Ecclesiastes 1 - The Truth Behind the See-Through Suit
Tom Shrader introduces the book of Ecclesiastes, emphasizing that Solomon wrote from a position of having everything the world offers - wealth, wisdom, power, and pleasure - yet concluded that life 'under the sun' is meaningless. Solomon's perspective comes not from failure but from success, making his observations about the futility of earthly pursuits particularly credible. Shrader argues this book helps believers understand both the world they live in and themselves, preparing them for the tension between life's apparent meaninglessness and real faith in God.
“Solomon is not a loser who's at the end of his life bitter and angry, he's at the top of his game - it's that guy who speaks and writes at the end of his life autobiographically.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Reflections From the Top of the Heap (2007)
Recorded: May 03, 2007
Duration: 37 min
Themes: meaninglessness, purpose, worldliness, success, wisdom, wealth, emptiness, fulfillment, successful businessman, wealthy individual, seeking purpose, questioning meaning, feeling empty despite success, new believer, struggling with materialism, middle-aged adult
Scripture: Ecclesiastes 1:1-11, Ecclesiastes 5:15, Job 1:21, Luke 12:16, 1 Kings
Theological Themes: vanity, futility, earthly pursuits, temporal things, biblical wisdom, solomon's teaching, worldly philosophy, creation theology
Full Transcript
Ecclesiastes 1 - Life Under the Sun
After much confusion, all on my part, we are starting today on the book of Ecclesiastes. I thought I did this a couple years ago, and a gentleman came up last week and said, "No, you said you were going to do it, but you didn't do it." That didn't sound right, so I checked with Sharon, and she said we're good to go on this.
We're going to look at, for me, one of those books that I'd put in the "you really need to get figured out" category. I was doing an interview with a student seminarian a couple of months ago, and he said, "If you were going to teach, you had a church, and you were going to put out a teaching schedule, and you didn't have forever"—which I pointed out to him is true of everyone—"what would you teach?" I said I would want people to understand Genesis 3, because I think you've got to have that to understand the whole world. I'd want to teach a gospel, and I'd probably say Mark, just because it's short and quick. Then you need a book from Paul—if you have time, you do Romans; if not, Ephesians. And then I said, the book of Ecclesiastes.
Why Ecclesiastes Matters
This is the book that will help you understand the world you live in, and yourself. I've told the story: Jamie and I were driving to a Young Life camp, and he said, "What have you learned lately?" I said, "I've learned the Bible is true." He said, "Well, I don't feel like I need to write that down." I said, "I get that. But when we say I think it's true, we always mean the 'get saved' and all that stuff, which is good, important, got to have it. But it's true for getting me through the day. It helps me understand the world I live in."
The book of Ecclesiastes is a wonderful book written by a unique guy. He doesn't identify himself. You see in Ecclesiastes chapter 1, verse 1: "The words of the preacher, the son of David." His name is Solomon.
Solomon's Unique Credibility
The thing about Solomon that I find really helpful and I think gives him credibility is God allowed Solomon to have or do whatever you think would make you happy. If you're a builder guy, Solomon built these great projects—we'll look at them in a couple of weeks. He was an author. We're told in 1 Kings that he spoke 3,000 proverbs and 1,005 songs. He had this massive wealth. If you could calculate his wealth or put it in present value, it would exceed all of the guys today.
He had, we're told, 40,000 stalls of horses for chariots and 12,000 horsemen. Just to run his household for a day, it took 600 bushels of flour, 600 bushels of meal, 10 fat oxen, 20 pasture-fed oxen, 100 sheep besides deer, gazelle, roebucks, and fowl. He had dominion over vast areas. He was wise. He had the largest library in the world.
If you are one who likes fine wines, he was into that. If sex is your thing, he had 700 wives—the original 700 Club. I just add that in there, more for the guys than the girls. He had 700 wives and 300 concubines. So he had 1,000 women whose mission was to make him satisfied sexually. He could—and the math's not perfect, but to give you the scope of this—he could be with three girls every day of the year, take a few holidays off and Super Bowl Sunday off, Iowa homecoming, and never see the same girl twice.
Here's what I want you to get, and I think it's important: Solomon is not a loser who's at the end of his life bitter and angry. He's at the top of his game. He's the guy that would be filling Talking Stick Arena at $99 a pop to have people come and learn to do things the Solomon way. It's that guy who speaks, writes, at the end of his life, autobiographically, and offers us some valuable insights.
Solomon's Assessment of Life
One of the things he does in Ecclesiastes 1, verse 2, is give you his assessment of life right from the top. Look with me: "Vanity of vanities, says the preacher, vanity of vanities, all is vanity." Some of your translations will say, "Meaningless, meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless."
Then he asks, "What advantage does a man have in all his work, which he does under the sun?" There's a key phrase there, and you should underline it, yellow it, mark it, highlight it. The phrase is "under the sun." Solomon is saying this: when I look at life on a horizontal plane, meaning this is it, Solomon's conclusion is it's absolutely meaningless. It's here, it's gone, it's a vapor. It's futile.
There's a tension in this. One author writes these words: "Ecclesiastes is powerful exactly because it presents the tension and struggle between the teacher's sense of futility and his very real faith in God." It's 7:15 on a Thursday morning. Some of you have days with projects in them and decisions to be made and important things to do, and you come in here and the first thing you hear is all of this is meaningless under the sun. I've made the observation to our staff: 90% of the stuff we work on is a waste of time. We're just spinning our wheels. We're getting each other angry and we're getting all riled up about stuff that doesn't matter.
The Cycles of Nature
Here's what he says in verse 4: "A generation goes and a generation comes, the earth remains forever. The sun rises, the sun sets, and hastening to its place, it rises again." He says look at the creation around you. One of the things—I've been doing this since 1987, that's a long time—and I've seen whatever that is, 30 years, I've seen the cycles of life, the cycles of nature. We come in here in December and it's dark even when we're halfway through our session. In three or four months, that sun is up and it'll be hot by the time we get here. You see it, and Solomon's making the argument about nature: it just rolls on.
It's the Grand Canyon. I've lived here since 1975, and I've been to the Grand Canyon once. The reason was I finally got shamed by people who said, "You live in Arizona, you've never been to the Grand Canyon." I said, "Well, that's true," and so finally
One day I said to Susan, "Why don't you get the girls and we'll drive to the Grand Canyon?" So we got up there, and this is exactly true. Have you ever been to the Grand Canyon? This is exactly what I'm going to say to you is exactly true. It looks exactly like the picture. I couldn't believe it. I got there and that was the first thing I said: "This looks just like the picture." We're there at 30 seconds, and the girl said, "Dad, where's the gift shop?"
We went into the gift shop, and I said, "Do you want to drive down, walk down?" They said, "No, we want to go home." So we got in the car, we drove out, and there's an IMAX theater on the one end. They said, "Let's go in there." So we go into the IMAX, and there is this breathtaking video of the Grand Canyon. Well, I don't get that sense of the Grand Canyon.
Here's where I get it. I get it at the ocean. When I stand on the ocean, up at Sea Ranch, at Coronado—we go to Coronado usually that week before Christmas, so it's pretty deserted—I like to sit on the bench in front of the Dell and make up stories about the people I see and who they are. I try to figure out, is that his wife? Is that his girlfriend? I have all sorts of games I like to play. But I watch the ocean. Here's one thing: the ocean doesn't care if it's Christmas week, or the Fourth of July, or if Kennedy got assassinated, or the stock market went up or down. It just rolls and rolls and rolls.
Solomon's Assessment of Life
That's the point that Solomon is making. We've sinned, we've fallen. God is a wrathful God and a God who judges. He's a holy God, but He's also a God of love. If we're going to understand the next seven or eight weeks together, we've got to understand that Solomon's assessment is that life is meaningless.
Here are some questions Tommy Nelson suggests that the book of Solomon tells us and answers: Where is God when bad things happen? How can I keep from becoming bitter toward God? How do I deal with the uncertainty of life? What do I do when I'm not sure of God's will? When bad things happen, is it because I don't have enough faith? Those are the issues of life.
You hear me talk—there's hardly a week I don't mention Larry Wright. Larry's widow Sue, about three or four weeks ago, had a stroke. She is in a care facility up in Northwest Phoenix, and she has no desire to power through the rehab. That rehab is tough sled. I take my physical therapy Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and I've got two or three stroke victims in there.
There's one lady, Maggie—she's my favorite. I told Maggie the other day (it made her cry, which was not what I was trying to do), but I said, "Maggie, you are my hero. You might be the most courageous person I know." I saw her getting there. She was there ahead of me, and she was getting her walker out of the trunk. She's got her walker and her leg brace on and her cane. She gets up there, and she can't do a lot of what we do, so she doesn't sit down. That's the inevitability of life. What do you do with that?
Two Men, Same Conclusion
Here's something that came to my mind in this study. It's one of those things that I thought, "Wow, that's really interesting" (but I doubt you will). Solomon's conclusion in Ecclesiastes, or observation, in Ecclesiastes 5:15 is this: "I came naked from my mother's womb. So I will return as I came. I came with nothing, I leave with nothing."
Job, in Job chapter 1 verse 21 said, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will return." I was struck by this. Both men arrived at the same conclusion. One did it from the position of utter loss of everything, and the other did it acquiring everything.
Whether you're at the bottom and you're looking around and saying, "I don't have anything"—your conclusion is, "I came with nothing, I'm going to leave with nothing." You get all this stuff and you look around and you go, "What am I going to do with this? How many of these do I need? How many deals can I make?"
The Tension of Material Things
I know the tension here. I've done this long enough to know the tension. This is not an anti-material message. You know me, it's not that. It's my favorite time of the year. Everybody right now in Major League Baseball is tied for first. That's a good thing (unless you're a Diamondback fan, because it's only going to last about a game). But you're tied for first.
How would a manager at the beginning of the year, who really understands this, how do you do it? You're Joe Maddon, you got the Cubs. What do you say to them? You know what he said to them last year? I bet there's not many of you know this. The Cubs motto last year, do you remember what it was? "Try not to suck." That was his message to the world champions. Try not to suck. Well, they didn't. Well, what are you going to say now?
I was doing a Major League Baseball conference a few years ago. Somebody said—I don't know if it's true or not, but it preaches well, so I want it to be true—that the number one divorce rate of all the teams from the year before was the team that won the World Series. Now you wouldn't think that: got the World Series, got the ring, got the bonus. But all that comes at a price. How many of them can you have? Tom Brady's running out of fingers and jerseys.
But what do you do? I'm not saying that's not important. This does not sound like Tony Robbins, I know. But this is reality. It's not saying don't pursue greatness. It's saying, understand that you're not going to find fulfillment through a person or place or thing other than Jesus.
Personal Reflection
I moved here in 1975. I moved into an apartment complex at 68th Street and Osborne, Ciento East and Ciento West. I moved into Ciento West. About three or four nights a week, I would track half a mile up to the Valley Hall, get loaded and figure out how to get home. That was my deal. So I'm one day at Ciento West in apartment 202.
The Disillusionment of Marriage and Expectations
Apartment 201 was empty, and these two girls were moving in. I'm somewhat superficial, and I haven't talked to him yet, so I can only make a judgment based on physical appearance. One of them was good, and one of them was not as good. So the good one I got to know, and she was really unique.
I discovered they were two friends from Boise, Idaho, who were moving down here to have one year before they went back to Boise, got their jobs, got married, settled down, had a family. So I started spending some time with her, and I'd never been around anybody like her. She was so positive and was always smiling. I couldn't understand it—I'm from the Midwest. We just watch sports and eat and complain. That's what we do. That's how we're raised.
I thought maybe I can get her to go out with me, and she did. Some of you have lived through this story. Then she told me one day, "I'll never go out with you ever again." But I'd heard that so many times, it didn't mean anything to me. I didn't know what she was saying. Anyway, long story short, she finally agreed to marry me.
I'm standing there, and she's coming down the aisle, and I'm thinking, "I'm the luckiest guy in the world because she's going to change me and make me like her." I'm the only guy in the world, maybe, that ever got married hoping my wife would change me. So the guy went through his deal, and he said to her, "Do you take Tom to be your husband?" And I thought, "There's still a 50-50 shot she's going to say no. I bought all this champagne and cake, but I can eat it myself."
She said yes. We're married about 60 days, and I came home and said to her, "I married you to make me happy. I'm not happy." And she said, "Well, Slick, let me tell you, you're no bargain either." I didn't get it then. I get it now.
The Futility of Looking to Others for Complete Happiness
Big point here: I was asking her to do what only God could do. We talk about this all the time—you know, you're going to meet your spouse's needs. Well, I can't do it.
Sandy's out of town, and whenever she goes out of town, we always have dinner the night before. It seems like we get in these serious conversations. This would have been Tuesday night, and I said to her, "I just want to make you happy. I want you happy. But the bad news is, I don't think I can do it." This is taking a lot of effort to say: I'm not perfect. I can't do everything.
What Solomon is saying is, in this world, you're not going to find complete happiness. You'll find fleeting happiness.
The Endless Cycles of Life
He goes on in verse six: "The wind blows toward the south, then turns north. Around and around it goes, blowing in circles." Verse seven: "All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full." Verse eight: "Everything is wearisome beyond description. No one can see it all. No one can hear it all."
Let me read you that verse from two other translations. The King James: "All things are full of labor; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing." The New Living: "Everything is wearisome beyond description. No matter how much we see, we are never satisfied. No matter how much we hear, we are not content." The Message: "Everything's boring, utterly boring—no one can find any meaning in it. Boring to the eye, boring to the ear."
The Weariness of Experience
I was talking to a guy the other day who took a Viking cruise down one of the rivers—Rhine or whatever—and I said, "How was it?" He said, "The first three days, I must have taken 200 pictures. And by the fourth day, I'm going, 'There's another old cathedral. There's another one of those things.'" How many of these can you see before you go, "Oh yeah, oh yeah, another sunset"?
My daughter Sarah is a big sunset girl. I probably once a week will get a text from her, and it's almost always during dinner. Our dinner looks out toward the west, and she'll say, "Look at that." You know this—we get these amazing sunsets. But chances are, you're driving home complaining the sun's in your eyes, and the guy from Bemidji is saying, "That's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen." It's the way life begins to play itself out.
The Problem of Being Forgotten
Then you have a problem, and that's nobody remembers you. "That which has been is what will be" (verse nine), "so there is nothing new under the sun." Verse 11: "There is no remembrance of former things." From The Message: "Nobody remembers what happened yesterday. And the things that will happen tomorrow? Nobody will remember them either." Don't count on being remembered.
Sandy is from St. Louis, and I've grown to really like going to St. Louis. A little muggy in the summer, but it's great to be there during baseball season. They are great baseball fans, and you can take the train down, and it lets off right at Will Call. Get your tickets—I mean, it's perfect.
In the middle of St. Louis is a place called Forest Park, and that's where they had the 1904 World's Fair. It's the coolest thing—big hill that they slide down during the winter, which doesn't appeal to me, but she likes it. There's a golf course, and I forget what it is, but it's six miles to run around it. So she can run around it three times, and she's a happy girl, and that loosens her up to go do weights or whatever it is.
So we're in Forest Park, and she's showing me around. We stop at a stop sign, and there's a statue there, and I don't recognize the statue. I don't know if it's Abraham Lincoln—it's got a hat, you know. I said, "You know who that is?" She said, "No, I have no idea." I said, "How many thousands of people have driven by this statue and have no idea who it is?" It's somebody significant enough to put up a statue, and the only person that cares about it is the guy that's got to clean the bird droppings off of it once a week. That's your future, buddy. They're not going to put up a statue of you.
And Solomon's saying this very thing.
The Earthbound Life is Empty Existence
Let me drive toward the four concluding points on your outline. Number one is that the earthbound life is empty existence, and number two is that viewing nature drives home the brevity of life.
My father passed away 10 years ago, but I would go home every August for a week, and we would play golf every day at Davenport Country Club—my favorite course in the world. It's a great hill, great course, where I learned to play, and I love to play there.
So one day, it's raining, and my dad says we're not going to play today. When he would come down here and we'd get a rainy day, I'd say we're not going to play today. He would say, "We play 36 on a day like that." Well, I don't. So it's raining a little, and he said, "I'd like to go for a ride." Well, I love to go for a ride.
The Power of Simple Pleasures
At dinner Tuesday night, Sandy said that in retrospect, my answer didn't live up to the question. If you could have a day of fun and decadence—and I need to look up decadence—what would you do? I said, "You know, I'd love to go for a ride. I'd love to ride up to Carefree." I haven't been up to Carefree. When I first came to town, we used to go up there and go to the Boulders and walk around and go to these little places. The back way over from Rio Verde down to Fountain Hills was not paved—it was a gravel road. I said that, and probably some ice cream.
So my dad said, "Let's go for a ride," and I said, "That's great." So we're driving, and he's taking me through. "I'm going to show you the new part of town." He shows me this and everything is getting familiar, and I realize we're going to the cemetery.
Confronting Mortality
So it's my dad, so I can handle this. He said, "We're going to go in here. Your mother and I have bought our cemetery plot, and I want you to see it." So we go and we park, and he said, "It's up there. See that beautiful tree? Well, it's under that beautiful tree. Let's walk up there."
So we're walking and he's doing a tour. He said his mentor was a guy by the name of Carl Fidler. "I'm right here. Carl's right here." And I said, "You understand you're not going to be having coffee with them every morning, right?" And he gave me that look—I know.
So we get over there. He said, "Isn't this beautiful?" And I said, "Yeah, it's beautiful." And I turned and there's this brand new, gray colored marble that says in all caps, "SCHRADER." And on the other side is "James E. Helen I" with their birth date and a dash. I'm struck by the inevitability of that in everybody's life. We know it, right?
I had taught at a church last Sunday. The guy sitting behind me was 103. I said, "How are you?" And he said, "They took my car away when I turned 100." You better get over it, buddy, because I don't know how many years you got left, but you've got to be playing the back nine. 103!
The Brevity of Life
Well, there's a brevity of life to this, and I need to understand the temporariness of it. My daughter called the other day and said, "What are you doing?" And I said, "Well, I'm doing nothing." But I knew that she wanted something and I didn't want to do it. She said, "I'm going to take the kids to the park and meet Haley there." So all the kids are getting together—that means eight kids at the park. "Would you like to join us?"
Well, I've already said I'm not doing anything. What kind of jerk would I look like if I say no? So I said, "Oh sure, I'd love it." And I go over and I'm watching, and I couldn't help but remember when I first took them to the park. We lived over at Granite Reef and Montebello, and Sarah could walk and Haley was in a stroller. We went over to the park, got out and played, came back, and somebody stole the stroller. I said to Sarah, "You're going to have to carry your sister all the way home." I don't know why, but I had that flashback, right? Haven't you? It goes by just like that.
Destined to Be Forgotten
Here's the third one: regardless of your accomplishments, you're destined to be forgotten. I had a friend who went over to California to his father's retirement party. He'd been with his company 40 years, and they had built a new building. They were having a retirement party over in the old building, and his dad said, "I want you to see the new building."
And they're having this big celebration. "You've been so important to the company"—you know the speech, right? Blah, blah, blah, blah. So he said, "Come on, let's go over." So they go over to the new building. He takes his card and scans it, and it says, "Deactivated." That's you, buddy—deactivated. "I don't remember. I don't know who they are."
I started talking to the boys, and we'll be talking about Mickey Mantle. They'll kind of get Mickey Mantle. But if you get a little more into it—if you do Moose Skowron, they got no idea. If you do Ernie Banks, maybe. But if you do Ron Santo, you can run down the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, man, and they don't remember.
The Intelligent Conclusion: Human Futility
The last thing is the intelligent conclusion is human futility. Look at the Gospel of Luke if you could. So over to the New Testament, Luke chapter 12. It's a story—in fact, somebody mentioned it coming in. Jesus is telling a story: "Beware, and be on your guard against every form of greed."
Luke 12:16: "The land of a rich man was very productive. And he began reasoning to himself, saying, 'What shall I do, since I have no place to store my crops?' Then he said, 'This is what I will do: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones.'" In my Bible, I've circled the singular personal pronouns—there's 10 of them. "This is what I will do. I will tear down my barns." I, I, I, I.
Jesus said, "You know, you don't need to worry about your life. Consider the ravens. You're here today and gone tomorrow."
Now let me tell you what this is not. This is not moping around saying, "Life is futile and hopeless. I'm all done. I quit." It's not that. It's to say, "I'm still going to work hard and I'm still going to strive." But in the context of putting things in their proper place.
Work as though it depends on me. But I understand God's sovereign and He's the one who's going to do it. At the end of all of this, Solomon says, in the last chapter of the book of Ecclesiastes, my conclusion is fear God and keep His command. So there you go.
There's your introduction. There's your charge. Does it make you want to go cold call all morning? Maybe, maybe not, but it should. But it's cold call with a different motivation or the proper motivation. We'll pick it up right there next week.
Father, thank You for this truth. Thank You for the reality of it. God, we pray that what we do and say brings honor and glory to You. Father, use us. Use us to achieve Your purpose in this world. Give us the ability to see things as You see them as they really are. We pray that in Christ's name. Amen.