Making Sense of Ecclesiates

So, I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention to everything going on in the world but… Everything is absurd. Seriously, have you been paying attention? Everything is meaningless. It’s all futile. Vanity. Smoke. 

People live and die and nothing changes. The sun rises and sets and rises and sets, over and over, every day. Nothing changes. Nothing matters. Then it hurries and rises again tomorrow.

The wind blows south, and then north, and then south, going in endless circles. Rivers run into the sea but the sea is never full. Then the water just returns again to the rivers. Then back to the sea. It’s all tiresome beyond belief. 

We’re also never satisfied with anything. We’re never content.

History just repeats itself over and over. Whether you know history or not. 

There is nothing new under the sun. It’s all been done before. It’s all been said before. 

Those are the opening words of Ecclesiastes. One of the most honest preachers of all time. The word “ecclesiastes” means “the one who speaks publicly in a congregation.” So, “The Preacher.”

But what kind of preaching is this? It sounds pretty bleak, right? 

It all leads to one of two places: either a religion that no one in the world can ever be comfortable with or a bullet in the head.

You might be reading through the Bible one day and suddenly come across this book and be like, “what the heck is going on here? This dude sounds depressed! Cynical.”

The opening line says “These are the words of Ecclesiastes (The Preacher), King David’s son, who ruled in Jerusalem.” He’s never called Solomon in the book, but we’re supposed to think of Solomon when we read it. It might have even been written by him, it doesn’t really matter. God wants us to think of Solomon, his wealth, his power, his wisdom, and his life when we read this book.

When Solomon was first made king of Israel, he was young, and he prayed to God for wisdom so he’d be able to lead the people well. God granted his prayer and gave him wisdom and said,

“Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice, I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be. Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for—both wealth and honor—so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings. And if you walk in obedience to me and keep my decrees and commands as David your father did, I will give you a long life.” 1 Kings 3:10-14

So, Solomon had it all. Wisdom, wealth, power, pleasure, and faith. Must be nice, huh?

The Book of Ecclesiastes is an honest, brutally honest, reflection on what it’s like to get everything you ever wanted.

The Preacher continues: 

So, I devoted myself to wisdom and understanding and knowledge—I found out God set up the world so that the human race is miserable. It doesn’t matter how much you know, it’s all meaningless. Everything under the sun is absurd. Empty. It’s all just chasing the wind.

The more you know, the more you realize you don’t know. Every answer just leads to more questions. So, the more I learned, the worse the world looked. The more depressed I got.

So I turned to pleasure. Might as well enjoy the good things in life, right? Sex, drugs, and rock n roll. Wine, women, and song. Whiskey River, take my mind! It was fun, for a while, but it was meaningless. Laughter is stupid. Pleasure just leads to needing more pleasure and eventually leads to boredom. It’s pretty much the only happiness most people find in their miserable, brief little lives, though.

I bought a bunch of nice big mansions to live in with amazing gardens. I made a lot of money and bought everything I ever wanted. Went to all the best concerts. Had thousands of lovers. Lived the life of a rock star—had everything a person could ever desire.

And I found it all to be completely empty. 

I mean, wisdom is better than being a fool. Pleasure is better than pain. Wealth is better than poverty. Duh! But it’s all ultimately a bunch of nothing.

Because eventually, we’re all going to die. So what does any of it matter?

And once you get there, it all seems so absurd. Get up, go to work, come home, go to bed, get up, go to work, come home, go to bed. Do that for 50 years and then die. Leave it all to people who are just going to do the same thing. Nothing matters.

This is the point in the book where the hippies come in and sing the folk song about “For every season, turn turn turn—A time for every purpose under heaven.”

Which he says this is actually a burden that God has placed on all of us. “God made everything beautiful for its own time.”

These are all burdens: Life, death, killing, healing, tearing down, building up, crying, laughing, grieving, dancing, embracing, turning away, searching, giving up, keeping, throwing away, tearing and mending, being quiet and speaking, loving and hating, war and peace. These are the things that all art, all poems, all songs, all stories are trying to express. All these beautiful things that ache in the heart of us all.

But it’s never enough. It’s all meaningless. Because eventually none of it matters. It all ends in death. Which is depressing because we don’t want to die. We know death is the enemy. We know we were supposed to live forever. 

It says in verse 11:

“He [God] has planted eternity in the human heart.” All happiness is as fleeting as a child’s balloon—it’s just a matter of time before something sneaks up and pops it.

The preacher says,

“So I concluded there is nothing better than to be happy and enjoy ourselves as long as we can. And people should eat and drink and enjoy the fruits of their labor, for these are gifts from God.” Ecclesiastes 3:11–13

Carpe Deum. Seize the day, for tomorrow we die.

Does all this sound like something a preacher would say?
Does any of this sound like The Truth?

How about this—does any of this sound true?

It all sounds true to me. This is the world we live in. 

The first time I read this book, when I was a teenager, probably 15 or 16 years old, it was the most refreshingly true thing I had ever heard. No one was trying to sell me anything. They were just telling it like it is. I kept waiting for the silver lining in the dark cloud. I kept waiting for the moral of the story but it never really comes.

Like Wesley says in The Princess Bride, “Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” 

And life shows no favoritism. Good people suffer and die young. Wicked people live long lives—sometimes. God created people to be good and virtuous, but none of us are. Nothing is fair. Bad people are buried with honor, people who try to do good are punished and forgotten. 

Might as well eat, drink, and be merry. We’re all going to die tomorrow anyway.

I’m just saying, I didn’t expect to find that in the Bible. But there it is.

So I read Ecclesiastes and nod my head in agreement, finding some kind of dark pleasure in the fact that at least God admits that’s what life on earth is like.

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been more of a philosopher than anything else. I like to think about thinking. I like to analyze my thoughts and look for meaning.

I’ve read a bunch of the great philosophers. I think everyone should. Read them once and then get on with your life. Ecclesiastes is the timeless book of philosophy in the Bible.

It punches modernism in the face. It pre-echoes existentialism and nihilism long before Sartre and Nietzsche were born. It articulates the problem of evil, the so-called “Achilles Heel of Christianity” better than any atheist philosophers have ever been able to—even though they continue to try.

Ecclesiastes raises the questions that the rest of the Bible answers. If you know someone who doesn’t believe in Jesus, this is the book you need to point them to first. They’ll get this one. It makes all of their arguments for them. 

I find it to be extremely refreshing that God understands our existential dilemma better than we do. And I think it’s very comforting that He wrote all of our painful objections down for us, so we’d know He understands.

These are the questions that drive people to despair. These are the questions that leave us wanting to give up.

No one is interested in the answer to a question they haven’t asked. Ecclesiastes is the questions that the rest of the Bible answers. 

If you want to try and convince someone of something, you have to let them know you understand where they’re coming from first. This is the problem with all the division and identity politics going on in the world these days. No one is listening, everyone is talking at each other. If you want people to hear you, you have to be able to articulate their position in a way that they believe you actually understand them. 

I think God put this book in the Bible so we would all know He understands the way things are. 

Also, all these ways that Solomon tries to fill up the emptiness of his life are all the things that the foolish, simple people in the world think are going to solve all their problems. If they only had more. More money, more sex, more drugs, more wine, more power, a bigger house, a nicer car, a better job, if they could have more friends, someone to love, more education—and on and on. The river flows into the sea but the sea is never full. Nothing under the sun satisfies. None of these things fulfill our deepest longings.

Not even conventional religion. True religion would be big enough to fill the hole in our soul but not the religion that most people believe in. Not the religion that Solomon believed. He certainly believes in God, but it’s the God of the enlightenment, the God of reason, the God who is known only by observation and experience on planet earth. The vague “first cause” who started it all, the Blind Watchmaker, The Force in Star Wars, the Deist God of the Fathers of the American Revolution. The God who made everything and then walked away and let everything take its natural course. The God who can be replaced with “The Universe.” As in, “A man said to the universe, Sir, I exist! Nevertheless, replied the Universe, That fact has not created in me The slightest feeling of obligation.”

Because even if there is a God, that doesn’t help in light of Solomon’s basic absurdities of life: that everything stays the same and God seems indifferent, that death is the end of everyone, that time is on no one’s side and is the enemy of us all, in fact, time is just another word for death, the problem that God allows evil to exist, He either allows it or He can’t do anything about it, or He’s the cause of it—which makes us all wonder if God is actually good.

I mean, God seems to exist. Someone had to make all this, it’s too interconnected and purposeful to be random. So God must exist and be really powerful and intelligent. Much of the world is beautiful, too, so He must be a great artist, too. 

But it’s not comforting because the natural universe doesn’t tell us that God is good, or loving, or fair, or just, or that He cares about any of us. There’s no evidence under the sun for any of that. Babies with cancer, wars all over the world, floods, hurricanes—which is why people become atheists.

The preacher, Solomon, believes there is a God. So at the end of the book he says this:

“Here now is my final conclusion: Fear God and obey his commands, for this is everyone’s duty. God will judge us for everything we do, including every secret thing, whether good or bad.” Ecclesiastes 12:13–14

And then the book is over. The end. 

Enjoy whatever pleasures you can find in life, try not to be an idiot, do whatever work you have to do, fear God, and do what He says. And that’s it. You’re still going to die. It’s all meaningless. 

Then the preacher says amen and everyone goes home.

But what about Jesus? We don’t close the Bible and put it down until we ask that question, right? So where is Jesus in Ecclesiastes?

Solomon’s God has no face. He’s impersonal. But Ecclesiastes is the perfect silhouette of Jesus.

The Preacher said, “there’s nothing new under the sun. Everyone dies.”

And then Jesus comes from beyond the sun. God is not impersonal after all. The Divine Son of God personally comes into the world He created and does something new. 

Revelation 21:5 is Jesus talking and He says

‘behold, I am making all things new.”

In Matthew 12:42, Jesus said the Queen of Sheba came from distant lands to hear the wisdom of Solomon. And then He said,

“But now someone greater than Solomon is here…” He was speaking of Himself.

Someone new. Someone who is not under the sun. Someone from beyond the sun. Someone who is outside of time.

None of the pursuits of life were ever going to save us or fulfill us. None of them were ever going to satisfy us or give life meaning. It was going to have to come from outside us. Extra Nos. From the outside.

Jesus also said “That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life—whether you have enough food and drink, or enough clothes to wear. Isn’t life more than food, and your body more than clothing?”

All those things are meaningless. Vanity.

“Look at the lilies of the field and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you.” Matthew 6:31–34

Jesus says God’s love for us is what gives life meaning and hope.

All the pursuits of life—wisdom, pleasure, power, relationships, whatever—they’re fine as far as they go, but it doesn’t do you any good to worry about them or obsess over them. Don’t make them the most important thing. Don’t make them idols. Understand that all those things will be added to you when you seek the wisdom of God because He loves you. 

And Jesus is the wisdom of God. The one greater than Solomon.

1 Corinthians 1:18

“The message of the cross is foolish to those who are headed for destruction! But we who are being saved know it is the very power of God. As the Scriptures say,

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise

    and discard the intelligence of the intelligent.”

So where does this leave the philosophers, the scholars, and the world’s brilliant debaters? God has made the wisdom of this world look foolish. Since God in his wisdom saw to it that the world would never know him through human wisdom, (not even the wisdom of Solomon the Preacher) he has used our foolish preaching to save those who believe. It is foolish to the Jews, who ask for signs from heaven. And it is foolish to the Greeks, who seek human wisdom. So when we preach that Christ was crucified, the Jews are offended and the Gentiles say it’s all nonsense.

But to those called by God to salvation, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

How did the Preacher end his book? “Fear God and obey his commands, for this is everyone’s duty. God will judge us for everything we do, including every secret thing, whether good or bad.”

In 1st Timothy Paul says this to a young preacher, “I solemnly urge you in the presence of God and Christ Jesus, who will someday judge the living and the dead when he comes to set up his Kingdom: Preach the word of God. Be prepared, whether the time is favorable or not. Patiently correct, rebuke, and encourage your people with good teaching.”

Solomon was definitely on to something but he didn’t see where this was all going.

Paul goes on to say this, and this is far beyond the understanding of Ecclesiastes,

“The time of my death is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, and I have remained faithful. And now the prize awaits me—the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on the day of his return. And the prize is not just for me but for all who eagerly look forward to his appearing.” 2 Timothy 4:1–8

This is something new under the sun. This is hope. This is meaning. This is salvation. The power and wisdom of God. This is resurrection. Life after death. Eternal life and hope. Not just for Jesus and Paul but also for you and me.

Like Ecclesiastes, the wisdom of Jesus also teaches us to be content with whatever life throws at us, to be thankful, to enjoy life. But Jesus offers us something that Ecclesiastes doesn’t. The driving theme in Ecclesiastes is the inevitability of death. Jesus is the resurrection and the life. In Christ, the absurdity of life under the sun gets a completely different perspective. All who believe in Him will live forever. 

Everything is absurd. Everything is meaningless. It’s all futile. Vanity. Smoke. 

Until you hear the Gospel.

This is something new under the sun. Something that was never done before. The dead come back to life. You will die but you will rise again. You must fear God because you will be judged but you get to stand behind the forgiveness and righteousness of Jesus when it happens. Things are looking much brighter for you because God personally came to you from beyond the sun, outside of time, back from death, in the person of Jesus Christ to give you hope and meaning and everlasting life. And that’s a far better conclusion than Solomon could have ever dreamed of. AMEN