April 12, 2026 | Life's Treadmill
Life's Treadmill | Ecclesiastes 1:1-11
Ecclesiastes 1:1–11
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. (ESV)
In Life’s Treadmill, Jed Gillis shows that Ecclesiastes 1:1–11 faces the frustration many people feel in ordinary life. Day after day can seem repetitive, fleeting, and hard to grasp. He explains that the word translated “vanity” points to life as breathlike. It passes quickly, cannot be controlled, and often resists simple explanation. Under the sun, life can feel empty because human effort alone cannot produce lasting gain or secure meaning. The repeated cycles in nature expose our limits and remind us that novelty and legacy cannot satisfy the heart’s desire for control or purpose. New experiences do not solve the problem, and even what we build will one day be forgotten. The sermon calls listeners to stop looking for meaning within the treadmill itself and instead look beyond it to God. Real purpose comes from embracing our creaturely limits, rejecting false hopes, and receiving life as a gift from the good God who stands over all that is under the sun.
Transcript of Life's Treadmill | Ecclesiastes 1:1-11
Jed Gillis: Amen. I'm excited. This morning we're going to begin a new series in the book of Ecclesiastes. So if you have your copy of Scriptures and you'd like to turn to Ecclesiastes chapter one, I invite you to do that. Also, children, if you're headed out the door to Children's Church, you're welcome to do that. You're also welcome to stay in here with us 'cause we're always glad to have you here.
Life's Treadmill
Jed Gillis: Does life ever feel like one big treadmill? Like you get to the evening time after dinner and you think, oh, I've gotta wash dishes. And you wash the dishes and the kitchen is spotless. And how does it look by, say, noon the next day? Or at least 24 hours later? And you say, I have to wash 'em again.
Again what about you go on vacation? You think, oh, I just can't wait to get to this vacation. And you finally go and it's a wonderful relaxing time. And then two months later you think, man, I need another vacation. We know what that feels like.
How about when you, you eat, you know, and some of you think you've had those meals where you go away thinking I could never put another bite in my stomach. Depending on your age, if you're a teenage boy, 30 seconds later you're hungry. Or maybe it takes a little longer. But you still, there's this sense, there are these things in life that happen time and time and time and time again. And if we stop and sit with it, we might have to say, wait, what's the point?
You go to bed every night. Hopefully you wake up rested, though maybe that's not true for all of us all the time, but hopefully you wake up rested, but then by the next evening you're exhausted again.
Or maybe it's not the the basic things that we do with our bodies like eating and sleeping. Maybe it's just the fact that you wake up in the morning, you do whatever your morning routine is, coffee or whatever you need to make sure you can function, and then you go to work. And then you do your best at your job, and then you come home and you try to grab a few minutes of quality time with your family or maybe some friends, and then you go to sleep, and what do you do? You get up and do it again and again and again and again.
It can feel like a treadmill like you're running and working, but never really getting somewhere. And treadmills are fine if you're exercising so that you can run the race later. But imagine if in your, your fitness journey, you get on the treadmill and somebody tells you, okay, that's where you are for the rest of your life.
Asking The Question: What is Life All About?
Jed Gillis: See the treadmill's great if it's helping you get ready for something. Most of us would say, what's the point? If there's nothing beyond the treadmill, why on earth do I keep running? This is our experience in life, and it begs us for deep engagement, for deep thought, say, what on earth is this life all about?
And the problem is we're addicted to pat answers. To like simple answers to complex questions.
The world rightly criticizes Christianity when we sound like that. When we give answers that sound like we don't want to actually think about reality, we just want to say something like, oh, it's all part of God's plan. Now how about the game?
Somebody ever said something to you like that and you said, I don't think you really get what I'm going through?
We say things like, just have faith, and to someone who maybe doesn't know God, you say, that's such a simplistic, naive answer.
Now we might know there's a big difference between the person who goes, oh, just have faith. And that person, we know their life and we know their walk with God, and they say, you need faith. And there's a depth to that answer that isn't always obvious. But we get these kinds of answers that seem more rehearsed than they are real.
Often we deploy these kinds of answers to avoid thinking about what's real, to avoid thinking about pain and things that hurt. And Christianity is rightly sometimes criticized for that.
But what about the pat answers that the world around us offers? We hear things like we make our own meaning, and we're supposed to just nod and say, oh good, that sounds great, but really? You make your own meaning and your, your random choices give purpose to your life enough that you can live on it.
Or we hear things like, everything in this world came from nothing. How'd that happen? Time plus matter than plus chance. How'd that happen? I don't know. Now I know there are people who think more deeply and, and try to work that all the way through to an answer. But the point is, recognize all of us, not just Christians, not just atheists, not just any other category you wanna put in there, we all tend to be addicted to these shallow answers that don't really deal with the problem.
Ecclesiastes Won't Let You Get Away with Pat Answers
Jed Gillis: In the book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon is not going to let you sit with overly simple answers to complex, difficult questions. In this book, he's going to say, let's talk about, you know, a few little things like the meaning of life, legacy, money, pleasure, work, toil, oppression, injustice, worship. Let's talk about all those things in a fallen difficult world. Let's talk about the reality of death. Let's talk about the fact that sometimes the wise person dies before the foolish one. Sometimes the strong person doesn't always win the battle.
Paul does. Paul, wrong book. Sorry, that was Galatians. Solomon will not let you sit with pat answers, and that is good. That's good because if you sit with pat answers when things are okay and surface and shallow, what happens when they get hard?
This book confronts us with life as finite, limited creatures in a fallen, sinful world and Solomon. I'm gonna make this statement now and hopefully show you as I go through the book. Solomon is not a naive simpleton. I don't think most people accuse him of that, but he's also not a bitter cynic. Instead, he's something much more unusual.
He's an honest, thoughtful man. He'll look at the difficulties. He'll look at the pain. He'll look at the struggle. And he'll say, that's real. Now, how do you live? What makes life worth it? What is a meaning? What is purpose in this life? This is what Solomon is trying to do for us as he writes the book of Ecclesiastes.
Reading Ecclesiastes 1:1-11
Jed Gillis: So I'm gonna read beginning in chapter one:
The words of the preacher, the son of David King in Jerusalem. Vanity of vanity 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, it rises and the sun goes down and hastens to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south. 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 has said, see, this is no 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.
Now, if that sounds depressing to you, which it might, I want to encourage you to go on this journey with Solomon. From this spot at the beginning of the book all the way to the end. I will tell you, Ecclesiastes is probably my favorite Old Testament book, arguably Psalms, depending on the week, it's probably my favorite.
And that's 'cause I don't think he's a bitter, bitter, cynic who's trying to discourage you at every moment. I do think he wants you to be real in this world.
Hebrew Word: Hevel
Jed Gillis: So in order to travel with Solomon on this journey, we've gotta make sure we start in the right place. I'm gonna have you learn two Hebrew words today.
First one is hevel, would you just say hevel? Hevel. Great. Now, would you take your hand while you say it, put it in front of your mouth and go hevel, do you feel that air hit your hand? That's what hevel means. It means breath, it means vapor. It mean could mean smoke.
When he says this, it's translated in verse two, vanity of vanities, and you depending on your translation, sometimes it says pointless. Sometimes it says meaningless. Sometimes it says empty. Sometimes it says breath. All kinds of different vapor, all kinds of different translations that happen. What they're trying to do is get around a Hebrew word here. Which is metaphorical to mean breath. So hevel, what you feel there? It's metaphorical to say it's, it's something that is empty in the sense that it's not like this pulpit. I can't pick it up and move it.
He's not trying to say it's all terrible. What he's doing is giving us through this picture of breath, of vapor of smoke. He's giving us at least three things.
Life is Fleeting
Jed Gillis: One, life is fleeting. You can't hold onto it. If you try to breathe out and grab your breath, what happens? Nothing.
In fact, you can hold your breath right for a few seconds. I thought about asking you to do that for however long you can, but I won't. You can hold it. You can keep it in for a few seconds. Maybe you could set the world record unaided uh, breath hold was almost 12 minutes. Without oxygen to start with. Somebody's done it for like 20 something with oxygen to start with.
Unbelievable, right? Sure, but how long is 12 minutes compared to your life?
You can't save up breath for later. I asked ChatGPT this question, so if it's wrong, that's why according to ChatGPT, the average human in 70 years breathes about a half billion times.
But here's the thing, you can't decide, you know, for this year, I'm just gonna not breathe and save it up for later. Doesn't work.
Solomon says, life is hevel. It's fleeting. You can't grab it, you can't save it. You can't do any of that with it. It's like breath.
Now none of us think breath is a pointless, meaningless thing, do we? You're all breathing right now, and now that I'm talking about it, you're all thinking about your breathing probably.
No, we, we rejoice in breath, like God's given us life. I'm, I'm breathing his air that he's made so that oxygen and lungs and carbon dioxide all do the stuff that they do, whatever all that is right, so that I can live. Breath is not a bad thing, but you can't hold it. You can't grab it. You can't save it. So life is fleeting.
You Can't Control Life
Jed Gillis: This picture also tells us, because you can't grab it, you can't control it. Imagine if you said, Hey, I'm just gonna bottle up a bottle of breath, so I have it for later. It just doesn't even work.
Life is Hard to Define
Jed Gillis: It's also not, since you can't control it, you can't grab it and understand it, it's also hard to define. It's like it's almost insubstantial. That's why some translations will translate this, uh, life is a riddle or an enigma or a mystery. It's like it's wispy.
If we were to go outside, maybe you do this with your, your kids or your grandkids, and you go outside and you look up at the clouds and you say, oh, that one looks kind of like a horse, right? And somebody else goes, oh no, I think it looks like cheesecake. Horse and cheesecake don't really have that much in common. Right? But it's a cloud, so you can kind of do that. It's hard to define it. It's hard to say, here's the meaning. This is clearly what it is, and somebody else says, no, it looks totally different.
That's part of what this sense of vapor, this wis nest, this sense of life. You try to say, what's the purpose in life? This difficulty happened this week. Okay. I know exactly. This is the meaning of it. This is the purpose. Do you really? Not usually, because life is hevel, life is fleeting.
And we might think, well, Solomon, did you just figure this out on your own? Probably not, honestly. Probably his dad told him, because we know Solomon's dad was David, and if you read Psalm 39. Slightly condensed. It says, oh Lord, let me know how fleeting I am. You have made my days a few hand breaths like the width of your hand, and then he says, surely all mankind stands as a mere breath.
Wanna guess what word that is? Hevel. Solomon, I'm sure heard his dad probably singing this song and saying it a million other times. Because that's what dads do, right? We repeat the same things over and over often. He heard his dad saying, you know, human life compared to God who never changes, it's just breath. And so Solomon takes that and runs with it here.
Now we might have to pause, we go. 'cause we don't, Solomon doesn't want Pat answers. He doesn't want you just to go. Okay, sure. I'll walk off and pretend it's true. Say, wait a minute. When I look forward at my life, those of you who are younger. I've got a front row of younger people, and I've got some in the back and all around.
You know, you're, you're 12 years old, you're 14 years old, probably life didn't feel so fleeting at that point, right? You'd say looking forward to high school, it felt like forever. Looking forward to a driver's license, felt like it would never come. Looking forward to graduation or a college degree, or a wedding, or a career, or a child. Or grandchildren.
But I've talked to enough of you to know when you look back at those things. It goes so fast. It's fleeting. You can't just grab it and keep it and hold it.
Under the Sun
Jed Gillis: So we say, okay, Solomon, I get it. You're right. You life does seem to be fleeting and fast, but Solomon, you said, all is vanity. Like everything. I mean, I get that some things, but you mean literally everything. In fact, later in the book Solomon, you're gonna say, fear God and keep his commandments. You're gonna say there's gain in wisdom. You're gonna say some things that you're, you seem like you're saying they're good. Are they also just fleeting breaths?
In order to do that, we need to know a second phrase. We won't get the Hebrew word for this one. We'll do that in a minute. Second phrase, and that's found at the end of verse three under the sun.
This is a beautifully poetic phrase. If we walk out there into the parking lot and we look up not directly at the sun, kids don't go blind. You go out and you look up. What do you see? You see blue skies. Maybe you see clouds. I'm not sure right now. You see the brilliance of the sun reflecting in our atmosphere.
Do you know that there's something above that? Of course you do. Say, I saw maybe last night. You see stars and comets and galaxies. You see this reality that's not under the sun, and yet when you go out there in the brilliance, the brightness of the sun, it can be easy to look and think that all you see is all that there is.
The same thing's true in our spiritual lives. We go about life under the sun. With all that we can see and hear and taste and touch and all that we can think here in this life, on this earth, and it can be easy to get trapped. To think that under the sun is all that there is.
But just like the stars are up there, the frustrations why we started this morning saying the brokenness of this world that you felt is real, but there's something over it.
Throughout this book, Solomon is not going to just say all that there is is what's under the sun, but he's going to push you to say, if that were true, what does that mean? So when he says, all is hevel, throughout this book, he's saying, when you consider existence under the sun, if you live like what you can see on this earth is all that there is, if you live like the treadmill is it, and you're running on the treadmill, but there's nothing beyond it, then not only is it fleeting like breath, but that's when it would actually be appropriate to translate it. Pointless, meaningless, empty.
So his first big statement on how you want to journey through this book, everything is fleeting, all of life is fleeting and frustrating sometimes because you can't hold it because you are not God. You are a limited, finite creature.
Hebrew Word: Yitron
Jed Gillis: And the second thing, 'cause thankfully Solomon, he's a good writer, he sets you up at the very beginning to say, what's the big question I'm gonna talk about? First of all, everything's fleeting.
Second, verse three, what does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? This word gain, here's your second Hebrew word, yitron. Would you say yitron? Yitron.
I'm gonna use these throughout the series sometimes. That's why I want you to hear 'em. Now, yitron, it means gain.
It doesn't necessarily mean any good, like Solomon is not saying all that man does is completely, uselessly bad. Gain is more like a technical term to refer to advantage, or in business we would call it profit.
So if you think in business terms, there's a difference between revenue, right? You get money in. And then you say, but we had costs involved. So if you take out all your costs, you say, what money is left over? That's profit.
So let me read with that in mind. Reread it with that word here. What does man profit, he's not saying that work doesn't do some good things. Sure. What he's saying is, when you take out all of your costs, where's the long-term lasting advantage? Where's the extra?
He's saying if you go and you, you show love to your children and you have a good, solid family. You go, it was a lot of work to do that. You go and you work hard at your job to provide for your family and it's a lot of work. You say, well, that was a lot of cost and there's good that came out of it.
Solomon's question is, at the end of the day, when you take all your effort and your labor, is it ultimately a profit, an advantage, something that's lasting or not?
And throughout this book, here's the tension, life is fleeting and there is a real way to have gain. He's gonna say there's more gain in wisdom than in folly. He's gonna say, living your life is like, if you have a sharp axe, you have a gain. You have an advantage over a dull ax.
See, most of the time what we want to think is, if I can have definite profit in this life, I can control it. I can grasp how all of it works together, then I can have gain, I can have profit.
Solomon says, no, you're gonna find the frustration of not being able to control life, and yet the real possibility of gain of good. Not considered under the sun only, but looking at eternity. Now, we'll get to that later as we go through the book.
Reading Ecclesiastes with Breath and Profit in Mind
Jed Gillis: Here's some homework for this week if you'd like. Some, you don't have to, but I'd love to have you do it. Read through the book of Ecclesiastes one time. Look for everywhere. The word vanity, if you're reading ESV or whatever word, it translates it in verse two, everywhere the word vanity is. And when you do, I want you to pause and think havel. Fleeting. Uncontrollable say that's what he's talking about.
And then read everywhere in the book that he uses the word gain in the ESV and think, okay, that's yitron, that's profit. That's long-term advantage beyond just, I paid this amount of effort and I got this good out. But something that's actual profit and advantage.
Read through that and that will help you as we work through this journey.
Cycles in Nature
Jed Gillis: So with that question, where does Solomon want you to go to start with? We look at verse four. He says, think about cycles in nature.
Generational Cycles
Jed Gillis: Specifically first cycles of people. Solomon says, Hey, if you individually are fleeting, don't forget, so are generations. We know this as, as you get older, you think most of your friends tend to be about the same age group. When you're 20, you say, well, most of my friends don't have kids, but they have parents and grandparents who are alive. And then you get a little bit older and maybe you get to 40 and you start saying, oh, most of us don't have grandparents who are alive. Or maybe not all four at least. And you get a little older and you start saying, most of my friends don't have parents who are alive. And then you get a old little older and you start saying, many of my friends have gone on.
And we know that's how it works. We don't have to be told that Solomon didn't give us new news here. Solomon says, generations go and come.
Now, I think that's interesting. We would normally say they come and go. Right? They would in Hebrew too. He reversed the order on purpose because this is instructive to us. The idea is whatever generation you're in, the tendency is to think that previous generation got some stuff wrong. They're gonna move on. We're gonna get it better, and we're gonna leave something better to the next generation.
Guess what? The generation before you thought and the one after you. And the one before that and the one after that. And it will be, 'cause Solomon is saying, this is how it works. Generation goes and you say, they're moving on, taking their errors, we're gonna be better. We'll have profit and gain. We'll make sure that we have that advantage. And this next generation coming, they'll be even better yet.
And yet, that's not what we see always in history. Is it? And especially when you compare a generation, even however many people you want to think of in a generation, compare their impact to what he does as he continues in verse four, the earth remains forever.
Most of us can't name anybody who lived in the generation from, let's say, 1835. If we pick the right years, maybe we go, oh, civil war. Maybe there's some people there. Sure. But most of us can't. And even if we could, we could name a couple. These generations come and go. And so he says, well, think about not only people think about nature, think about the sun. It rises, it sets, and notice the way he describes it, it hurries back to the place where it's gonna rise again.
This cycle keeps happening and it's like Solomon is asking us to say, how on earth do I have meaning and purpose in my life when there are these giant cycles that keep moving and I can't change 'em at all? You can try. You can say, I'm gonna stop the sun from rising today. Good luck. You won't. You can say, I'm gonna stop the wind from blowing.
I mean, you can put up a block, maybe you could put up a wall, you could do some things, but you don't stop the cycle of the wind. I'm gonna stop water from evaporating. No, you're not.
We live in a world that constantly reminds us of how small we are, and that's exactly where Solomon points us. He says The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north.
Now we can use wind, we can set up windmills, we can generate power, but go try to get a bottle of wind and save it to use it later. You can't.
The Water Cycle
Jed Gillis: So he says, look at the water cycle. Look over and over at the world you live in. He says, the, the rivers run down to the sea, but it's never full. Like, the ocean looks like it was designed to collect water, right? It's a big bowl, and yet it's never full.
Solomon drives us then because he's not only talking about geology here, right? He says, wait a minute. Now, think about you. Think about the things in you that were designed for a purpose and are never satisfied. The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor the ear filled with hearing. It always wants something more.
Solomon says, if you're gonna sit with the hard questions in life and you're gonna sit with what is the meaning and purpose of the life that I live when all of life is hevel, if you're gonna do that, you gotta realize, here's this creation that God put in place with all of these cycles, and they keep going no matter what you do. We have to start with a sense of how small we are.
How We Normally Try to Grab Control and Meaning
Jed Gillis: So when we do that, if we compare, here's our fleeting life, here's enduring creation, here's my choices from day to day, here's the sun rising. We put ourselves in that perspective, well then how would we try to, to grab control to say, here's how I know my life can be of a benefit. Here's how I can find meaning. What are the ways we could do it?
He's gonna list a lot of 'em, but we're gonna talk about two in this section this morning.
Novelty
Jed Gillis: The first is we might look to novelty. If I can just experience something new and better, or maybe create something new and better, then my life has value. My life has purpose. And the bottom line of my life, the prophet of my life will be good.
That's when we get to this statement in verse nine. What has been is what will be what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. There's our phrase under the sun. In this life considered by itself, there's nothing new.
Now at this point we can like Paul, I keep saying Paul, gimme about five weeks. I'll get past Paul. Sorry. Solomon.
We're like, Solomon, you're crazy. I drive a car. You had a horse. We have penicillin, we have smartphones, we have the internet, we have movies. Solomon, you had none of that. So in one sense, we could sit here and make him a naive simpleton and be like, yeah, yeah, sure. You, you don't know what you're talking about.
But Solomon knew technological advances. Those happened in the ancient world, right? We went from, you know, bronze Age and Iron Age and Stone Age. Before that, we, those things all happened. He knew about technology, not the same way we do, but he knew that things had happened. But what he also knew maybe better than we do, is in a sense the more things change, the more they stay the same.
That you can go through all of these developments and what do you still find? Fighting, injustice, anger, betrayal. Happens on the internet. It happened with hammers in a sense. There's nothing new. You find people making movies now. You found people doing plays then. What's really the difference? Solomon says, in their essence, there's, there's nothing new.
Now, you had the fighting and oppression. You also had love and kindness and the beauty of humanity made in God's image. That's always been true.
Yes, we have the internet now so we can get access to so much more information. That's no guarantee that more of it's right. Solomon had all kinds of information. He was probably the most educated man on the planet. He says, in reality, there's nothing that's actually new. There's nothing about the digital age we live in that will ever change the meaning and purpose of life any more than it changed going from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age, to the Iron Age, to the Industrial Revolution.
The real questions, the meaning and purpose of life kind of questions never changed. So our hope for meaning and control and gain is not going to be found in novelty in finding this new thing. Is there a thing of which it has said, see, this is new. It has been already in the ages before us.
Legacy
Jed Gillis: And the second way we might try to achieve gain, it's not through novelty, but through legacy.
So Solomon says. If you draw the timeline out enough, there's nothing really meaningfully remembered. That's verse 11. There's no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be.
How many of you remember what you were doing 11 years ago today? I would be utterly shocked if you did. I didn't pick like 9/11 or something like that where you would probably actually remember, you probably don't. 11 years. That's not really that long.
Let's be honest. How many of you remember what you were doing two weeks ago today? Right? That's a little harder.
We don't remember sometimes. We don't remember people, but we don't even remember what we did because for most of us, our memory of our life, it runs together. There's one way to illustrate it in this room. How many of you ever personally met John Stone? Raise your hand. So many of us, but many haven't. My hand's down, 'cause I didn't.
If I ask that same question in 20 years, how many hands will go up? If you don't know John Stone was pastor here at Berean Bible Church for a long time, 40 years. If I ask it in 20 years, if I ask it in 40 years, how long does it take before somebody says, oh, I know that name. It's on our gym over there. And how long does it take before the gym's not there?
Things pass. Even meaningful, impactful, good things. There's no permanent remembrance.
How Do We Resolve This Tension?
Jed Gillis: So we, we can get here and say, Solomon, thanks a lot. You're quite the depressing sage. But his message isn't that life is depressing. His message is life handled in a certain way is depressing. Just like breath is a wonderful thing if you breathe in and breathe out. But if you decide you're gonna hold it, you're gonna find it's difficult fast.
So what do we do with this? I want to ask you to think on a couple things this morning. How do you take this? Like he's giving you philosophical ideas. He's giving you a question, attention that actually, if you feel like, oh, I get all the answer to that right now, I think Solomon would roll his eyes at you.
So you say there's tension, there's challenge. How do I do that? Here's a couple things I want you to think about this week.
Look Beyond the Treadmill to Find Purpose
Jed Gillis: One. Life feels like a treadmill. You have to look beyond the treadmill to find purpose.
Those of you who are runners, if you run on a treadmill, you probably do it to say, I want to run the race well. When life feels like a treadmill, you're not going to find purpose in. Yep, same day again. Same day again. Same day again, you're gonna go out, you're gonna look past the sun and say, but there's, there's a God behind this. There's an existence, a reality that's not just under the sun, that's not just on the treadmill. So let the frustration of life under the sun drive you to the hope of life beyond it.
Embrace Your Limits
Jed Gillis: Second thing, embrace your limits. There's really probably not a more counter-cultural message in our world today. We're literally told repeatedly, you can do anything you want. And Solomon says, that's a miserable way to live.
Embrace the fact that you are not like the sun. You will not keep running in this body, in this life forever. Embrace the fact that you cannot change the water cycle. And you're not responsible to. We often long to be like small g gods or superheroes, but we don't live in a world designed for gods and superheroes. We don't live in bodies designed to be that. We're not people designed to be that.
We're designed to be limited creatures. So develop responsible rhythms of work and rest.
When you embrace limits, part of that is you say, Hey, I need to sleep. My body needs rest. My body needs nutrition. My body needs exercise. I can't actually do everything without that. Why? Because I'm not God.
The Bible says, God never, slumbers, never sleeps. So embrace our limits. Remember frequently what you can't do, and remember, God can do all of those.
Remember Novelty Will Not Solve Your Desire for Meaning or Control
Jed Gillis: Then as you think on these kinds of tensions, remember, novelty will not solve your desire for meaning and control.
I think the place we see this may be the most, I didn't bring it up with me, but it's normally in my pocket, my smartphone. What is that full of? A smartphone connected to the internet is just a machine to give you new stuff over and over and over and over and, and they're really good at it, by the way. At hooking you on something, you go, oh, this is new. This is new. And next thing you know, you've scrolled for three hours.
I want to encourage you when Solomon says. Is there a thing of which it has said, see, this is new. It has been already in the ages before us. He's saying that itch to see the new thing that the internet and the smartphone tries to catch you with. It's bait in a trap. It's not going to give you meaning and gain and success and all the stuff you want in this life.
It's a tool. We can use it in some ways. I'm not anti-technology. I am anti scrolling in a way that says, my hope and my fulfillment is life is built on seeing the next new thing.
Why do you think we have so many streaming options? Right? Netflix, Prime Video, Disney, Peacock, Hulu, YouTube tv, Roku tv, and those were the ones I could list really quickly. I didn't even list YouTube. I listed YouTube tv, but not YouTube. Duh. Why do we have so much of that? Because we as humans are so easily drawn in by then. Oh, that's new. Oh, that's new. Oh, that's new. Oh, that's new. And we get deceived to think that's going to solve these kinds of questions that we have.
So I wanna encourage you, spend time with God. Ask him to break the hold of always looking for something new. That could be some simple ways you could do it.
Speaking to myself, I was trying to think of ways that I get wrapped into it. Go find an old book you've read before and read it. Just because you say something new is not gonna solve my problem. Go watch an old movie that you say, this is really, really good. Instead of scrolling 45,000 new short videos on YouTube. To remind you that my hope is not found in something new, but in God who gives all good things to enjoy. If I could say it directly, put your phone down more, and the more, the harder that is for you, the more you need to do it.
You know, there's the equivalent of 10 million Blu-ray discs of data is created every day. That's insane. They people estimate 90% of the world's digital data was created in the last two years. Why do they do that? Because people keep going to look for new stuff and think it's gonna solve their problems.
New is not going to solve what goes on in your heart. It's not going to solve the deep questions. Stop scrolling and hoping for something new to distract you and go to the God who can actually answer those questions.
And one reason that's so important is 'cause it filters into our spiritual life too. How many times do you read your Bible, go away and you think, I didn't really see anything new. Maybe you came to sermon and said, I didn't really hear anything new or Bible study.
The fact that we have that question though means we're sometimes looking for the wrong thing. Solomon says, new is not gonna solve it for you.
Instead, you say, I want to love my Heavenly Father. I wanna spend time in a relationship with him. So what if what he does is say, here's a truth you've known and loved before. Come love it again. Praise God for that.
Remember Legacy Will Not Solve Your Desire for Meaning or Control
Jed Gillis: Novelty's not gonna solve it. Neither is legacy. Again, Solomon asks you to embrace this truth.
Your job in life is not to build a monument, certainly not to you. Your job in life is to breathe in and out. Take the life God's given you and breathe it out in His in. Praise for him. Not to hold it and build a monument. Breathe it out.
So think about your relationships. When you spend time with your family or your friends. Are you present in that small moment or are you more concerned about the legacy, the future, the monument, the reputation? Where's your hope?
I think it's a wonderful thing, and by the way, Solomon would agree in Ecclesiastes, we'll get there: leaving a godly spiritual legacy is a good thing, but if your hope is solely built on that and you forget to know and love God, now you miss the point.
Life is fleeting. Havel. It passes. You can't grab it, but there is gain. There is good. There is a profitable, good way to live this life. How do we hold those two things together and not go crazy?
The answer's not novelty and it's not legacy. The answer is to look over the sun. Life is about more than what you experience and see right here.
Solomon's answer ultimately will be that we need a deep commitment to the fact that human existence is more than just the treadmill we see, and we feel. It's a good God who gives in creation and as we celebrated earlier, who gave him himself for us so that you can know him, so that you can love him. So that you can rejoice in him.
Pray for God to Work
Jed Gillis: So I invite you to take a moment and ask God to work through his word today, through this series. Ask him to help you in wrestling with the challenging questions. Thank him for his goodness as the God who gives. Spend a moment in prayer and then I'll close.
Father, we feel the stress, the frustration of just trying to make sense sometimes of this world that's around us of our lives. We feel the fleeting nature. We long to hold on to joys and opportunities that we can't seem to keep.
I pray that you would draw us, draw us to understand our lives, not merely under the sun. I pray however it is that each of us individually, we, we view you, I pray that this book, that Solomon's writings, this wisdom, this truth, would draw our souls to know you more as a good God who gives gifts and gives enjoyment to his people.
Would you protect us from putting our hope in human achievement? Protect us from seeking the novelty as something that we think will solve our questions and solve our problems? Would you make us people who are rooted deeply rooted in the truth of your word, who are like the oak tree standing by the water so that when the difficulties come, we don't have shallow answers that get uprooted, but we're not tossed to and fro, and we are sustained by your truth and your grace all the way through our lives and all the way to glory.
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.