Ecclesiastes Lesson 2

What is Vanity – 1:-2:11

The objective of this book is to fortify the believer by presenting the negative side of life, by showing what exists on the other side of the fence. The book of Ecclesiastes has tremendous meaning for us today because we have so many believers that are always looking for something plus the Word of God. We have people that have come to Lubbock Bible Church come here time and time again and even though they have sat under the teaching of the Word of God they have no production in their lives; it’s obvious why, because Bible doctrine that they have been exposed to has never got into their human spirit. We have had zero growth on some men in the part of leadership. This is not a pitch to get involved in certain activities; it’s simply stating the facts.

Ecclesiastes 1:2, “Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.” This word vanity is a word which means emptiness, it means transitoriness, and from verses 2-11 we have a summary of the content of vanity. Solomon is going to state his theme in this section. Later on we’ll be moving into another section of this book where he works with various details so support this position that he’s taken in verses 2-11. But verses 2-11 you might say form the teaching of the book of Ecclesiastes. This is an honest evaluation of where you are if you are a Christian and you are out of fellowship. At the time you received Christ you were put in union with Him; here’s where your position is legally, that position never changes, you cannot lose your salvation, impossible. People who say you can lose your salvation are very proud people because they think they can actually commit a sin that’s greater than the grace of God. That’s blasphemy, you can’t, if you sat down and deliberately tried to sin from now until the time you died the grace of God would still exceed any possible sin that you could discover, think of or actually commit.

Therefore the plan is based on grace and we have labeled that the new creation. Then we have the old creation and this old creation is cursed. The only place where there is light in the old creation in which we live, the material spiritual universe is inside this circle; this is our legal position above the line, below the line in your experience as a believer there’s only one place of happiness and that’s inside that circle. You are at any time either in that circle or out of that circle. You are either in fellowship or out of fellowship and if you are out of fellowship the Bible describes your condition as carnal, a carnal believer. And carnal believers have all sorts of problems. This is the old creation and what Solomon is going to do in verses 2-11 is he is going to show you what life is like out there, in the old creation. He’s going to give you a candid appraisal of what life is going to be like out there in the old creation, so that it should cure you of any desire you might have to find happiness on your terms instead of the Word of God’s terms.

That’s always a problem with believers; believers say if I had this or if I had that, or if I was married to somebody else, or if I was single, if they had some other thing then they would be happy, and of course that’s blasphemous. You are only happy the way God has designed the universe if you are in fellowship with Him. This book is a book to prove that you cannot be happy outside of fellowship with Him. So when Solomon says “all is vanity” he speaks of this whole area, that’s what “all” means, the whole entire old creation, including your soul as it operates under the system of carnality.

As we’ve said, when we look at the human anatomy spiritually we have certain functions of the human soul. When the flesh controls our life this is part of the old creation; you have these functions, volition, personal affections, mentality and bodily affections that are in no way altered, except under demonic activity when the volition is destroyed and the mentality when is destroyed, things like hypnosis. Watch out for people that talk about yield to the Lord because the Bible doesn’t say yield, it says “present,” it’s an act of your volition. So whenever the flesh or the Holy Spirit is controlling, all these functions are operating. The point is that they’re operating your soul life or under the eternal life given to you by God the Holy Spirit. When you are controlled by the flesh, channel two from your human spirit is blocked off, therefore the only source of life you have is the normal bios life, the physical life, and psuchikos life which is the life that comes out of the residue of the human spirit to keep you going, and you have negative volition, personal affections, unstable, impatient, irresponsible, approbation lust, power lust, materialism lust, etc. Whenever you see these things going it’s simply the personal affections of a believer who is out of fellowship and his emotional pattern is all in disorder.

This is one of the problems that we have as believers; when we are out of fellowship our emotional pattern is involved in a tremendous amount of disorder and decay; it participates in the same kind of decay as the body does, therefore we have these things, irresponsibility, approbation lust, power lust, materialism lust, all these things that come out that are involved when the flesh is in control of your personal affections. Mentality, confusion, worry, distraction, occupation with human viewpoint, again, notice the functions of the soul do not change, they’re still there but when they are controlled by the flesh they produce a certain thing which we call human good plus personal sins. When you are controlled by the flesh don’t think that you’re committing personal sins left and right, not necessarily. You have one sin that you’re out of fellowship, but you can produce wonderful works when you’re out of fellowship, totally out of fellowship, and yet you can counterfeit practically every activity of the Christian life. If you know the lingo of a certain Christian group you can pass; if you give money in the collection plate and volunteer to do this and volunteer to do that you can pass, but it’s all human good, it doesn’t come from the Holy Spirit leading you personally.

So when we have the soul controlled by the flesh then we have this decay. That too is part of the vanity Solomon speaks of in verse 2, “all is vanity.” So even his own life is vanity; as a believer it’s vanity, it’s emptiness, it’s transitory when he does not experience the filling of the Holy Spirit. But under the filling of the Holy Spirit we find these functions still exist but they begin to have a different orientation. So instead of negative volition we have positive volition; the indwelling Holy Spirit in the human spirit comes through channel two and affects the personal affections so now they are under control, your emotional pattern doesn’t run away with you, you have stability and you don’t guide your life by emotions like a lot of Christians, that think because they have a tingly sensation that that’s God the Holy Spirit leading them. That’s not God the Holy Spirit leading them, you could have had a lousy supper or something, it has nothing to do with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit leads through your conscience and through a quiet, almost unspoken voice. That’s how the Holy Spirit leads, not through some sensational emotional blowup.

And then we have mentality and the mentality of your soul, when you are filled with the Spirit lives in the Word of God, it thrives on the Word of God; it becomes occupied with Christ, you have a relaxed mental attitude, you don’t tense up, you don’t sweat what other people have to say about you because you know you are right before God and if you are right before God you could care less what other people think. These are wonderful things that are ours if we but use the assets that God has given us. Bodily affections are under control and your body is empowered for service. So it seems quite obvious that one of the two states every Christian is in, one is desirable and one is not; one is full and one is vain and the flesh is vain.

In verse 3 Solomon makes a second statement about vanity in general, “What profit has a man in all his labor” or toil “which he takes under the sun?” The word “profit” here is exactly that, it’s a commercial term in the Hebrew. Ask yourself for a moment, what does economic profit mean? Obviously we have a lot of socialists that hate the word profit; we have senators and congressmen in this country that are trying to ruin the middle class. It’s the middle class in this country that’s paying the bills. The middle class is the glue that’s holding this country together. Profit—profit motive, the Bible is pro capitalistic and the profit motive in Scripture means that you can’t exist without making a profit; profit is necessary to provide you with a means to live. This is the meaning of profit, through economic activities and through the economic processes you get something out of those processes called profit and profit gives you the means by which you live.

What’s the analogy that Solomon is making in verse 3; he’s saying if you live as a carnal believer, if you live out of fellowship, if you live with all your life focused on the old creation there’s no profit there, there’s nothing that sustains you by way of spiritual life. It would be like engaging in a business where you never can make any money; how long are you going to stay in business? Not very long. It’s the same thing here, life lived apart from the filling of the Holy Spirit is vain and one of the signs of this is that there is no profit, we work, work, work, we run around and do all these activities and yet there’s no spiritual profit. Some of you have been involved in the religious rat race where you got to this meeting, that meeting, show up over here and lead this class and that class and you’re so busy your soul has no nourishment whatever. Do you know why? It’s very simple, you can’t get nourishment for your soul apart from the Word of God and if you do not take time, and I don’t just mean putting your appearance at 11:00 o’clock Sunday morning. I mean throughout the week if you do not take time to be involved in the Word of God you have no profit in your life.

You can get involved in all the activities you want to and still there’s no profit in it because “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” So if your life is dull and you have the spiritual blahs, chances are that you are not taking in the Word of God systematically. Yet what do we have in our country; we have Christians by the carload who are involved in activities, this activity, that activity, I’m too busy to study the Word, I’ve got to do something, I’m running here, running there and doing something else. Therefore there’s no profit and they run dry. There’s no reason for a Christian to run dry, God has given you an unlimited food supply in His Word. That is what is going to sustain you. People give scintillating testimonies and three months later you don’t see them, never around. Do you know why? They didn’t get involved in the Word, no growth so they just flake out. Just like a businessman who makes no profit.

So verse 3, Solomon is making the analogy of a profit motive in the economic system compared with the profit factor in your spiritual life. “What profit has a man” in all his toil; these are all the activities that you are involved with, the housewife or the husband working wherever he works, person in school, all of it. Is your objective in school is just to get the assignment done or is your objective in school to relate what you are learning to the Word of God? If it isn’t to relate what you’re learning to the Word of God and develop yourself intellectually as a Bible-believing, no profit. This is why so many college students are ready to toss in the towel, they can’t studies, there’s no unity, it’s just a bunch of pieces. Apart from the fact of individual professors involved a lot of it is simply due to their lack of orientation of taking these facts and these pieces and putting them together into an overall Biblical framework.

“What profit has a man in all his labor which he takes under the sun?” And the phrase “under the sun” is the most important phrase in this prologue. “Under the sun” defines the area of discussion for this book. You are going to be fouled up unless you realize that this book limits the discussion to “under the sun,” not above the sun, therefore the emphasis is going to be on the old creation minus the Word. It’s the Word of God that gives us contact with that which is above the sun, God Himself. So therefore cut the Word of God out of your life and you just have the old creation; therefore you’re miserable, you’re suffering, you have no color, no taste, no animation to your life. The reason is very simple; you’ve cut yourself off from the power supply. “Under the sun” there is no profit; “under the sun” means simply yourself minus Bible doctrine, apart from any revelation of God.

Now verses 4-7 deal with the old creation; verses 2-3 dealt with a summary of vanity, now verses 4-7 are going to expand the theme of the old creation. Verses 8-11 are going to expand the theme of the believer’s frustration with the old creation. But verses 4-7 depict the old creation with all of the problems that it has. “One generation passes away, and another generation is coming,” these are Hebrew participles and a Hebrew participle since it is a moving picture tense the idea that Solomon has that he’s trying to portray to you is that this is happening simultaneously, as one generation is going another generation is coming. In other words there’s no stability there, one generation, the older generation is passing off the scene and there’s just another generation, constant flux, constant flux, and the frustrating thing about it, his last conclusion, “the earth abides forever.” So that man who was destined to be the lord of creation finds himself involved on a treadmill; one generation comes, another generation goes but the earth keeps on standing.

Modern man has felt this and some of you have asked me why is evolution is so popular. Put this phrase together and I think you’ll see why the current myth of the 20^th century known as evolution, why it has such a tremendous appeal to people. Now it doesn’t appeal on the basis of scientific fact; there are certain hypotheses of scientific data but basically there’s no evidence for evolution. It’s most interesting. And yet this is one of the most widely assumed theories going today. Why then do men insist upon believing the theory of evolution when in the face of other conflicting data, like the second law of thermodynamics, etc. this seems utterly ridiculous? It’s to answer the problem of verse 4, man doesn’t like to be on a treadmill, he doesn’t like to be in a situation where he comes and he goes and there’s no progress and there’s just a lot of wheels going around and that’s all his life is. One generation comes, big deal, and another one goes, that’s all it is; and that’s all the unbeliever has and so he’s trying to jack himself up with the idea that somehow in the middle of all of this cyclic work one generation coming and another going, that somehow there’s progress there.

That is why evolution is so popular, it’s a drug, it’s a hypnotic factor that the unbeliever must take to himself to keep from facing the horror of verse 4. It’s horrible and if you don’t feel its horribleness just go home and read it about 25 times to yourself, one generation comes and another one goes; that is all the unbeliever has. Some of you have been brought up in Christian homes. I am glad that I didn’t come to know Jesus Christ until college because I can still remember what it was like to think as an unbeliever. Some of you who have been raised in Christian homes have absolutely no appreciation for what it is in the mind of the unbeliever; you kind of look down your nose at the unbeliever and you have no sympathy for the unbeliever. You should, because unbelievers are suffering round about you and they may be laughing on the outside but they’re crying on the inside and the reason why they’re crying on the inside and the reason why they’re miserable is because of verses 4 and following, because this is all they’ve got. There’s no permanency, one generation is constantly coming and another generation is constantly going.

Verse 5, “The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to his place where he arose.” There’s a change in the translation here, “the sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and is hastening to his place only to rise again,” that’s the point. In other words, looked at in the ancient form the sun comes up and the sun goes down and then it just rotates around to come up the next morning. Monotony, that’s all it is, no progress, just monotony. And incidentally, that is one of the characteristics of a life lived in the flesh; monotony. Is life monotonous to you? Same old routine day in and day out, nothing new, same thing goes on and on, that’s a sign it’s just the power of the flesh operating. If the filling of the Holy Spirit is there, there will be joy and animation and you may be involved in the same activities but there’s always a different factor, something fresh each day. That’s a characteristic of the filling of the Spirit. So if your life is dull and blah and monotonous, that too is a sign that you are walking in the energy of the flesh, that is the production of the energy of the flesh, a total monotony. “The sun rises, the sun sets, and hastens to its place only to rise again.”

Verse 6, “The wind goes toward the south, and turns about to the north; it whirls about continually, and the wind returns again according to its circuits.” He takes the elements of nature, first the sun, then the wind, and then he says these things it’s just total monotony all the time, just total monotony, no change, no progress. And this is his complaint against life lived outside of this circle; outside of this circle Solomon says when I’m living in the old creation and I’m out of fellowship and I look around to see what happiness I can get out here all I find is monotony and vanity and I’m frustrated and that’s all I’ve go. That’s all you have if you are not filled with the Spirit.

Verse 7, “All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full. Unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.” Now you have water, sun, wind and water, and the water is involved in the same old monotonous cycle, no change, no progress, nothing promising, nothing is going to be different tomorrow than it is today. That’s basically all the unbeliever has; that’s all you have and what you want to ask God to show you in the depths of your heart as we go through this book of Ecclesiastes is that you’ll get an appreciation for the poverty of life outside the bottom circle. Just look at it, this is all you’ve got in life lived outside the bottom circle.

Beginning in verse 8 running through verse 11 we have man’s frustration. Verse 4-7 describe the old creation and verses 8-11 are man’s reaction to this. “All things are weary,” not “full of labor,” it means all things are tiresome, boredom, “man cannot utter it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.” The point is that he goes back to the mentality of his soul and he says look, I’ve got a soul, I’ve got volition, I’ve got personal affections, I’ve got mentality, I’ve got bodily affections and when I stop and think of human viewpoint that’s coming into the mentality of my soul, this is all I’ve got. “Man cannot utter it” and here we have the reflective portion of the mentality of your soul, “uttering” or speaking in the Hebrew means to think through something and talk about it to yourself. We would say the reflective portion of your mentality, when you sit down you think.

Did you ever notice, it’s interesting; people can’t stand to be by themselves for more than about 30 seconds? You watch, they either have to get a magazine, flick on the radio, flick on TV, as though there’s nothing interesting on their insides to contemplate, and relax without being constantly agitated and stimulated from the outside. This again is one of the signs of walking in the flesh; if you are filled with the Spirit there are lots of things that you can do. You can sit down for an hour and a half and pray, and mediate on the things of the Word of God, and completely not miss at all your environment. You don’t need external stimuli to have a life that means something. It all comes from the inside through the filling of the Spirit. So “man cannot utter it,” it refers to the reflective part of the mentality.

“…The eye is not satisfied with seeing,” here’s the perceptive part of the mentality, all these things that come in here, the mentality of the soul is asking look, I want to be filled with something, I want to be filled with something satisfying, I want to get my teeth in something that’s going to satisfy and I can’t, I look over here and it’s all monotony, I look over there and it’s all monotony, I look over here and it’s all decay and monotony and I’m tired of it. “…nor the ear filled with hearing,” the same thing here and here the ear speaks of other people’s mentality, people who may have learned things apart from you and they share what they’ve learned with you and that is boring. So nothing is stimulating to this individual. And Solomon is totally out of fellowship at this point and he’s describing all the horror and the pain and the dullness and the boredom of life lived outside of the filling of the Spirit. Ask yourself, why is it that our generation is turning to drugs, etc. It’s very easy to see, all you have to do is read verses 2-11, if that were your life, if that were my life I’d turn to drugs, I’d want something, I wouldn’t want to go through that, monotony, monotony, monotony, monotony, and if I didn’t know any spiritual truth why not drugs?

Verse 9, “The thing that has been, it is that which shall be,” these are famous quotes but nevertheless I want to point out certain things about these. “The thing that has been” or “whatsoever has been is that which shall be, and that which has been done is that which shall be done; there is no new thing under the sun,” and that’s hard to appreciate until you know Bible history and dispensations, but basically there is no new idea under the sun. You take modern philosophy that always thinks it’s so creative and yet most of the ideas of modern philosophy were prevalent before the time of Jesus Christ. You find ideas that are coming into our culture like war and peace; people say we’re tired of war. Do you realize there’s never been a generation that hasn’t been tired of war? Do you realize the Bible says in Matthew 24:6-7 there will be wars and rumors of wars over and over and over and over and over until the second return of the Lord Jesus Christ. People in our generation are saying we’re so tired of war things in our generation are going to be different.

Every generation has said that; don’t be snowed by some politician or some community leader that says we’re going to get rid of war in our generation. Nonsense! The Lord Jesus Christ said you’re going to have war, war, war, and when you don’t have hot wars you’re going to have cold wars, you’re going to have rumors of war so you might as well get used to it and don’t be like the United States where we are throwing out our military, deriding our military, malign the military, it’s the big thing now in our country. We’ve allowed the military to decline, we have weakened ourselves listening to these idiots that say our generation is going to be different, there’s going to be something new in our generation, we’re going to get rid of war, etc. It’s nonsense, don’t ever believe it.

The Bible-believing Christian citizen will always vote for a strong military defense because he realizes that this generation and our children are going to face war. In fact, our children, thanks to the military and foreign policy, are the ones who are going to pay for the foolishness of our generation. When you look at your children, just remember, there’s one thing that you can use to fortify them—get Bible doctrine into them because someday maybe that’s all they’ll have but if they’ve got Bible doctrine, no matter what happens in history they will have the resources to move on and keep moving on for Jesus Christ. If they don’t have it, they’ll fall apart. We have people today who would like to say the solution to all our problems is something new, something like world government, and yet if you know your Bible the first UN building was destroyed by Jesus Christ in Genesis 11.

So world government has been tried, they had a total, perfect world government, didn’t even have translators in the tower of Babel, imagine that. Didn’t have to have French, Spanish, Russian, Greek, no translating necessary because they had one complete language. They had a beautiful setup for one-world government and yet what happened in Genesis. God divided it; do you realize why He divided it? It’ simple, like the holds of a ship He divided the human race, fractured the human race would be a better word, up into racial, linguistic and cultural subdivisions. And the reason given in Genesis and else where for this is to act as quarantine compartments so that if one area of humanity gets polluted by negative volition and apostate religion that disease cannot spread through the entire human race. There is a reason why God has divided up the nation; it’s to act as quarantine. Now God knew that it would cause problems, God knew about Wycliffe, God knew about these missionaries that would have to learn these languages to teach the gospel, he knew all that and yet He said I am going to fracture the human race to protect the human race. If you have one-world government and you have the antichrist ahead of it, what kind of peace are you going to have? You’ll have peace all right, you’ll have peace because all the Christians are eliminated; that’s what kind of peace you’re going to have. So beware of this and just remember verse 9, it’s absolutely true for any phase, any area of the old creation, there is no new thing under the sun.

Verse 10, “Is there anything whereof it may be said, ‘See, this is new?’” That’s a quotation; it should be quotes before the word “see” and after the word “new.” “…It has already been of old time, which was before us.” Now obviously people say wait a minute, certainly we’ve had technological progress today. Certainly we’ve had new inventions, certainly those things are new, certainly those are before. Is that really so? Think back for a moment, think of the lens and the camera, do you think that’s a modern invention; what about your eye, God already designed a perfect camera, years before man ever thought of it. You stop and think of your eye, you’ve got a super sensory meter in that eye so you can have total sensitivity to light; you have automatic focusing. Do you know of a camera the size of your eyeball that has total light sensing, that has total ability to focus in full color, instantaneous reproduction. You have some Polaroid’s that can get you a picture back in about 60 seconds, do you realize your eye takes about a split second to have perfect color reproduction. No camera has ever been invented to parallel your eye. See, God preempted the technology. You have pumps; do you think pumps are new? What about your own heart. Somebody calculated your heart pumps 10,000 times a day for 70 years without a shutdown for maintenance. Tell me a pump that man has made that can perform that way. Think of air conditioning, a little technological device like air conditioning, and yet bees in their beehive have had air conditioning all the time so that the temperature inside the beehive is always 94 degrees, regardless of what the temperature is outside, always the same, heating and cooling are perfect, perfect system. But man has come along and picked up some of the ideas and called them inventions, but basically they’re not new, God had them there all the time. All we do is copy.

Verse 11, now this is what really is going on in the old creation. “There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those things,” with those people literally, “that shall come after.” In other words, what gives the appearance of progress in the human race and in human history is man’s forgetfulness. That’s what he’s pointing out in verse 11, it’s simply because man forgets. That’s why; if you forget enough there’s going to be obvious signs of progress because you’re learning stuff all the time and yet it’s simply because this generation has forgotten what previous generations have learned.

For example, in our generation we have forgotten lessons taught to us by a group of people called the Puritans. You mention “Puritan” to our young people and they think of some prude, they think of some idiot, etc. and yet it’s the Puritans that actually caused the golden age of America. It was the Puritans of whom it was said by their greatest enemy: when you meet one of these people in a debate hall or you meet them on the battlefield, you discover their idiosyncrasies are only skin deep and underneath they are one of the most tenacious groups of people that world history has ever produced. The Puritans—that is why America was great, because the Puritans came here and they had Bible doctrine. Do you realize before you could vote in Massachusetts during the reign of the Puritans you had to know Bible doctrine and pass an examination and if you couldn’t pass an examination on basic Bible doctrine your right to vote was withdrawn. Historians don’t like that, they say that’s bigotry; it’s not bigotry at all, it was one of the greatest systems of suffrage we have ever seen in history, is that people had to pass a test on Bible doctrine before they had the right to vote. What do we do in our country? We have this myth of universal suffrage; we let every little nitwit vote and if a person can write their own name we’ll let them vote. So what does that do to your vote, you study the issues and all you can do is neutralize somebody else’s vote. We have clods by the thousands in this country with the right to vote and yet had we listened to the Puritans we’d have a fantastic system.

Verse 11, “There is no remembrance of former things,” so all these things that we have studied in verses 2-11 are true “under the sun.” They are not true if you go above the sun, which we are going to do now. We are going to go back through verses 2-11 and now we are going to give you the Christian view. We have gone through verses 2-11 from the standpoint of the carnal Christian or the unbeliever. Now let’s go back through verses 2-11 correcting it as to how we should view these various things.

Now in place of verses 4-7, this is the passage of Scripture talking about the endless monotony, no progress, no progress! How do you think about this? Do you see progress in your life? Do you see progress in history? You should, there are two factors why you should. First, personally you should assume that you are in the rapture generation unless contraindicated personally. In other words, if you are a believer today, you should assume that you are not going to die, that the rapture is going to occur in your generation; you have every right under the Word of God, Rev. 22:20, “Even so, come Lord Jesus Christ,” and that is the cry of you as a believer unless the Lord personally shows you, as He did Paul and Peter, that you’re going to die. But that’s one of the greatest things that you can look forward to; it’s not monotony at all for you are looking forward to the possibility that in your life God is going to call an end to the Church Age and that you as a believer are going to be walking around some day and instantaneously your natural body is going to go into a resurrection body, according to 1 Thess. 4, 1 Cor. 15 where Paul tells you that he’s showing us a mystery, that “in the twinkling of an eye” that this shall occur.

And therefore you have the right not to look upon every day as a monotonous thing but you have the right to look upon every day as this day, this morning may be the time of the rapture. If you will consistently apply this truth in your life it will do wonders for you spiritually. If you think your life is boring and dull you ought to take this rapture truth and absorb it and see what a change it works on the inside. You think that there’s no progress in history and yet God’s Word tells you that history is going on. You have the cross of Christ, you have the end of the Church Age, you have the seven years of Tribulation, you have the 1,000 millennial reign and the eternal state. History does have progress to it under the program of God, prophecy in other words.

How do you neutralize verses 4-7? Answer: You neutralize verses 4-7 and the dullness and the monotony of life by turning to the Bible and finding the truth of Bible prophecy, that history has movement and that in your generation you may live to see the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, the most phenomenal event of history and it may occur in your generation; it could occur today. Therefore you do not, verses 4-7 look at your life this way, and if you find yourself looking at your life this way there is something wrong with you and you’d better deal with it, personally and immediately. If you have tendencies to look at life as monotonous and vain and frustrating, there is something wrong with you spiritually and you should never allow it to go on any more than if you’re sick physically you should all it to go on without seeing somebody, so you should see the Lord through His Word.

What else do we have to neutralize this program of carnality? Verses 8-11; verses 8-11 depict man’s frustration. What do you have in the Word of God to put in the mentality of your soul, this is your mentality now, what do you have to put in there to neutralize this frustration that you’re picking up here in verses 8-11. This is natural, this frustration. What have you got to neutralize it? You have various things in the Bible to neutralize; one of them is 2 Cor. 5, believer’s judgment. What this means is that if you take your life from this point until the time you die you’re making decisions, decisions, decisions and all these are real decisions that you are going to be held accountable for in eternity. So therefore your life is not dull because every day there are new opportunities for you to exercise your volition.

If you want to see a graphic illustration of how important your decisions are, turn to Revelation 5:7. Here we have one of the great visions of the book of Revelation and this shows you something about those prayers that you think are so monotonous and so boring and so frustrating. You’ll see what’s been happening to your prayers for this is down at the end of the Church Age and the Lord’s called a halt, so therefore there’s something that’s very interesting in verse 7 that tells you about where your prayers went. “And he came and took the scroll out of the right hand of Him that sat upon the throne.” That’s the Lord Jesus Christ during the Tribulation.

Verse 8, “And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of saints.” Now do you see what’s happened? During the Tribulation these elders pick up these great vials and John sees these vials with fumes rising up out of them, and he says these are the prayers of the saints. When were those prayers made? Down through the ages, every time you prayed a prayer about “Lord, this is an unjust world; Lord, this is unfair; or we’ve got a problem over here, there should be judgment on this; Lord, exercise your righteousness, this is essentially wrong.” Every time those prayers have been uttered at these so-called insignificant points in your life they went into those vials and they have been stored there, just like a magnetic tape on a computer. They’ve been stored there until the time of the judgment and just before the judgment the great elders come before the throne with the vials and they say now, now we’ll pick up the prayers of the saints, they weren’t answered before but here they are all stored, and that’s why in chapter 6 you begin to have the judgments pour out upon the world. You may not realize it but every time you pray the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” every time you’ve prayed that you’re praying for the Tribulation. And it’s your prayers that go into the vial and later actually cause the Tribulational judgments. So don’t think upon your life as a series of monotonous events, just because you don’t see any fireworks right away. All these things come out.

Now, turn to Ephesians 1 and you’ll see how we should look upon life. Instead of saying “vanity of vanities,” or “emptiness of emptinesses,” the Christian has something far more exciting to say because he doesn’t look at life “under the sun.” If you sit around all day moping, involved in self-pity and blaming God and blaming everybody else except yourself for all your problems, you’re involved in a carnal situation and you’re involved in a situation that denies Ephesians 1:17 because this is how the mentality of your soul should be working if you are spiritual. “That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, [18] That the eyes of your understanding may be enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of His calling, and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, [19] And what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us to believe.”

Now let me ask you a simple question. Since you’ve received the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, since you became a believer, have you learned anything about what Christ did for you? Or is the mentality of your soul so filled with vanity, frustration, worry, thinking about the things in the old creation that you just don’t even have any room in your mentality to think about what Christ has done for you. And yet Paul says in this prayer, verses 17ff, this is to be what fills the mentality of your soul. And if your life is blah, and your life has that colorless aspect to it, Paul’s prescription is in verse 17ff. What you should do is not go out and seek an ecstatic experience, not go out and get involved in demonism, what you are to do is to go to the Word of God and ask God the Father to take this truth and make it real; make it more real than anything else in your human spirit. These doctrines that we are studying on Wednesday night in Ephesians 1, predestination, election, everybody says these are theoretical things. If they’re theoretical and only for seminary students how come Paul expected every Christian to know them.

Turn to chapter 3:16, this is the answer to “vanity of vanities.” “That He will grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man, [17] That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, [18] May be able to comprehend, with half the saints, what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height.” Is that what that says? “ALL the saints,” every believer, there is no excuse for any believer not knowing the height and the length and the breadth and the depth. And I don’t mean just knowing it in the mentality of your soul, I mean knowing it where it’s something real in your life, and that’s what’s going to give you the dynamic to live for Jesus Christ. That’s what’s going to make life exciting so that every day you can thank the Lord, “Lord, I thank You for this day because I know in the next 24 hours you have a reason for me being on the scene, if you didn’t I would have been called home, so therefore something is going to happen today and can meditate upon my position in the Lord Jesus Christ, I can apply it to my experience and I can know these things.”

If you have no hunger to know you’re carnal. I’m trying to point this out forcefully so as we go through Ecclesiastes you can spot and test yourself; that’s what you should be doing, ask yourself as we go from verse to verse, is this true of me? Is this the way I think? Do I have this thing that I’ve picked up, probably from preachers, oh brother, what you want to do is get the light but just forget the doctrine; what you want to focus on is the experience. Listen, you can’t have any experience without Bible doctrine. Paul demands that you “with all saints” comprehend these things. You don’t have to be a brainy person to comprehend these things. Don’t think because you haven’t got a college education or you don’t know the Greek and the Hebrew you can’t know these things. That would violate the prayer of verse 18 and Paul’s praying for you. If you want to make this personal take this Bible and put your own name in front of that prayer in verse 18. “That you,” whatever your name might be, John, Joe, Mary, “may be able to comprehend with all the saints.” Put your name right in the text and that makes that prayer personal for you, you are to know these things. That is your spiritual food.

How does this take place in experience; turn to Romans 6. Every Christian faces a problem; the problem that we face as Christians is basically a problem of human good. Our sin nature cranks out personal sins out of the area of weakness. Jesus Christ took those personal sins upon Himself on the cross, He judged them, but there’s something else that your sin nature produces and it’s human good, these are all the (quote) “good things” that are just blah and colorless, actually, and yet they are the things that people would oh, so and so, fine ethical moral person, does all the great things, and yet basically all that is is a lot of wood, hay and stubble, human good because it comes out of your sin nature, energy of the flesh operating in the mentality of your soul producing worry, occupation with human viewpoint, and that’s the story of your life, occupation with human viewpoint, what other people think of you, involved in activities to impress to your wife, your husband, come to church to impress your wife, husband, or something else. All of it is a waste of time, it’s human good and Christ rejected human good at the cross. Isn’t it interesting, Christ didn’t say Lord, take all the works that men have done and help Me out? Isn’t it interesting, the Lord Jesus Christ utterly and totally completely condemned human good? It has no atoning value whatever.

In Romans 6 it tells you how to apply this in your life. See, there’s an aspect of positional truth that you have to apply in your life consciously. Here you are as a Christian, at the time that you receive Christ you’re put in union with Him. Let’s take one of these truths and see how you can personally apply it in your life. All right, Romans 6:6, this is the means by which you accomplish these things. Jesus Christ gives you various things, He gives you imputed righteousness, He gives you death, He gives you resurrection, He gives you eternal life and He gives you the Holy Spirit. These are five things that God the Son does in the plan of salvation. One of those things that He does is give you death. You say wait a minute, why do I want death? You want death to your sin nature, that’s what you want death for.

Verse 6, “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed,” let’s see on the diagram what this means. Here we have the Christian, flesh controlling. Now what does it say? First you have to know the truth, “Knowing this, that our old man,” the “old man” is your soul as it is energized by your flesh, volition, personal affections, mentality, bodily affections; that is your old man. The old man is the energizing of the functions of your soul by the flesh. “Know this,” that this has been, that’s not present, in the King James it’s “is crucified,” actually in the Greek it is “has been crucified with him, that the body of sin might be…” not destroyed, but might “be neutralized.” Do you know this gives you one of the greatest freedoms in the human race? You can be free as a Christian because what this means is that Jesus Christ by dying on the cross has rejected human good, has rejected anything that comes out of the flesh nature of you, no matter how good it is. No matter how much money you give in the energy of the flesh Jesus says I don’t want anything to do with it, because nothing that comes from the energy of the flesh through your soul is acceptable before God, absolutely nothing! It’s an utter waste of time no matter how much men may like it and appreciate it, and you may get brownie points in kindergarten and all the rest of it, yet man is utterly acceptable to God.

Verse 11, here’s how to appropriate it. So the truth is that God has said now look, this whole concept of the flesh dominating you I have legally removed at the cross. We talk about Christ bearing our sins but Christ did something else for you on the cross, He also took your sin nature upon Himself and so now you don’t have to be dominated by the flesh. You do not have to be dominated by the flesh. Where does this come in? Verse 11, “Reckon,” verse 6 you have to know it, that’s Bible doctrine, verse 11 you “reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin,” that’s the flesh, you “reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ, our Lord.” Now that’s an act of faith. That is an act of moment by moment faith. You have to constantly say this, when temptation faces you what do you say? Basically all temptation that comes to us is a lie because basically if you think to yourself when you are being tempted, what is this temptation saying, you’ve got to yield to me; I am stronger than you are. That’s basically the form of the temptation; you can’t help it Christian, you’re a slave to me. And that’s the lie of the flesh, and yet what does this verse say, “Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God.”

Now the point here is that you have to by faith pick up this truth, apply it in your life and verse 13 is the result. “Neither yield ye your members,” or present, the word is present, “your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin,” that’s the sin nature, “but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.”

Conclusion: we have talked about being out of the bottom circle, you get out of the bottom circle, how do you get back in? 1 John 1:9. Some people don’t understand one thing about 1 John 1:9 and that is this word “sins,” you see, you can get out of fellowship with the Lord and under the control of the sin nature, and one of the great sins you have is that you have deliberately allowed the flesh to take over and so this verse says you don’t have to do that. And it is possible for you instantaneously to free yourself from the power of the sin nature. That does not mean that you are a mature Christian but it means that in an instant of time, just like when you think back to the point when you received Christ in an instant of time by appropriating this truth and believing it, you can be free from the domineering of your sin nature. And you’re completely free. That’s what the passage says.

So therefore if this is not real in your life, and if Romans 6 is not real then you’ve got some work to do, you’ve got to get rid of some of the spiritual flab and start appropriating this truth and making it work in your life. Those are the assets that God has given to you and He expects you to use them, and it in this way that instead of saying “vanity of vanities, all is vanity” the Christian can say “fullness of fullness, Christ is fullness.” With our heads bowed.