in our Lord Jesus is the one greater than the teacher or the preacher of Ecclesiastes. The one greater, the one who's come in the line of King David. 2 Corinthians 5.1, the Apostle Paul wrote, For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Brothers and sisters and children, we need to be of good courage when we face those moments of perplexion, Especially at the hands of unbelievers. We must remember places like Psalm 49 verse 20. Man in his pomp yet without understanding or without wisdom is like the beasts that perish. Even the book of Ecclesiastes does foretell the coming of our Lord Jesus. Ecclesiastes 5 verse 1. Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. To draw near, to listen, is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools. For they do not know that they are doing evil. We are in the house of God now. And we're being soaked in a cruciform wisdom. The law of God, the moral law, which is good. And certainly is our map to new obedience. But only having been rooted in new, renewed in our understanding of Christ and him crucified for us. That is our foundation, a granite foundation under our feet. We are participants, we are stones in an eternal house. Psalm 23 verse 6. surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. What we are doing now is a foretaste of that. As you prepare for the Lord's table in the weeks to come, I think it's appropriate to read yet another passage out of the wisdom literature that gives us confidence, that gives us that foretaste of our eternal home, of that heavenly banquet. Wisdom has built her house. Psalm, excuse me, Proverbs 9 verses 1 and 2. Wisdom has built her house. She has hewn her seven pillars. She has slaughtered her beasts. she has mixed her wine. She has also set her table. And so it's in light of our Lord Jesus Christ, it's in light of his life and death and resurrection, in light of his ongoing intercession for us, that we can now labor, we can toil, we can work as those who have already been made heirs to eternal life. We are already seated with Christ in heavenly places. And so we do not work towards our sabbatical rest. It's already been won. And so as we work, as we love one another within the family of God, share each other's burdens, as we go out and fulfill our vocations, as we make a good shoe and sell it at a fair price, we do so out of gratitude. but we are to do so with a wisdom that is multifaceted. The wisdom of Proverbs, the wisdom of Ecclesiastes, and so on, but especially and foundationally the wisdom of our Lord Jesus Christ that is cruciform. Let us be of good courage until that day that the Lord takes us home. May we live well, may we suffer well, may we die well. Let us pray. our heavenly Father God, we ask that you would be pleased to put fresh wind in the sails of your saints this morning, especially those who are weighed down, struggling to get beyond the seeming reality that all is vanity, meaninglessness. Strengthen the faith of your people. Help them to stand strong and to run well the race that you have set before us. We ask that you would give us wisdom, a wisdom that is well-rounded and well-grounded. We ask that you would help us to come alongside of those within our midst, within the church by exercising our various gifts. Pray for one another. Share each other's burdens. Grow in wisdom and knowledge. Pray particularly for those who are struggling to work through painful emotions that come with loss, that come through experiencing the conundrums of this life, that they would have confidence to pray your word, sing your word, not just with the mind but with the heart as well, being able to hit the low notes as well as the high. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.