Steve Grant
Under The Sun? Or Under The Son? – Series on Ecclesiastes
Ecclesiastes 1:1-11
Is Life Meaningless?
11 May 2014

“Life is like an onion; you peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.”
– Carl Sandburg

The book of Ecclesiastes is a journal of a man who is looking for life. And he begins his journal by saying that all of life is meaningless.

‘Under the sun’ is Solomon’s way of saying that he is looking at life from a humanistic point of view. He’s intentionally ignoring God and considering life in isolation of Him. Most importantly, Solomon is saying that without God in the picture, everything is meaningless and pointless. Without God everything seems futile and a colossal waste of time. Like the proverbial hamster on a wheel, we go round and round all the time, but we don’t seem to get anywhere.

To be sure, Solomon is not denying the existence of creativity with his phrase ‘nothing new under the sun’. Rather, he says that life doesn’t change because the same frustrations and futilities plague every generation. Hence a life that is lived apart from God is pointless, profitless and purposeless.

The only way to escape the futility of things is to attach ourselves to that which is eternal. In other words, the key to satisfaction and fulfilment is in God through Jesus Christ. This is how life is meant to be lived.