Review:

Last week we began a study from the book of Ecclesiastes on the subject of Happiness: "How to Find Happiness." This book is about the most miserable person in the world. He is the unhappiest person you could ever meet. In fact, he holds the record of being the most discouraged, despondent, dissatisfied, and discontented individual that ever lived. And guess what! He is a believer.

This is an autobiography of a born again believer opening his heart. I have made a great mistake and I am writing to all of you that you do not make the same mistake. His pain and mental anguish is evident as He writes:

1:2 "Vanity of vanities," says the Preacher, "Vanity of vanities! All is vanity."

1:3 What advantage does man have in all his work which he does under the sun?

He has tried everything under the sun to find happiness and it has alluded him. This is his story of his frantic search for happiness. Why is it important to us? Everyone who is not mentally challenged wants to be happy, satisfied, content, live a life which has some meaning and significance. The same temptations Solomon faced we face. We can fail God the same way Solomon did. We can search for happiness in the wrong places. Nothing wrong with searching for happiness, but everything wrong with looking for it in the wrong place.

Now we could close our Bibles at this point and go home. We have the entire lesson of Ecclesiastes summarized in these few statements. Yet, we would fail to appreciate the lessons he learned. We need to see his frustration and misery and feel his pain. This is a book of warning. Heed the warnings. We would also miss out on understanding the various dangers and snares that exist. This book helps us identify those hazards. It explains how to avoid those traps. This is a very valuable book, and that is why it is in the cannon of Scripture.

This morning we turn to "the man with a message." After numerous attempts to find happiness and after years wasted in the search for happiness his conclusion was "vanities of vanities, all is vanity." He is absolutely frustrated. It is clear in the next verses as he illustrates his conclusion (1) From nature. (2) From history.

Let me state the principle first that is found here in the two illustrations:

There is no happiness under the sun without relationship to Jesus Christ.

1. Illustration from nature

1:4) "One generation passes away, and another generation comes: but the earth abides forever."

What does he mean by this? Simple! Just what he said, ' As long as the earth, remains in tact, one generation replaces the next, on and on and on and on, one monotonous cycle.

1:5) "The sun also rises and the sun goes down, and hastens to its place where it arose,"

The sun goes up, the sun goes down, ever day the sun goes up and the sun goes down, up and down, up and down,(yawn),up and down, etc.

Solomon is bored to death with life and he looks at nature from that perspective, The cycles of nature become the medium for expressing the cycle of frustration in his life. Solomon's life has become a rat race. In his search for happiness, happiness evades him. No matter how hard he tries, no matter what he tries, he always ends up at the same place: He is miserable and frustrated. His search always ends in futility. Life does not have to be that way for the believer.

Paul says, "The invisible things of Him from the creation or the world are clearly SEEN, being understood, by the things that are made', even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse." Romans 1:16

God can be seen through nature, but Solomon did not see the testimony of God in nature. He saw in it his own frustration.

God said: Let there be light, and there was light, And God saw the light that it was good and God divided the light from the darkness, And God said Let there be light in the firmament of the heavens to-divide the day from the night and let them be for signs and for seasons, for days and for years. Genesis 1

Every time the sun rises it is a testimony of the faithfulness of God. God keeps his word. Man brag's about man's power. They talk about the 100 megaton bombs, yet every morning they are the beneficiaries of the sun's light and it has more power in it than 100 million megaton bombs. This is what Paul meant when he said, "God can be understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power".

When Solomon looks at nature he looks at life without God in the picture and therefore he sees in nature only his own frustration. Whenever you are frustrated and unhappy check you perspective. How are you viewing life at that moment?

The Bible says, "Set your affection on things above, not on the things of the earth." Colossians 3:3

How far above? Solomon never got any further up than the sun.

"Seek those things which are above, where Christ sits on the right hand of God."

I like to call this occupation with Jesus Christ. No matter what I do, no matter what I have, no matter where I go, I share everything with Jesus Christ. That is the perspective of the spiritual person who possess the divine perspective of life.

1:6 he wind goes toward the south and turns about unto the north; it circles about continually, and the wind returns.

The wind continuously circles around and around and around.

1:7 "All the rivers run into the sea, yet, the sea is not full; unto if the place from where the rivers come, there they return again,

The water in the rivers flows into the sea; moisture is drawn into the clouds and

dumped back again into the rivers.

1:8 All things are full of labor (toil), man cannot utter it (no way I can express the misery ) the eye is not satisfied (happy) with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing,"

Note the voice which is given to speak, cannot utter. The eye is given to see but it doesn't see. The ear is given to bear but it can't hear. Something is definitely wrong. The voice, the eye, the ear all represent the details of life, Solomon has a voice, he has two eyes, he has two ears, but they are not operating as they should,

The point is this: The details of life are not producing what he thinks they should be producing, that is happiness! Another thing that is here is "without happiness we might as well be dumb, blind and deaf. If you don't know what life is like, you don't know what you are missing. But to see life and have experienced happiness, then to lose happiness and not find it no matter how hard you try is sheer torture.

2. Illustration from history 1:9-11

1:9 The thing that hath been (past) it is that which shall be (future) and that which is done (present) is that which shall be done (future) so ( conclusion) there is no new thing under heaven.

Solomon looked to the past to find if there was anything in earlier times that he hadn't tried. He so desperately wanted to be happy that he studied the past to see if he might have overlooked something. He saw nothing new. Nothing he hadn't already tried. Everything that had been tried failed. He could have shot himself at this point. Here he tried everything the previous generation had tried. He failed, they failed, yet they failed before he failed, had he only started his quest for happiness by first looking into the past, he would have saved himself a lot of agony.

1:10 Is there any thing whereof it may be said., "See, this is new?"it hath already of old time which was before us.

Now let's say you and I make up a list. Everything we put on our list will be those things which people associate with happiness. If we do these things or have these things we will be happy. Solomon says, when your list is finished every item can be found in the past as tried and failed to bring happiness.

1:11 There is no remembrance of former things (past) neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.

His present will be someone's past and in those future generations they will all be trying the same things to find happiness that Solomon tried. In other words, the general principle is this: People do not learn from other people mistakes.

Hegel said it this way, "What we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.

Closing lesson:

Does life have any meaning? Nature goes on generation after generation repeating itself over and over. It makes no progress. It seems to have no purpose. History repeats itself over and over again. Solomon expresses the experience of all who are living "under the sun" rather than walking with the Lord Jesus.

If your life seem to be going nowhere. It you lack meaning or purpose. You must first come to Jesus Christ for Salvation. There can be no happiness under the sun without a relationship to Jesus Christ.