Show Notes
Westminster Shorter Catechism Q/A 10
Ecclesiastes 1:12-2:23
Pastor Christopher Chelpka
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] O Lord and king, we bless your name this evening and acknowledge your great and awesome sovereignty over all aspects of our lives. The rule that you have that extends to every part of this world and the world to come.
[00:00:21] We bless your name, and we thank you that we have the opportunity, I have the joy and privilege to meet with you this evening and to be encouraged by your word as we reflect on the ways in which it applies to our lives.
[00:00:36] Lord, we thank you that you have not abandoned us in our sin, that you restrain us in our sin, and that you provide for us escapes from evil and temptation.
[00:00:47] Lord, you also give to us the forgiveness of our sins and joy in the holy spirit of rejoicing in our salvation.
[00:00:55] We thank you, Lord, that your law has been written on our hearts and that our consciences are being sensitized to your will.
[00:01:04] We ask that you would continue to strengthen these things that we might hate what you hate and love what you love, that you would continue to help us to enjoy the kingdom of the beloved son and never return to those things of darkness out of which we have been brought. Please bless us, Lord, this evening, as we consider the creation of man and our place in this world and in the world to come, through Jesus Christ, we pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:01:41] Well, tonight we are thinking about the doctrine that is expressed in our shorter catechism question ten.
[00:01:51] You find it printed in your bulletins, regards the creation of man.
[00:02:01] Now, before we think about that question, I want to think with you a little bit about the tension we feel in our own lives, the frustration that we feel in the way that things don't seem to fit.
[00:02:20] They're never quite right.
[00:02:23] If you've ever worked on a project and you grab a tool, maybe even a specialty tool that you know is designed for this task, and yet it doesn't seem to work. It's not functioning. It's maybe a little too big or a little too small, or the spring doesn't seem to be working right. And you say, what is going on? I bought this tool just for this job.
[00:02:45] What's the problem? Is it designed weird? Is it broken? Am I using it wrong?
[00:02:52] There's something of that frustration that we feel in our own bodies, in our own lives, in our world.
[00:02:58] We recognize that there are these things that we're designed for this way that God has made us to, and yet it never functions quite right. In fact, it can be extremely frustrating and challenging if you look at the question provided in your bulletin, and the answer there, we're given the answer to this question, how did God create man?
[00:03:26] And the answer from the scriptures, summarized this way, is, God created man, male and female, after his own image in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, with dominion over the creatures.
[00:03:40] Well, that sounds pretty good, right? And in fact, it was good. The scriptures tell us, God tells us that when he made us, he made us very good in knowledge, knowing, being able to discern good from evil, and knowing God, especially in our place with him, righteousness. We were made in a way that was not struggling with sin, was not always broken and frustrated, but we were made as those who were righteous before the Lord, without a mediator, at peace with God in his garden, in holiness as well, on belonging to the Lord, being a part of this society that he had put together, this world that he had put together.
[00:04:39] We were special to him, set aside, marked to do a particular job, right, to work, and to keep that garden, to expand it, to be fruitful and multiply, to have dominion over the creatures.
[00:04:53] There was goodness in this. There was alignment of values and purpose and goals. All of these things were fit together. Well, life now under the sun in this world is very different. And we know this. And the scriptures give testimony to this and to our experiences.
[00:05:18] I'd like you to turn with me to ecclesiastes, one of my favorite books of the Bible. Ecclesiastes, chapter one.
[00:05:28] We're going to read the last half of one and the first half or so of two.
[00:05:39] Let's see if you recognize any frustrations here in your own lives.
[00:05:46] So, ecclesiastes one, beginning at verse twelve, what's going to happen is the author is going to go through these different categories of life and show and express the frustration we feel in them, the misalignment, the sense that there's this good thing, this goal, this thing that we're designed for, and yet we fall short, and the world falls apart, and things don't seem to work like they're supposed to.
[00:06:15] So, ecclesiastes 112.
[00:06:17] 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 the sun.
[00:06:27] It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.
[00:06:34] I have seen everything that is done under the sun. And behold, all is vanity, a striving after wind.
[00:06:42] What is crooked cannot be made straight. What is lacking cannot be counted.
[00:06:47] 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 no wisdom and to no madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind.
[00:07:10] For in much wisdom is vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.
[00:07:23] So let's pause here and think about this one for a moment. Right? We've all experienced this. Right? There's this sense in us that says, I should be a learner.
[00:07:34] I should be humble before the Lord. There's so much I don't know. There's so much I can learn and grow in, and I'm going to pursue it, and I'm going to learn, and I'm going to grow. But then, as we do, we don't just find up and up success.
[00:07:51] We find vexation. We find frustration in all kinds of ways, sometimes in the learning process itself, sometimes in the facts that we're learning, sometimes in the truths that just bring us heartache.
[00:08:06] Like, what is crooked cannot be made straight.
[00:08:09] What is lacking cannot be counted.
[00:08:12] There's this sense in which the more you know, the more you grow. And there's another sense in which the more you know, the more sad you are.
[00:08:22] He who increases knowledge increases sorrow.
[00:08:28] This is a hard truth, because on the one hand, the scriptures and there's whole. You know, if you look back, I'm looking right here at ecclesiastes. On this page. On the page next to it is proverbs calling us to wisdom. Right, everyone, let's go. Let's understand this world. Let's understand the reality we're in and work with that grain. Apply yourselves to wisdom. Proverbs says, seek it more than gold. Give anything up for it, pursue it. And then on the next page, you have, he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.
[00:09:02] Both these things are true.
[00:09:05] Something doesn't align.
[00:09:07] Something's not right.
[00:09:10] Let's continue reading chapter two.
[00:09:13] I said in my heart, come now, I will test you with pleasure. Enjoy yourself. But behold, this also is vanity.
[00:09:21] I said, of laughter, it is mad and of pleasure. What use is it? I searched with my heart how to cheer my body with wine, my heart still guiding me with wisdom. And how to lay hold on folly till I might see what is good for the children of man to do under heaven. During the few days of their life, I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. I made gardens and parks and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. I made myself pools from which to water the forests of the trees. I bought male and female slaves and had slaves who were born in my house. I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me. In Jerusalem, I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. I got singers, both men and women and many concubines, the delight of the sons of man. So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem also, my wisdom remained with me, and whatever my eyes desired, I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil. And this was my reward for all my toil.
[00:10:39] Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had experienced in doing it. And behold, all was vanity and a striving after the wind. And there is nothing to be gained under the sun.
[00:10:55] Nothing to be gained under the sun, coming from a man who has just done everything he can to gain everything he can. He looks at it all and he's like, what's the point?
[00:11:05] Perhaps you've experienced this before. You've wanted something so badly, maybe a certain amount of money in your bank account, maybe a certain possession. And there's this part of you that feels like, okay, once I get this thing, everything is going to be fine. And then you get it, and you're like, this doesn't feel like as big a deal as I thought it was going to be.
[00:11:25] Why is a little bit faster Internet not changing my life or whatever, right?
[00:11:35] There's this sense in us that we say God has filled the world with good things.
[00:11:41] Good things should bring me pleasure. Good things should bring me joy. Working hard, toiling after worthwhile projects, he's basically doing a kind of Eden project here, isn't he? Planting trees and pools, creating this great garden, expanding it, all this kind of stuff. He's trying to do the thing right. He's trying to be Adam in a way, but what's the point? He says, there's nothing to be gained under the sun.
[00:12:15] Now, Adam had a lot to gain.
[00:12:18] Adam was promised eternal life.
[00:12:22] If Adam has succeeded in his task. And we'll think more about this as we get into the next questions about the covenant that God made with Adam, the arrangement and promise that he gave to him.
[00:12:33] There was good things ahead of him, but also very bad things if he failed, which he did.
[00:12:41] If you eat of the tree, the fruit of the tree, you will surely die.
[00:12:48] The author of Ecclesiastes finds himself in this sort of post Eden place. He finds himself in this life under the sun that is marked by the curse that fell on Adam, a world in which toil happens, but so do weeds and frustration.
[00:13:08] We'll think about this more in a moment when we come to the last part of this chapter. Let's continue on. So now we're in chapter two, verse twelve.
[00:13:16] So I turn to consider wisdom and madness and folly. For what can the man do who comes after the king? Only what has already been done. Then I saw that there is more gain in wisdom than in folly, as there is more gain in light than in darkness. The wise person has eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness.
[00:13:40] And yet I perceived that the same event happens to all of them. Then I said to my own heart, then I said in my heart, what happens to the fool will happen to me also. Why then have I been so very wise? And I said in my heart that this is also vanity. For of the wise and of the fool, there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come, that in the days to come, all will have been long forgotten. How the wise dies, just like the fool. So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me. For all is vanity and is striving after the wind.
[00:14:22] So here he applies himself to wisdom, to really trying to get ahold of the benefits of wisdom. And he admits the benefits of wisdom, right? He says, there is more gain in it in wisdom than in folly. But then he comes to this conclusion. He's like, but then, so what? Everybody dies.
[00:14:44] The wise man dies, the fool dies. It's exactly the same. This feels then to him like a vanity. He even says, I hated life.
[00:14:57] The mismatch between the benefits of these things and the results that keep happening under the sun are in some ways driving him mad. He's hating his life. And then in the last section, hating toil, verse 18, I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, and who knows whether he'll be wise, whether he will be wise or a fool.
[00:15:25] Yet he will be master of all for which I have toiled, and under my wisdom, under the sun. This also vanity.
[00:15:33] So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun. Because sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it.
[00:15:49] This also is vanity and a great evil. What has man from all the toil and the striving of the heart with which he toils beneath the sun? For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night, his heart does not rest. This also is vanity, and we'll end there.
[00:16:10] So you see his point here. He says, you work hard, you apply yourself, you exercise all kinds of wisdom, all the best business practices, whatever. You build this fortune for yourself, and then you leave it to someone, and who knows what's going to happen? Wise person, maybe it would advance it, build on it, or a fool gone in a night.
[00:16:35] Well, that's frustrating and true. He's not wrong, is he? He's seeing things as they really are, and he's despairing as a result.
[00:16:50] The other part of it that he talks about is sometimes a person toils with wisdom, knowledge, skill, everything. But then they leave it to someone who did not toil for it, who was lazy and sat around. How's that fair? How does that make sense?
[00:17:06] Well, throughout the book, and there are other things that come along, he keeps making this point. Life under the sun is vanity, a striving after the wind, and it's depressing.
[00:17:23] He despairs, and we can despair as well, if that's all that we see.
[00:17:29] If all that we see and we know is our experience. Like that tool I mentioned, you know, a tool that doesn't work and do what it's designed to do, a world that doesn't work and doesn't do what it's designed to do, it can be incredibly discouraging.
[00:17:49] Perhaps you've been at a point where in your life where you don't just hear the author of ecclesiastes and say, yeah, that is hard, but where you just can barely breathe because it's so hard.
[00:18:04] Perhaps you've been in your life where you feel the pressures of all the work that you have done, and then internal family things that are just ripping it apart, or things at work or things in society, all the work that's been built up and done, and then things just disintegrating.
[00:18:27] Wouldn't it be nice if we could look at something beyond this world, something beyond the things under the sun to things that last?
[00:18:39] Wouldn't it be nice if there was something to hold onto, where thieves couldn't take it away, rust destroy it? Moths eat it up?
[00:18:55] There is the author. Ecclesiastes is just getting warmed up. There's more to the book, and this book is placed within the Bible as a whole.
[00:19:09] You can't read ecclesiastes and come to a conclusion that the Bible has a pollyannish view about our lives. Just pure optimism and joy. Go forward and everything is going to be fine. No, the Lord knows suffering. The Lord knows the curse.
[00:19:28] He's given the curse, if we're really frank about it, but not unjustly, not wrongly.
[00:19:36] The experience and the disconnects and the misalignment and the frustrations and the vanity and the toil and the striving, it's because of sin and the consequences of sin.
[00:19:49] God created man, male and female, after his own image, in knowledge, in righteousness, in holiness, with dominion over the creatures.
[00:19:59] And then man threw it all away.
[00:20:04] God cursed mankind for this.
[00:20:08] But God also promised salvation, salvation from life under the sun, salvation to a new heavens and a new earth, a glorified realm in which that frustration and sorrow and brokenness would no longer be present.
[00:20:31] It would require, however, the fixing of the problem, the healing of our brokenness, of our souls and of the world as a whole.
[00:20:44] And the way that God solved that was by becoming man.
[00:20:50] He takes on humanity unto himself and then does the thing that Adam failed to do.
[00:20:59] He lived the life that Adam failed to live.
[00:21:04] And in his victory, which was glorious, in his resurrection, in his current rule, the design of man, the purpose of man that we began with to serve God, to love him, to enjoy him, he fulfilled it all.
[00:21:34] Jesus fulfilled everything on our behalf. On our behalf.
[00:21:39] That's why, if you look at your sheet in revelation 411, we read, thou art worthy, o Lord, to receive glory and honor and power, for thou has created all things, and by thy pleasure they are and were created.
[00:21:54] God created all of these things. But then God created a new heavens and a new earth. He prepares a place for us that we might live and reign with him forever.
[00:22:07] Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of all of these things. And in that way we have this glorious hope that allows us to both look realistically at our world and say, yeah, life under the sun is really hard. It's really hard, but my citizenship is in heaven.
[00:22:27] This world is really tough, but this world is not all that there is.
[00:22:34] If all that there was was this world, indeed, everything would be vanity and toil and struggle. But it's not all that there is.
[00:22:44] God has given to me a new place, a new country, a new kingdom, and on top of that, he has made me fit for it.
[00:22:54] So if you look at the verses on your paper in Colossians and Ephesians, two very similar verses about what God does for us in Christ, he says that we have put on the new man in Colossians 310, which was renewed in knowledge after the image of him who created him, Ephesians 424, and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and in true holiness.
[00:23:24] The good news for us is that even though we were broken, God is bringing healing. Even though we were dead, God is bringing life. And even now he's conforming us to the image of his son, the glorified man, the glorified Adam, the one who has already resurrected from the dead and is called the firstfruits as a way to remind us that we will soon follow him.
[00:23:57] So as you experience the frustrations of this life, as you feel this misalignment between the world we live in and what we seem to be designed for, don't get too frustrated.
[00:24:10] But instead, look to Christ, who has come into this world to redeem us, to conform us to his own image, and to prepare us for the world to come.
[00:24:21] In the world to come, there will be no frustrations, no sorrows, no empty strivings and toil. And even those things that we experience now, God is using to prepare us for what is to come.
[00:24:35] Let's pray.
[00:24:37] Our heavenly Father, we thank you for the world that you have made, and we thank you for the joys and the pleasures that are in it. Even though there is also struggle and difficulty, we are particularly thankful not only for the joys and the pleasures and the wisdom and the work, but for the way that we can do these things. Nothing, only with a spirit of toil and struggle, but we can eat and drink to the glory of God. Your glory, you who made us and made this world, but also are redeeming us and saving us.
[00:25:14] Lord, when we eat our bread and drink our drinks, we can feel frustrated about this and that thing. But we also know that you are at work and preparing us for things that are to come.
[00:25:29] We ask that you would help us to live our lives here in this world as citizens of heaven, that you would help us to look forward to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and to be thankful for what he has done and for the dominion that he now has over all of the creatures. Indeed, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to him in that authority. Lord, give us hearts of faith and hearts of submission in his authority and his resurrection. Give us hearts that desire to serve him and share the good news about him. With our brothers and sisters all over the world.
[00:26:09] We pray for your salvation. May it be mighty. May it be active. May it be glorious. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
