Ecclesiastes 1:1-2 The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. 2 Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
INTRODUCTION
Good morning, Grace. To be honest, it’s been a while since I’ve been this excited to start preaching through a book of the Bible. I think the main reason for my extra excitement is that in a truly unique way (which becomes apparent almost immediately when you begin to read it) Ecclesiastes directly, unblinkingly, honestly, and unashamedly addresses two of the most significant questions for all mankind. It addresses two questions that most of us have felt in our bones for our whole lives. Questions that are at the heart of all the pastoral counseling I’ve done, every bump in every relationship, every pursuit and loss of pleasure, and every believer and unbeliever’s longing for understanding:
1) What is the world like, and 2) What can we do about it?
More specifically, regarding the first question, Ecclesiastes observes, asks, and attempts to answer (over and over and over): Why is life often so frustrating, so disappointing, so confusing, so inefficient, so lonely, so discouraging, so unjust, so short, so tragic, so harsh, unpredictable, so fleeting? Why is it often so hard to experience any prolonged joy, peace, clarity, perspective, or contentment?
And perhaps even more importantly, Ecclesiastes also attempts to answer the question of what we ought to do about the fact that the world is like that? How should we/can we live in a world like the one we’re in?
On one level, there is a heavy, heavy dose of sobriety in Ecclesiastes. It just isn’t a happy book. Nevertheless, I’m excited to spend the next (not sure how) many months working through it with you all because it provides great clarity, which is a far greater gift than fleeting happiness. What’s more, it provides clarity for everyone.
If you are a Christian, you will find immense help in this book to understand the world around you, your experiences in it, as well as how to live an abundant life within it.
If you are a skeptical, board teenager or young adult, you will quickly find that Ecclesiastes explains why you are always trying to find something fun, but that the fun is never quite as fun as you’d hoped and never lasts as long as you want.
And, at the exact same time, if you are the most ardent atheist, you will find that Ecclesiastes deals with the world as it is in a way that you’ll certainly find refreshing. It does not deny, but affirms many of the exact things that drive you to disbelief in God. It joins you in your sense of skepticism and futility, but it doesn’t stay there.
The main message of Ecclesiastes is that under the sun, all is vanity, but there is more than meets the eye in God’s world. The Preacher gives us glimpses of what the rest of the Bible (the NT in particular) makes crystal clear: above the sun is glory beyond imagination. Sin has made it so that we cannot see above apart from God’s help. God’s grace has made it so that we can live below in fullness of joy. The main takeaways are to ask God to help us see the glory above and to live according to His promises as we wait for His answer below.
THE PREACHER
There are three main parts to this sermon. We’ll consider the author of Ecclesiastes, the main themes of Ecclesiastes (the perspective of the Preacher), and the main message of Ecclesiastes. Having started at the end (with the main message and takeaway of Ecclesiastes), let’s back up a bit. I want to show you where I got that from the text, beginning with the author. Of that, I’d like to point out five things.
The Preacher
First, Ecclesiastes begins by naming the author (sort of). As we heard Jen read and as you can see on the screen behind me in v.1, Ecclesiastes contains “the words of the Preacher”. That title (and no other) is mentioned six other times as well.
The word “Preacher” is a translation of the Hebrew, “Qoheleth.” “Ecclesiastes” is the Greek translation. That might sound familiar to you (beyond the title of this book). “Ecclesiastes” comes from the same root as “Ecclesia,” the Greek word that we translate “church”. The basic meaning of the root (in both Hebrew and Greek) is “assembly” (which is what a church is).
The literal meaning in both the Hebrew and Greek is something like “assembly addresser”. And because the term has religious connotations, the idea is “One who addresses a religious assembly.” That’s why the ESV translates it “the Preacher.”
In other words, “Qoheleth” (the Preacher) is almost certainly not a person’s name, but a title.
Traditionally Understood to be Solomon
That leads to the second key regarding the author of Ecclesiastes. Who is “the Preacher”? It’s an understatement to say that there’s been a lot of discussion and debate on this question.
The traditional view has been that King Solomon was the Preacher. This idea derives from numerous passages.
“The son of David, King in Jerusalem” (1:1).
“I the Preacher have been king over Israel in Jerusalem” (1:12).
“And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven” (1:13).
“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” (1:16).
And when we compare the things the Preacher did in 2:4-9 with the description of the things Solomon did in 1 Kings 3-4, and the proverbs of Ecclesiastes with the Proverbs of Solomon, it’s hard not to make the connection.
Whether Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes or not—that is, whether He is the Preacher or not—it is clear that whoever did purposefully wrote with Solomonic wisdom and voice; that is, Ecclesiastes is clearly written from the perspective of Solomon. That is not to say that the author (if not Solomon) was attempting to deceitfully pass himself off as Solomon, only that he understood that Solomon was the best person to speak to the issues at hand. This was not uncommon in the ancient world.
Purposefully Anonymous
I think the next two points are far more important than definitively answering the questions of who the Preacher was. The third thing to see in the way of authorship, then, is that Ecclesiastes is purposefully anonymous.
We can rest easy not knowing for sure who wrote it because, under the inspiration of God, a title is used (“the Preacher”) where a name could have been provided. If we needed to know who, specifically, wrote Ecclesiastes we would have been told. In that way, Ecclesiastes is like the NT book of Hebrews.
Inspired by God
The fourth point and the most important aspect of the authorship of Ecclesiastes, however, is found at the very end of the book. In 12:11, we’re told, “The words of the wise … are given by one Shepherd [that is, God Himself].”
It is often helpful to know the human author of the books of the Bible, but the most important thing, every time, is the fact that they wrote under God’s inspiration. That seems to me to be of particular importance in Ecclesiastes because it’s such an unusual book and because Ecclesiastes asks questions that we need the rest of God’s Word to answer.
Frame Narrator
There’s one more item of note here. You may have noticed that 1:1-11 and 12:9-14 (along with 7:27) are written in third person (he, the Preacher) while the rest is written in first person (I, the Preacher). Some have suggested that the beginning and end were written by someone that scholars call the “frame narrator,” someone who compiled and framed up the words of the Preacher.
This matters on some level when it comes to interpretation (which I’ll point out at the very end of the book), but what matters most, once again, is that whether there is one human voice or two in Ecclesiastes, the most important and guiding voice is God’s.
Ecclesiastes is in the Bible not because of the wishes of the Preacher, Solomon, the frame narrator, or anyone else under the sun. It is in the Bible because it is the Word of God, maker of heave and earth.
Grace, as I mentioned earlier, I have a particular affinity for Ecclesiastes because of its blunt honesty. I resonate with this book because the author keeps pushing. As I read Ecclesiastes, and as I encountered the Preacher’s peeling back layer after layer, I kept cheering him on. Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” But I’ve always responded with, “Yeah, but I know parents who did and kids who didn’t.” Early on, that made me nervous. My assumption was always that the word of God was right and I was wrong, but I wanted to understand better. That seems to be the disposition of the Preacher as well. I wasn’t sure at first if that was OK, but books like Ecclesiastes helped me to learn that there is a way to honor God in seeking understanding.
THE PREACHER’S PERSPECTIVE
One of the biggest questions—probably the biggest, actually—that we need to settle on in Ecclesiastes is the main message of the book. What’s Ecclesiastes all about? I shared some of my thoughts on that at the beginning, and I’m going to come back to it in greater detail at the end, but in order to get there we need to consider the Preacher’s perspective. How does he see the world?
In reading, listening, studying, and praying over Ecclesiastes, it seems to me that there are three main themes that we need to get our heads around in order to grasp the main message of the book: The vanity of this life, the sovereignty of God over all things, and the meaning of the phrase, “under the sun.”
Vanity
The first theme is found in the word translated “vanity” (hevel) in the ESV. The only thing about Ecclesiastes that is debated more than its authorship, is the meaning of this word, “vanity”. It’s so hotly debated because it occurs thirty-eight times in just twelve chapters (it is clearly the most significant word for the Preacher) and because its range of meanings is significant.
There are four possible meanings.
- Short, fleeting, elusive. The literal meaning of the Hebrew word is “vapor” or “breath” or “puff of smoke”. In that way, it carries the meaning of here for a brief moment and then gone, short, fleeting, elusive.
- Insubstantial. The second possible meaning is related to the first. A puff of smoke is not only short-lived, it is also insubstantial, without substance, not something that can be grasped or held onto.
- Meaningless, absurd, futile, pointless. A third aspect of hevel carries the idea of meaningless, absurd, futile, pointless. The NIV favors this idea, translating the word as “meaningless”. The NASB does so as well, but uses the word futile, “Futility of futilities.”
- Enigmatic, mysterious, unpredictable. A final connotation is enigmatic, mysterious, and unpredictable. The idea is that there are no exact formulas to follow in this life, consistent input does not equal consistent output.
With even the briefest consideration, it’s easy to see that when you plug each of these possible meanings into the various passages in Ecclesiastes, you get very different results. What’s more, there’s no question that each of those things are true in a certain sense. Life is short, hard to grasp, futile, and mysterious. But which did the Preacher have primarily in mind?
My sense is that the fourth meaning is primary, with at least hints of the others in various places. In that way, truly grasping the main message of Ecclesiastes means understanding that all of life is mysterious to the Preacher. It is unpredictable and inconsistent.
As I hope to help you see in the coming months, most of what we experience in life is tied to this simple truth: all is vanity—mysterious, enigmatic, unpredictable.
I’m not sure I’ve ever come across someone who has felt that deeper and articulated it clearer than the Preacher in Ecclesiastes. He gives many, many examples of what He means by that (we’ll see a bunch right off the bat next week in 1:3-11). Let me try to capture it this way…
Why do you have a time of sweetest communion in your quiet time one day and then, doing the exact same things, God feels completely distant the next? We’ve all experienced that. Why is it?
Or, why does God heal one of your sick family members through your faithful prayers and not another?
Why does one person respond to your passionate gospel plea with faith and another in anger?
Why do some people who live morally bankrupt lives live to be 90, with lots of money, and die peacefully in their sleep, while others who try to honor God in everything, die far too young?
Why do fools often prosper and the wise often suffer?
Why does one of your kids love the Lord and another doesn’t?
Why does your DG seem to be a place of life and growth for one season and dry and difficult the next?
Why do people at your work who are lazy have the boss’s favor and the hard workers get taken advantage of?
Why can it be so hard to love your spouse at times and so easy and joyful at others?
Why do septic alarms only go off at night and in the winter? Why does it always snow on Saturday nights? Why do church furnaces go out on Sunday mornings?
The answer to all of these questions is vanity. All of life is like this the Preacher says. You can’t set your watch by any of it, for there is no guarantee that what is today is what will be tomorrow.
This might be best summed up in 9:11 where the Preacher reflects, “Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all.”
Everyone has experienced this vanity. And the thoughtful person asks why? Why is all vanity? That leads nicely to the next main theme, the Sovereignty of God.
Sovereignty of God
Why is everything so mysterious, enigmatic, and unpredictable? We’ll see that the Preacher gives several reasons throughout Ecclesiastes, but underneath them all is (surprisingly) the sovereignty of God.
Eating, drinking, and finding enjoyment are from the sovereign hand of God (2:24-25, 3:13, 5:17, 18).
Likewise, wisdom, knowledge and joy are from the sovereign hand of God (2:26).
God is sovereign over every event in time (3:1-8).
The days of a man’s life are a gift from the sovereign God (5:18).
Wealth, possessions, power, and honor and (as we’ll soon see, critical for the Preacher is the fact that) the ability to enjoy them are from the sovereign hand of God as well (5:18-19; 6:2)
God is sovereign over the ability to straighten things and make them crooked (7:13)
God sovereignly makes days of joyful prosperity and adversity (7:14).
All the deeds of all men are in the sovereign hand of God (9:1).
God sovereignly made everything (11:4).
God is the sovereign judge of all men (11:9; 12:14).
For the Preacher, God’s sovereignty is unquestionable, but it is also what makes the mystery of life so great. Since God is sovereign, He could have made things differently. He could have made things predictable and understandable. He could have made all things efficient for His creatures. He could have made things so that hard, honest work always gains. He could have made it so that the wise and the foolish, the righteous and the wicked, the generous and the selfish do not all meet the same fate. He could have made it so that wisdom always works. He could have, in His sovereignty, made the world such that fearing and obeying Him always lead to joy.
A significant portion of the message of Ecclesiastes is tied to the fact that the world is all vanity by God’s sovereign decree and that is a hard pill to swallow for the Preacher (and for many).
Under the Sun
Again, there are many important themes in Ecclesiastes. Death, joy, wisdom, chasing after the wind, and the fear of the Lord are among them. But the big three, from my perspective, are vanity, the sovereignty of God (both of which we’ve just considered) and finally the idea of living under the sun.
Right away in 1:3, we find this phrase, “What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils ‘under the sun’”?
A few verses later (1:9) we’re told that there is “nothing new ‘under the sun’”.
In 1:14 we’re told that everything done “under the sun” is “vanity and a striving after the wind.”
The idea only picks up steam from there, occurring nearly 30 more times throughout the book (2:17, 18, 19, 20, 22; 3:16; 4:1, 3, 7, 15; 5:15, 18; 6:1, 5, 12; 7:11; 8:8, 15, 17; 9:3, 6, 9, 11, 13; 10:5).
Man toils under the sun, he lives righteous or wicked lives under the sun, oppresses and is oppressed by others under the sun, riches and poverty are found under the sun, enjoyment and misery are experienced under the sun, God works under the sun, and men die under the sun.
In short, for the Preacher, the phrase “under the sun” refers to life on earth. All mankind lives under the sun. There is no other place for man to live. But the phrase also has a spiritual connotation embedded in it. More fully, then, “life under the sun” means life on earth, under the curse. It is infused with a spiritual blindness that comes from the fall.
The Preacher feels this even if he can’t entirely explain it. We find it in passages like 7:20, “Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.”
This theme (under the sun) is particularly important because it brings the first two themes together (vanity and God’s sovereignty). Life is mysterious at every turn, according to the sovereign will of God, because we are all under the sun; that is, because we are all blinded by sin to that which is above the sun and brings clarity and meaning to life. And that leads to the final section.
THE MAIN MESSAGE OF ECCLESIASTES
Having considered all that we have, we’re in the right place to answer the question: What is the main message of Ecclesiastes?
To explain what I think that means, I think I’ve come up with two helpful illustrations.
Imagine a day that is utterly gloomy—cloudy, foggy, rainy, muddy? It’s hard to see more than a few feet in front of you, it’s hard to be joyful because it seems like everything is working against it, everything is a bit harder and messier than it seems like it should be, everything that you can see is dark and unclear.
Have you ever flown on an airplane on a day like that?
I can’t remember the first time I experienced it, but it’s pretty discouraging to look out the window and see nothing but rain drops and miserable ground crewmen and women. What’s more, it’s honestly a little scarry imagining the plane and pilots needing to perform in the inclement weather and with such limited visibility.
Once the plane takes off, the further you travel and the higher you climb you can’t help but to notice that it’s the same everywhere. There doesn’t seem to be anyway or any place to escape the gloom.
As you climb into the clouds, it only seems to get worse. Your already limited visibility drops to nearly nothing. There is often significant turbulence at this point. It seems as if there’s only darkness and difficulty everywhere.
But then, and if you’ve experienced this you know how amazing this can be, your airplane pops out above the clouds and all you can see is perfect, blue, sunny sky for countess more miles than anything below. The distance of gloom is about 1/1,000,000th of the distance of clarity and sun, but you just can’t see that from below.
That, I believe, is the basic message of Ecclesiastes.
Because of Adam and Eve’s sin and the resulting curse of our sovereign God, life really is gloomy, cloudy, foggy, rainy, muddy—vanity. And because of Adam and Eve’s sin and the resulting curse of our sovereign God, we simply cannot see past the gloom, clouds, fog, rain, mud, and vanity of life under the sun. The sun (the glory and wisdom and goodness and perfect plan of God) is always out there, but it’s not often easy to see.
This illustration also helps explain why the book is so challenging to read. The Preacher doesn’t seem to have spent a lot of time above the clouds. He knows the sun is up there, but he doesn’t seem to have been able to see very often. He genuinely believes that God is real and working great things, but the Preacher struggles (like so many of us) to see and understand it in real time.
Let me share a second example.
How many of you have ever seen a tapestry up close? More importantly, how many of you have ever seen a tapestry being made up close? I want to show you three picturesi that I think will be helpful.
The first picture is of a loom. It is what people use to make tapestries. In Ecclesiastes, this represents the sovereign hand of God, working in all creation, above and below the sun. He is purposeful and orderly.
The second picture is of the back of a completed tapestry. As you can tell, it is knotted and tangled. There doesn’t seem to be much order or purpose to it. In fact, it looks really messy and chaotic. It doesn’t seem like anything good could possibly come out of it. In Ecclesiastes, this represents the vanity of life under the sun. At best, this image is mysterious, enigmatic, and unpredictable. Again, this is what life looks like (at least on the inside) to anyone who is honest about it. Most of the time in this life we only get to see the back, the messiness.
The third and final picture is the front of the completed tapestry. The picture doesn’t do it justice, but it is a beautiful tapestry of an older sister leading her younger, nervous sister toward a bunny. In Ecclesiastes, this represents the fact that God is always working in His sovereign, mysterious ways. It is always the case that God is making good things for His people, even when it looks like the opposite. As I said above, one of the features of Ecclesiastes is that the Preacher doesn’t seem to have seen the front very clearly or very often. He believes it’s there by God’s hand and design, but he chose to live a life of faith in God’s promises in spite of the vanity he could see.
That is, I believe, the heart of the final two verses in this remarkable book. In 12:13-14 we’re told, “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. 14 For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.”
(This idea is also found, as we’ll see when we get there in 3:13, 5:19, and 7:2.)
What is the message of Ecclesiastes?
It is that in this life everything looks chaotic, futile, frustrating, pointless, broken, confusing. Even when things look OK for a time, they always, eventually (even if a generation or two later) break down again; every strong government, every faithful family, every healthy church, every successful sports franchise. Some last longer and some shorter, but all, eventually revert to hardship and struggle and loss.
And because of that, we have two choices. Either we will (1) Live according to the way things look (which the author refers to as living “under the sun”, or (2) We will live according to the promises of God (life above the sun).
For those who choose the second option (above the sun, according to God’s promises), there is no real tension in the hardships of life. Life is still often difficult, but there is peace in the trust that God is always working a greater good in every vanity than if things were any other way. One cannot always see the sun shining, but one can believe God that it always is. In that is peace that surpasses knowledge and transcends every circumstance.
But for those who choose the first option (to live only according to the way things seem), which is all of us sometimes and some of us all the time, life is a constant temptation toward practical atheism, fatalism, and cynicism. Life is always and only cloudy and gray and the best we can do is to try to find some joy, even in the knowledge that it is certain to be fleeting.
Ecclesiastes was written largely to those who have chosen, or are stuck in the first option, in order to convince them to choose the second. And in that way, once again, Ecclesiastes answers two main questions: (1) What is life like under the sun, and (2) What can be done about it.
What is life like? In short, it is harsh. For it has the constant appearance of vanity, futility, frustration, unpredictability; utter, complete, unchangeable vanity, futility, frustration, and unpredictability.
What do we do about it? In short, the Ecclesiastes’ answer is to trust in God’s Word (fear and obey Him) and enjoy His blessings as much as you are able under the sun.
CONCLUSION
The Preacher doesn’t take us much beyond that, but thanks be to God that we have the whole Bible and not just the words of the Preacher. I want to close, then, with a very brief contrast between this Preacher and another who would come later.
The Preacher, as we will see (especially in 2:4–10), had everything. He experienced every pleasure the world has to offer; and yet he found them all lacking. He found in frustrating ways that nothing in this life is able to satisfy on its own. Rather than providing any kind of lasting satisfaction, the Preacher’s conclusion was, “Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun” (2:11).
The Preacher had everything and yet found little beyond fleeting moments of pleasure. He struggled mightily to see past the vanity, above the sun.
As I said, later, from the same family line as the Preacher, came another preacher. This one had none of the pleasures of his forefather. In fact, he knew only the lack of everything the Preacher tried. And yet his conclusion was different.
8 Indeed, [he wrote,] I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:8-11).
The Apostle Paul, by God’s grace, was able to see above the sun like few others ever have. And because of that, he found profound meaning and joy in all of the vanities of life under the sun.
The great gift of Ecclesiastes is a plea to help you to see that nothing under the sun can satisfy, and therein a plea to look above the sun through Jesus Christ our Lord.
i I found each of these at https://warpedforgood.com/2020/02/tapestry-promise/ (Return)