Guest preacher
Ecclesiastes 1:1-18 ·August 27, 2023· Rick Hutton
Rick Hutton is a ruling elder at All Saints Reformed Presbyterian Church in Richmond, VA, and has a Master of Divinity from Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary.
Transcript
Show
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors. Select a time to jump to that point in the recording.
I want to call up Rick Hutton, who is our guest preacher today. Rick is a ruling elder at All Saints Presbyterian Church up in Richmond. He has been serving that church for a long time, and he is actually on staff with that church now. He has been for a few years now. Before that, he was in computer programming, is that right? But come on up, Rick. Rick has an interview from Gordon Conwell, and he's also one of the elders that's on the Oversight Commission of our church.
So it's really great to have him here today, and I'm excited to hear the word from him, as I hope you are too. So yeah, it's a joy to be here. I've served with Joel in a variety of capacities over the years, and I thought about, because I know Joel, I thought about calling this morning and saying, is it okay if I wear a tie? And then I thought, they're just going to love me for who I am. So, here I am. It is a joy to be here. If you wish to turn in your Bible, or it's there in the bulletin, and maybe overhead in a moment, we'll read Ecclesiastes chapter 1 together, or I will read it out loud.
And then we'll pray. Ecclesiastes chapter 1, beginning at verse 1. The words of the preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities, says the preacher. Vanity of vanities. All is vanity. What does a man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastes to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south, and goes around to the north, and around and around the wind goes on its circuit.
The wind returns. All the streams run into the sea, but the sea is not full. To the place where the streams flow, there they flow again. All things are full of weariness. A man cannot utter it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done. And there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, see, this is new? It has been already, in the ages before us.
There is no remembrance of the former things, nor will there be any remembrance of the latter things yet to come among those who come after. I, the preacher, have been king over Israel. I have applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity, a striving after wind.
What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted. Thus far, the word of God. Let's pray. Father, we pray that you would be with us, that you would give me your words to say, and that you would give all of us ears to hear what you have for us in your word.
The book of Ecclesiastes has a sort of similar purpose to the law. If a preacher is preaching the law, and you don't walk away at the end feeling just a little bit guilty, then either you weren't paying attention, or he wasn't preaching the law. We just went through the Ten Commandments in our men's study at All Saints here recently, and, you know, we'd gotten beat up by the first seven commandments, and a number of the men said, finally, we got to number eight.
I think I'm okay on number eight. Thou shalt not steal, right? You know, I know I have idols in my life. I know I don't worship God the way I ought. I know, you know, Jesus said when I get angry, that's the same as murder. You know, if I lust after a woman, that's the same as adultery. So I knew I was going to have trouble with all of those commandments, but I don't steal. And then we got through the larger catechism on the Eighth Commandment, and everybody was going, oh, I'd do that one too.
And so the law is designed to drive us out of our self-righteousness and to Christ. And if you hear the law, and it does not drive you out of yourself, if it does not make you feel guilty, if it does not make you go, I can't do this, I need a Savior, then you haven't heard the law. Ecclesiastes is like that, except what it drives us out of is our self-sufficiency and our self-importance. It doesn't drive us out of our self-righteousness. It drives us out of our self-sufficiency and our self-importance.
Even when we acknowledge that we need a Savior, we still think of ourselves as more important than we ought, you know? I'm planting a church for the kingdom of God. That makes me important. You know, my job, the thing that I do, that I get up every morning to do, is important. It's making people's lives better. There's my life, we want our lives to make a difference. We want to be important. We want to be self-sufficient. It's fascinating, I don't know if this is true like in all churches, but it's been true in all of my Presbyterian experience.
We are much better at being willing to serve others than we are in being willing to be served. Because I want to be self-sufficient. I want to take care of my own needs. I want to be important. And the writer of Ecclesiastes is here to drive us from our self-importance. So he begins to introduce the problem here in the first chapter. And kind of, let me back into it a little bit and mention when I was in college and really beginning to study theology for the first time, really kind of get deep into theology and learning about what Christ had done for me, the question came to my mind, well then why do I have to die, right?
If death is the wages of sin and Jesus paid the penalty for my sins, then why don't I get to be like Elijah and just get carried up into heaven in a fiery chariot without dying? This was a real question in my mind in college. And I found out that I wasn't the only one that asked that question. It was asked so many times that it's actually in our larger catechism. It says, death, question 85, larger catechism. Death, being the wages of sin, why are not the righteous delivered from death, seeing their sins are forgiven in Christ?
My exact question. And it said, the righteous shall be delivered from death at Christ's return, right? And even in death are delivered from the sting and the curse of it so that although they die, yet it is out of God's love to free them perfectly from the sin and misery and to make them capable of further communion with Christ in glory, which they enter in upon, upon their death. So, the catechism said, or the divines said as they wrote the larger catechism, as we look at the Bible, we see that death is actually a blessing in Christ.
And so, that answered that question for me when I was young. But I'm not in college anymore. I'm now pushing 60. And I remember when I started getting into my early 50s, a new question came into my mind, which was, why bother? Why bother doing anything? More of my life was now in the rear view mirror than it was in the front of me. And I just began to ask the question, why bother? Every so often on my news feed, you know, I'm reading my news feed on my computer in the morning, and every so often, a story comes across the news feed about a 90-year-old who's gone back to college to get, to finally get their bachelor's degree.
And I always go, why? Why are you going back to college at 90 to get a bachelor's degree, right? Don't you know you're going to be dead in a couple of years? What's the point of getting a bachelor's degree at 94? But then once you start asking that question, you begin to go, what's the point of getting a bachelor's degree at 20? I had a friend at All Saints several years ago. He was younger, fresh out of college, 23-year-old, and he had a friend that passed away suddenly.
And he was really upset, and he was asking, he was asking, why? Why did this young man have to die with all of his life in front of him, with, you know, with the potential of wife and children and career and service of God, all that in front of him? Why would God take him at 23? And I said, you need to realize your problem isn't that your friend died early. Your problem is that your friend died. And it won't be as if you reach 75, and your spouse or your best friend dies, and you go, oh, well, it's a good thing they didn't die when they were 23.
Everything's fine. I'm okay that my spouse died at 75 because they didn't die at 23. No, you're going to be devastated because your best friend or your wife died. Death brings to it a sense of, what's the point? Why did I invest myself in them? Why did I let them get close to me? You come into this world, says the writer of Ecclesiastes, with nothing in your hand, and you leave this world with nothing in your hand. We call that in America, no profit.
If you start with nothing, and you end with nothing, you made no profit. And that's how we perceive the world, but that's how the writer of Ecclesiastes said that from chapter 5, naked a man comes from his mother's womb, and as he comes, so he departs. He takes nothing from his labor that he can carry in his hand. As a man comes, so he departs. And what does he gain from all his toils? Nothing. It's a striving for the wind. There's an old joke that says, when you're four years old, success is having friends and not peeing in the bed.
But you know, when you're 95, success is having friends and not peeing in the bed. As a man comes, so he goes. The richest man in the world and the homeless man on the street both end up in the ground dead as worm food. The end of Elon Musk and the end of the homeless person on Broad Street in Richmond is the same. So why bother? What's the point? What does man gain for all his toil under the sun? And the writer of Ecclesiastes says, nothing. He gains nothing.
And he gives us two problems. He gives us two reasons why this is true, that we gain nothing. He says, in this chapter, he says, nothing's new and nothing's ever finished. That's one. And the other is that nothing's ever remembered. All right? So first, nothing's new. Nothing's ever finished. Nothing's ever completed. And he gives us some examples of this. The first one is the wind. The wind blows to the north and then to the south and then back around and back up to the north.
I have always, from my childhood, been fascinated by the jet stream. Because, you know, it's always there on the weather map, you know, on the news in the evening. When I was a kid, you know, you had to get your news from television. For you kids, you had to get your news from television or the newspaper. Newspaper's kind of like Instagram. So I'm watching the evening news and they would show the jet stream, you know, and it would kind of come in around Washington and then dip down towards Texas and then go back up the east coast and off.
And everything above the jet stream was like cool with low humidity and everything below the jet stream would be hot and humid. Or in the winter, it would be, you know, frozen north of the jet stream and everything south of the jet stream would be temperate and nice. Oh, what a wonderful winter day. And it wouldn't matter. If it dripped way down and way back up, you know, here and here is hot and there's comfortable, even though they're on the same line.
That jet stream seemed to make a big difference. And for several years, I lived in Richmond and worked in Atlanta. And it always took longer to fly to Atlanta than it did to fly from Atlanta back to Richmond. Because if you think about that, jet stream goes down and then comes back up. It often crosses over Atlanta and heads towards Richmond. So we were flying against the jet stream going down and with the jet stream coming back. And it always took longer.
And so the pilot would come on, you know, how the pilots would come on and say, you know, we expect to be in the air an hour and 10 minutes. Or we expect to be in the air two hours or whatever the length of the flight is. Before you take off, they tell you how long this flight's going to be. And it was always, you know, going to Atlanta, it was always like an hour and 15 minutes. Coming back, it would be an hour, hour and five minutes. And then one day we got on the plane in Atlanta and the pilot came on and said, our flight time today will be 45 minutes.
And all of us who regularly make the flight just went, ugh. Because never had we heard 45 minutes from it. And, you know, I'm sitting there going, the jet stream must literally be just being going straight across the Atlanta airport and pointed exactly at the Richmond airport. And the pilot's just going to take off, cut the engines, and drift right into Richmond. Because the wind does something. The wind is powerful. You watch, you know, I've seen oak trees, massive oak trees just, poof, to the ground because of the wind.
The wind does something. It seems to accomplish something. But when you back up and not look at the United States map, but look at the satellite map of the jet stream, it goes Washington, Texas, Atlanta, around, across the ocean, Russia, back around, down, up, around, back up. It's a circle. And it just keeps going and going and going, and it never accomplishes anything. It never finishes the job that God set it to do. It just goes around and around and around.
Then the second example he gives is of the rivers. All the rivers flow into the sea, but the sea never fills up. The Mississippi River, on averages, dumps 5 million gallons of water a second into the Gulf of Mexico. 5 million gallons, not a minute, not a day, not an hour, 5 million gallons a second flow out of the Mississippi River and into the Gulf of Mexico. You would think that would make a difference, right? 5 million gallons a second ought to make a difference in the ocean.
And yet it's just the same. The ocean remains the same. The Amazon River is over 10 times the size of the Mississippi. The Amazon River, 58 million gallons a second, on average, flow into the Atlantic Ocean. And it makes no difference. Where the water flows, says the writer of Ecclesiastes, into the ocean, there it will flow again. It will just keep dumping that water perpetually, and nothing's ever changed. He says that's what our lives are like.
Nothing is ever new. Now, we live in the age of newness, right? Don't we live in the age of new? It seems like there's a new iPhone every year, right? There's something new. I mean, I was a computer programmer. I am on the cutting edge of new, right? But when you start to back up and pull out to that satellite view, you realize that all the iPhone is is a new tool, an improved tool. From the time we left the Garden of Eden, we've been making tools.
And we've been replacing the obsolete tool with the new and improved tool, but it's still just a tool. The Internet is a better library. We used to have to go to libraries to look things up. Now I can pop my phone up, pull up, so all of you that didn't trust me that the Amazon's dumping 58 million gallons a second, you can pop it up on your phone on the way home and go, sure enough, he wasn't kidding, 58 million gallons a second. You used to have to go to the library to look that up.
Internet's a better library. The library is a better book. It's a collection of books. A book is a better scroll. A scroll is a better story that was told by word of mouth. We've been making tools better, but there's no end of making tools. There'll come a day when people will not know what an iPhone is because it will have been replaced by the next best tool. There's no end. It's never finished. That very fact that there is a new iPhone every year is proof that it's never finished.
And a day will come when no one will know what an iPhone is. Nothing is really new. And not only is nothing really new and nothing ever finished, nothing's really remembered. That was his second problem. Nothing is ever remembered. He says a generation comes and a generation goes, but what they do is never remembered. What has happened in the past has been forgotten, and what will yet happen in the future will be forgotten by the people who come after that, says the writer of Ecclesiastes.
Nothing is remembered. I've been doing this thing for about 10 years now in our senior high Sunday school class. I'll ask the kids, do you know what the Fab Four is?
And they don't. They're like, I actually got this one. This is my favorite answer of what is the Fab Four. Is that that group in the Marvel comic book series? I'm like, no, that's the Fantastic Four. I'm looking for the Fab Four. And so, and they're like, no, I'm like, okay, the Beatles. They're like, oh, yeah, we know, we've heard of the Beatles. I'm like, okay, name one. There are two still alive, and they can't name one. You think about, for those of you over 50, think about how culturally important the Beatles were.
So, unless your dad is like a band member, rock music player, then you probably don't know who the Beatles are. But, in this next generation, they are remembered no more. For you older people, let me give you one. How many vice presidents can you name from before you were born? I mean, vice president, that's a pretty important position. How many vice presidents can you name from before you were born? And then the one that really gets me is start thinking about, unless you're just, you know, one of those genealogy nuts, think about your great-grandparents.
How many of us can name all four of our great-grandparents? And even if, and if you remember some of them, like they lived long enough for you to remember them, you know them by their grandparent name. Do you know their full name of all four of your great-grandparents? Now, think about how important your grandparents were to you in your growing up. You teenagers, all the way up. Think about how your grandparents made an impact on your life. So, your great-grandparents are your parents' grandparents.
So, these were people that had a huge impact on your parents, and most of us can't remember their names. And if we can remember names, what did they do for a living? What did they do under the sun? They got up every morning, and they toiled in this life under the sun. And for the most part, their great-grandchildren will not remember them. If your great-grandchildren don't remember you, who's going to remember you? You will be forgotten. I will be forgotten.
And it doesn't matter, really, how famous you are. The Fab Four. I'll give you one for the younger ones now. Kylie Jenner. No, not Caitlyn Jenner for you older people. Kylie Jenner. That's Bruce Jenner's youngest daughter. Kylie Jenner was on the cover of Forbes magazine right before COVID. She was on the cover of Forbes magazine for being the first, or youngest, rather, the youngest self-made billionaire in history. She, you know, she was a teenager during the show, Keeping Up with the Kardashians.
She parlayed that into internet fame, an influencer. She then parlayed that fame into a makeup company. So she sold, in the first five years of her makeup company, a billion dollars' worth of makeup. She sold a billion dollars' worth of makeup. And Forbes valued her makeup company at $800 million. So, of her billion-dollar wealth, $800 million was the makeup company. And then she, through her, you know, all the other things that she had her fingers in, made up the rest.
She was the youngest self-made billionaire in history. Now, here's the interesting thing. She doesn't make makeup. The company that actually produces Kylie Jenner makeup existed prior to Kylie Jenner makeup company. All she did was put her name on existing makeup. It was her fame that sold a billion dollars' worth of makeup. And so, here she is. She's on television. She's on internet. She's got an $800 million company. And what is she famous for?
She's famous for being famous. And I can guarantee you that 40 years from now, you go to the high school Sunday school class and say, Who was Kylie Jenner? And they're going to go, Who? What?
Fame. Even fame cannot preserve the memory of you. I actually did come across, you know, Kylie Jenner, Paris Hilton, Some, you know, the ladies who have kind of made themselves a name. You know, if this was 80 years ago, we'd call them debutantes. And that's because those ladies existed 100 years ago. There were rich ladies who were rich because their daddy was rich. And they threw parties. And they got their name in the paper constantly. And everybody talked about them.
And whatever dress they wore, that's the dress that everybody wanted to wear. And I came across a group of these from the early 20th century not long ago. I didn't know a single name on the list. And you wouldn't either. And no one will remember Kylie Jenner. No one will remember Paris Hilton. No one will remember. Today's celebrity, Douglas O'Dell said, Today's celebrities are tomorrow's obituaries. And their names are as disposable as the morning paper in which their life stories will be printed.
No one will remember. So the world has three answers for this. For all this toil under the sun that gets you nowhere, that no one will remember. The work that you do that no one will remember. The world has three answers for this. First is escapism. Just don't think about it. Do whatever you can to not think about the fact that you are going to die. And you are going to die with nothing. And nobody is going to remember you. Just don't think about it.
So entertain yourselves. Do whatever you can to distract yourself from your inevitable death. I find it fascinating how many people are shocked when a loved one dies. Not hurt, not devastated, not feeling a loss, but actually shocked that their loved one has died. It's because they never think about it. They want to do anything but think about it. And so when it comes, they are shocked. It's the one thing in all the world that happens to everyone, and yet we're shocked when it happens.
It's because we don't think about it. We don't want to think about it. We want everything to be distracting us from that inevitable death that awaits us, that brings all of our profit to nothing. The next option that the world offers is hedonism. Let's just live it up, right? If nothing matters, then just live it up. Drink, eat, go on cruises, you know, just whatever you can do. Just enjoy the world while you've got it. Don't worry about anybody or anything else because none of it matters.
Just, you know, if you're still working, you're living for the weekend. If you're retired, you're just living for yourself. The bumper sticker on the RV going down the interstate, I'm spending my children's inheritance. That's the hedonist mindset, right? That's, just eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Then the final option that the world offers is nihilism. This is the idea that, and most of these guys end up committing suicide because it's the idea that there's nothing in this life worth living for.
There's no point to this life at all. They're actually looking at square in the face. They're not like the escapist, and then realizing, why should I live? So Tolstoy said, Listen, my question that which at age 50, just like me, that question which at age 50 brought me to the verge of suicide was the simplest of questions, living in the soul of every man. A question without an answer to which one cannot live. It was, what will come of what I am doing today or tomorrow?
What will come of my whole life? Why should I live, wish for anything, or do anything? It can be expressed thus, Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy? That was Tolstoy. That's how he viewed life in this world. Now, I realize most people don't come to the nihilist position. That's why there are more people in the business school and college than there are in the philosophy department.
But those are the three options that the world offers. And none of them are of any value. Ultimately, we all end up dead. We all end up striving after wind. What is the point? There's nothing new. There's nothing ever finished. A generation comes. A generation goes. Everything is forgotten. It's just monotony. It just keeps going. And it's painful. Life under the sun is painful. What's the point? Well, just like the law, the good news is that Jesus is the answer.
Jesus is the answer to the problem of humanity's toil under the sun. Life under the sun is meaningless. But life in the sun, S-O-N, has purpose and meaning. And so let me show you how Jesus is the answer to the two questions of the writer of Ecclesiastes. First, what Jesus did on the first Easter week was new. Remember, we said nothing was ever new. But what Jesus did was new. And not only was it new, it was completed. What did he say on the cross?
It is finished. Exactly. It was new and he finished it. The writer of Ecclesiastes said everything repeats over and over and over and over. The eye is never finished seeing. The ear is never finished hearing. And on it goes and on it goes. And Jesus comes along and says, it is finished. Jesus completed his work on the cross. It was finished. It had never been done before. It would never be done again. And Jesus accomplished what no one else in history had ever been able to do.
Ever since the garden, man has been looking for a way to get himself back in a right relationship with God. And we couldn't do it. Everything we tried failed. And then Jesus comes along and says, done. Done. So he accomplished it. It was finished. It was new. And then, not only that, not only was it new, not only was it finished, but it's remembered. We're right here, right now, talking about it 2,000 years later. No one will be talking about Kylie Jenner 100 years from now.
We're here 2,000 years later talking about Jesus Christ. And not only us, but people all over the world are gathering on this day, on Sunday, to talk about Jesus and what he accomplished. We are remembering him. And we're celebrating this new thing that he did, right? We were singing in celebration. We're going to have a festal meal in celebration of what he did. He has a legacy that will never be forgotten. I remember we were about two years into the Trump administration, and I saw Michelle Obama on television complaining that Trump was destroying her husband's legacy.
Jesus has a legacy that cannot be destroyed. I think, imagine the jealousy of the Roman emperors. Think about how the Roman emperors would have loved to have set a system up whereby they would be remembered every week for the next 2,000 years. That would have been like a dream come true for Julius Caesar. And yet, nothing. We have a remembrance of Jesus every week for the last 2,000 years. You know, rich men get their names put on. Rich men, famous men, courageous men get their names put on buildings and bridges and military bases.
And then the next generation comes along and erases those names and puts another name up. But Jesus Christ's name is on the church and will be there for the next generation and the next and the next and the next. But what's really exciting is that not only has he done something new, but because of him, we are new. Right? Think about how many times the word new is used in the New Testament. You have a new life in Christ. You are a new creation. You are a member of a new covenant.
You have been given a new law. You are promised a new world, a new heaven, a new earth. We walk in newness of life. The church is described as one new man. Paul says we have a new self, a new name. We are part of a new Jerusalem. We sing a new song of praise to Jesus. And at the end of Revelation that we read earlier in the service, Jesus says he is making all things new.
The old order of Ecclesiastes with its repeated drudgery is being turned on its head. Because in Christ, our work has value. It is new. So, and then not only, again, not only am I new because what Jesus did was new, I'm also remembered. You are remembered. Remember the thief on the cross? Remember what he asked of Jesus, the good thief on the cross? Remember me. Remember me when you come into your kingdom. Do you notice Jesus doesn't actually answer the question?
He doesn't go, well, of course I will remember you. God, right? I remember everything. He says, you will be with me today in paradise. It's as if he had said, remember you. Of course I will remember you. We will be together. You know, people often say, especially, you know, you say stuff like, you know, I'm old now and I'm beginning to have trouble remembering, you know, what my grandmother looked like. Or, you know, I've been departed so long, I can't remember what her voice was like, how she sounded.
Because that distance of time makes us forget. And Jesus said, you're going to be with me. How could I possibly forget you, right? I'm going to see you in heaven today. And we're going to be there together. Of course I am going to remember you. I will be with you. And if that wasn't enough, your name is written in the book of life. Right? There's a book that isn't going to rot and be lost and forgotten to time. There is a book with your name in it for everyone to see.
Your name is written in the book of life. John, in his letter, says that if anyone loves God, he is known by God. Again, something different than just the fact that God never forgets anything. God knows you. He remembers you. He loves you. And so, you are known by God. You will not be forgotten. You will be remembered. So, why get up and go to work tomorrow? Why be nice to the children? My mother always said, there's no use being nice to little kids.
They're not going to remember it anyway. So, why be nice to the children when there's such a pain? Why get up and go to work every morning? Why put up with the drudgeries of this life? Why study piano in your 70s? Why get a degree in your 90s? Because Jesus brings value to your work. Whatever you do, whether you eat or sleep or get a degree in your 90s or practice piano in your 70s or be nice to a one-year-old, whatever you do, do all for the glory of God.
That's the only thing that brings purpose and meaning to this existence. So, and you see, actually, that this is the conclusion that the writer of Ecclesiastes ultimately comes to. He says, towards the end, the end of the matter, all has been heard. He's talked for several chapters on the vanity of this life. And he says, It's all been heard now. Fear God and keep his commandments. For this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil.
Having looked at all that there was in the world, he said, is it the love of a good spouse? Is it the joy of children? Is it the success of work? What makes it all worth living for? And he said, none of it. But, what makes it worth doing is hearing at the end, well done, good and faithful servant. So, whatever you do, said the writer of Ecclesiastes, do it all for the glory of God because he will bring every deed into judgment, everything, every secret thing, whether good or evil.
So, it's God who makes our life valuable. The writer of Ecclesiastes only saw dimly. He could only see God the Father. He could only see the law of Moses. But, in Christ, we see so much more. And, how Christ makes our lives valuable under the sun. Because he rose from the dead on the first Easter morning, we have new life in Christ. And, our names will be remembered forever and ever. Let's pray. Thank you, Father, for your many blessings to us. Father, we acknowledge that we have often questioned your goodness in the hardness of this life.
As we see things changing in our culture, as we lose friends, as work is unsuccessful, as the hardness of life under the sun beats us down. As we have older children who refuse to walk with Christ. All those things, Father, that just bring pain and misery into this life. Father, we thank you that you are ever with us. And, that our labors, even when they seem unsuccessful, bring you glory, if we do them for you. Father, please, give us strength, to live for you, in this world.
And, we pray it in Jesus' name.