How Empty Life is Without Devotion to God (Part 1 of 2)

The Vanity of Life Under the Sun

The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

“Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
What does man gain by all the toil
at which he toils under the sun?
A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
and hastens to the place where it rises.
The wind blows to the south
and goes around to the north;
around and around goes the wind,
and on its circuits the wind returns.
All streams run to the sea,
but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
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 former things,
nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to be among those who come after.

I the Preacher have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.

What is crooked cannot be made straight,
and what is lacking cannot be counted.

I said in my heart, ‘I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.’ And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind.

For in much wisdom is much vexation,
and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.”

All of the vanities that Ecclesiastes demonstrates are comparatively vain. They are vain in comparison to something. The goal of this book is to provide the comparison between things of creation and things that people do in creation, comparing those things to God Himself. By comparing things with God, we find out that without God everything is vain. Without God, everything is indeed pointless.

The goal of this book is to demonstrate how without God—without Godly living and without a relationship with God—you will inevitably live life in vain. Everything that you would do would be vain pursuits. College would be vain. Sports would be vain. Everything that we would do would be vain.

We can then begin to use that as a template for recognizing that there are probably things that we are doing within our lives that are vain and that even as Christians would still be vain because they distract us from our relationship with God.

There is a specific war that goes on within cultures for captivating the attention of people, specifically those of a younger generation. If you can get people at a young enough age and convince them of whatever doctrine you want, the chances of that doctrine sticking are very high.

The necessity for Ecclesiastes in our day and age is incredibly important because there are so many things grabbing our attention. There are endless videos we could be watching, endless pictures we could be viewing, and endless status updates we could be reading. All of this indicates the reality of individuals with low attention spans being drawn into various things. There is a battle for our attention, which we experience on an ongoing basis.

In web design, slide shows have faded out because people don't want to spend time waiting for images to switch. People's attention spans are decreasing. Front pages of websites have become simpler: not a lot of text, but a giant button that says "click me." Everything is designed like an amusement park with fun buttons to push.

Yet even in the midst of all those pursuits that captivate our attention, it is all vain.

The Hopelessness of Life Without God

The book of Ecclesiastes is largely a hopeless book. It creates a huge degree of hopelessness in all things that are not God and then supplements that hopelessness with the hope of God Himself. The point of this book is to live your life in comparison to Godly living so that you actually find the huge degree of hope that is within this book.

Ecclesiastes shatters your perspective on how people should live—perspectives the book would call hopeless—and rebuilds it in the fear of God. It dismantles the American dream: school, college, marriage, settling down, accumulating comfort and ease. Ecclesiastes says, "Vanity" on its own.

Once it creates that depression and sense of hopelessness, it plows the field and makes you ripe for the sowing of the only real hope: a relationship with God Himself. That is the highest degree of hope, the greatest degree of hope—what this book is ultimately about amid the hopelessness of a life lived without God.

The point of Ecclesiastes summarizes the entirety of your existence in two specific points. If you can get this, you can receive the ultimate hope that Ecclesiastes promises.

First, your whole duty and reason for existence—the whole reason God didn't allow you to fall into hell prior to your conversion, the whole reason God continues your existence—is that you fear God. It is your whole purpose, your whole duty: to fear God.

Second, very much united with that, you would find happiness in nothing else than to fear God, to be devoted to God, to worship God, to be grateful toward God. These principles all belong to the fear of God.

There would be no other source of happiness in your life than to fear God—which seems crazy because fear sounds unhappy and happy does not sound like fear. Yet the fear of the Lord, because of what it does for you and who God is, is actually the greatest source of your happiness.

Ecclesiastes is concerned with a person's happiness. To avoid faithy health-wealth-and-prosperity garbage, the reality is that as a Christian, if all you had was God, you would be thoroughly content. You would find one of the greatest sources of joy and happiness. How could a person brought into a right relationship with God be unhappy with God?

In Ecclesiastes, all things outside of God are sources of ultimate unhappiness, while all things that belong to God—in a right, fearful, reverential relationship with God—are the sources of happiness in your life.

The primary emphasis of our text is how empty life is without devotion to God. In some senses, Ecclesiastes is hyperbolic, exaggerating to make a point. But at the same time, it is actually true: without God, it really is that terrible. It really is that pointless.

The Preacher and the Wisdom Literature

Ecclesiastes comes from the Hebrew term Qoheleth, which refers to a person who brings people into an assembly and speaks to the assembly. That is why many translations call him "the Preacher." Even in the Old Testament, you have the concept of preaching: God's people gathering to listen to a singular speaker present the truth of Scripture, thousands of years before the cross.

In the Greek translation, Qoheleth becomes Ecclesiastes, from the same root as ecclesia, the Greek word for church. It refers to any member of the assembly, meaning the Preacher is not above the assembly but a member of it. The concepts Ecclesiastes presents are relevant to every church member. It is a handbook and textbook for the members of the assembly of God's people. All of God's people are supposed to learn and understand the total emptiness of life apart from devotion to God.

The author identifies himself as a son of David, a preacher with great wisdom—most likely King Solomon. This forms the wisdom literature of the Bible, provided by arguably the wisest man of all time (before he lost his mind), writing with the inspired words of the Holy Spirit.

Solomon provides three specific ways of understanding how life is empty without devotion to God.

1. Vanity Explained Through Experiences

First, vanity is explained through experiences. He lists several experiences that teach us what vanity is.

The literal definition of vanity—from a Latin word—means empty. Imagine you are thirsty and I give you an empty cup. That is a vain gesture. It is like James 2, when someone in need of food and clothing hears only, "Be warm and be filled," without help. That kind of faith cannot save. It is vain, empty, pointless, meaningless.

James 2 (implied): If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?

Solomon paints a grim picture: not just vanity in life, but vanity of vanities. It is the apex of vanity, the epitome. If you looked up "vanity" in the dictionary, it would be a dictionary with no words.

He starts with vain experiences, like verse 4: "A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever." Generations—like Generation X, baby boomers, millennials—span about 40 years. Forty years seems long, but Solomon says it is a total waste, passing in the blink of an eye. It is vain.

He views these things from a macro, transcendent perspective. A person's life is insignificant.

Psalm 39:5: Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath!

A handbreadth is two and a half to four inches. The Psalmist says his life measures no longer than that. Compared to God's existence, a person's existence is more closely related to non-existence than existence—like a breath.

All things are full of weariness. It is not just pointless, but exhausting. Pointless and exhausting: like an activity that accomplishes nothing but tires you out. It is like taking a super soaker to the ocean.

Even the experience of nature is vain, though the heavens declare God's glory and creation reveals Him (Romans 1). Man suppresses the knowledge of God in unrighteousness. Outside of fearing God and enjoying Him through devotion, creation is exhausting and pointless. Man medicates or enjoys sin to suppress it.

Man cannot even utter the weariness—it is wasting breath. Living without God is toiling and getting nowhere.

Verse 8: "The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing." The senses delight to be fulfilled, yet they cannot be apart from God. You cannot listen to enough music—even timeless classics get old. No multiplicity of songs satisfies; one on repeat drives you crazy.

Movies bore eventually. If they truly satisfied, the industry would stop at one hit. Social media testifies to dissatisfaction: endless scrolling for new things. Imagine the same cat-chasing-bird post forever—vain.

Even sin does not satisfy: endless sinful images, tickling ears. People demand smooth things.

Isaiah 30:9-11: For they are a rebellious people, lying children, children unwilling to hear the instruction of the Lord; who say to the seers, “Do not see,” and to the prophets, “Do not prophesy to us what is right; speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions, leave the way, turn aside from the path, let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel.”

2 Peter 4:3-4: For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

Passions encompass what pleases the senses. Entertainment like Star Wars is modern mythology—gripping because senses cannot be satisfied.

The only way to add meaning to the experience of creation is to worship the Creator. The only way to be satisfied is to see the Scriptures and hear God. His voice is the only permanently soothing voice; His glory, the only soothing image. Now our experience is veiled—we get snippets through preaching, reading, worship. But eternity will bring permanent satisfaction in God's glory.

Everything without God is boring. God is not boring, and the experience of Him is not either.

2. Vanity Explained Through Work

Second, vanity is explained through work. Everybody would agree: work is pointless. It is a consuming toil of misery. This explains why people avoid work, even opting for government assistance when they could work (though some truly need help due to suffering or circumstances, where the church must rise up).

Verse 3: "What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?" This rhetorical question expects: nothing. Without God, man gains nothing through work.

We need to provide food, clothing, shelter—but without God, even that is totally pointless.

The Vanity of Earthly Pursuits

Imagine all the people in unbelief who work their entire lives, building massive fortunes or simply making enough to retire. All that effort leads straight to hell. It was a pointless endeavor with no meaning, no significance, no eternal value.

This is the significance of Ecclesiastes: it reveals how many things we do have no eternal weight. I'm not saying avoid fun, entertainment, or sports. But what is the value in pursuits that don't last?

I was looking through old yearbooks while unpacking after years in the house. Kids ruin things—in a good way. Holding those little bundles of joy when they're sleeping is wonderful. But back to the yearbooks: in high school, state soccer championships and lettering seemed huge. Now, after more than a decade and a reunion, it's meaningless. I got an education, but even knowledge brings sorrow, as we'll see.

All those antics we thought were fun and important? Pointless. YouTube is full of people doing stupid, fun things, laughing along. It's all vain.

Even work, so valued in our culture—the American dream of rags to riches through ingenuity—is empty.

Ecclesiastes 1:9: "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."

You can't truly innovate something new. Sure, we have smartphones and social media that Solomon didn't, but the point is everything man creates is vain. Mobility? Man has always sought to ease travel—from four legs to four wheels, hence "horsepower." But nothing new under the sun has lasting significance.

Man doesn't create; we manipulate. We didn't invent steel, gas, or electricity—we rearrange what's already here. No remembrance of former things, nor of future ones, as time marches on.

The Unhappiness of Busyness Without God

Solomon calls it an unhappy business that God has made man busy with. Everything we fill our schedules with is vain and unhappy without God. These are wearisome burdens that exhaust us, accumulating temporary things that can't satisfy.

How many godless endeavors do we pack into our lives? Can we do things to God's glory? Then sports or work gain meaning. If we're enjoying God in them, they matter. But if something detracts from enjoying God, why do it?

This applies to relationships, even marriage. Why marry someone who doesn't remind you of God or enable enjoyment of Him? Why work a job where you can't enjoy God amid it? Often it's our sin issue. If it's not sinful, we can find purpose if the gospel advances, God's reputation rises, and we draw closer to Him in thankfulness.

Otherwise, what's the point? No eternal significance.

Prioritizing Devotion to God Over Temporary Things

Many youths devote more to extracurriculars than to God. Zoom out to judgment day: a varsity soccer letter means nothing to God Almighty. Even volunteer work, if done without Him, falls short. My sports career as an unbeliever was wasted time.

If devotion to things outweighs devotion to God, those things must change or be dropped. Pointlessness without God is irrelevant for heaven's entrance.

What matters more? Temporary enjoyments and relationships that defy God's Word? Trading eternity of bliss with God for fleeting pleasures and eternal punishment? Don't accumulate temporary comforts. Accumulate glory and honor for God.