Understanding Ecclesiastes

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Call to Worship (Isaiah 40:6-8)

Prayer of Praise (Mendi Keatts)

This is Amazing Grace (With PBC Kids)

O God Our Help in Ages Past

Prayer of Confession (Sam Hammontree ), Unrighteousness

Assurance of Pardon (Isaiah 61:10a)

Run and Run (Christ is All My Righteousness)

Yet Not I But Through Christ in Me

Scripture Reading (Eccl. 1:1-3)

You can find it on page 656 in the black Bibles

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SERMON

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The author Franz Kafka once wrote, “If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? . . . we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply. . . . A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.” [1]

The book of Ecclesiastes is that type of book.

From the very beginning, the book comes at us like a bully on a playground, kicking sand in children’s faces and popping all their balloons.

“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!” (1:2)

"The wise dies just like the fool." (2:16)

"Man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity." (3:19)

"A man . . . [whose] soul is not satisfied with life’s good things . . . a stillborn child is better off than he.” (6:3)

These statements are like an axe to the frozen sea of our hearts, because they’re so shocking and depressing.

How can statements like these make sense for a people who sing about grace and joy and salvation?

It’s no wonder commentators regularly complain about how hard it is to understand this book.

Martin Luther said “This book is one of the more difficult books in all of Scripture, which no one has ever completely mastered.” [2]

Preaching professor Sidney Greidanus says “Ecclesiastes may be the most difficult biblical book to interpret and preach.” [3]

Another commentator said “Ecclesiastes is a lot like an octopus: just when you think you have all the tentacles under control. . . there is one waving about in the air!” [4]

One commentator pulls no punches when he asks, “ought the book … to remain in the Bible? Would it not be better to admit straight away that the contradictions and unorthodox statements that have delighted skeptics and puzzled devout minds would have been far better employed in writing for the Rationalist Press Association than for the Library of the Holy Spirit? It is a question that must be faced. If there is not satisfactory interpretation of the book—satisfactory, that is, from the Christian standpoint—there is no logical reason for retaining it in the Bible.” [5]

—J. Stafford Wright

We believe the book of Ecclesiastes does belong in the Bible, which is why we’re going to spend the next few months studying it together.

But I believe we should still wrestle with this question: Is there a satisfactory interpretation of the book from a Christian standpoint?

In other words, How should we understand Ecclesiastes?

Here’s the Big Idea I hope to communicate today, with God’s help:

We should understand Ecclesiastes as God’s wisdom with a unified message that ultimately points to Jesus. [6]

From that sentence we see Three Keys to Understanding Ecclesiastes:

Ecclesiastes is God’s WISDOM

Ecclesiastes has a unified MESSAGE

Ecclesiastes ultimately points to JESUS.

If you’re our guest this morning, I hope you’ll learn some principles not only for understanding the book of Ecclesiastes, but for understanding the Bible as a whole. I pray you’ll be encouraged to pick it up and read it for yourself!

If you’re a member or regular attender here, I hope this sermon will chart a course for our study in the book of Ecclesiastes over the next few months.

Let’s begin with our first key to understanding Ecclesiastes. We must recognize..

1) Ecclesiastes is God’s WISDOM.

In some ways, the Bible is like a library.

Your favorite library holds a collection of books from different genres—self-help, fiction, biography, history, graphic novels, and so on.

Depending on the genre, you read books differently. You understand that a crime novel is read differently than a historical account of WWII, which is read differently than a book about cultivating good habits.

Similar rules apply to the Bible.

Like a library, its a collection of 66 books (39 in the OT and 27 in the NT).

Like a library, it has books from different genres.

Every book in the Bible is true, but its truth is communicated in different ways.

Sometimes in the form of songs, sometimes through historical accounts, sometimes through laws, sometimes in the form of a letter.

The book of Ecclesiastes is a genre called wisdom literature.

It’s placed near books like Proverbs, Job, and the Song of Solomon because all those books are in the same genre.

This is important to understand because we need to read wisdom literature differently than we read other books in the Bible.

Wisdom literature is filled with poetry, parallelisms, metaphors, similes, hyperboles, alliterations, proverbs mini-parables, rhetorical questions, and more.

Many of us are familiar with the wisdom literature of the Proverbs.

We’ve learned that Proverbs typically teach general truths.

For example...

Proverbs 13:21—Disaster pursues sinners, but the righteous are rewarded with good.

That is generally true, but of course there are exceptions to the rule.

Sometimes the righteous die young. Sometimes it feels like the righteous work and work and get nothing good in return.

The book of Ecclesiastes is a book that focuses on these exceptions. [7]

It’s important to learn the general rules from Proverbs, but it’s also important to learn the exceptions from a book like Ecclesiastes, even if those exceptions are uncomfortable to hear.

Zach Eswine says it’s like teaching a child how to spell in English. We teach our kids the rule that “i comes before e.” That’s like a Proverb. It’s a helpful general rule. But there are exceptions. [8]

So we teach our kids “I before e, except after c.”

And… when your weird foreign neighbor Keith seizes eight counterfeit beige sleighs from feisty caffeinated weightlifters.

The English language is filled with exceptions. And so is life. So we need the wisdom of Ecclesiastes.

Now, just like other wisdom books—Proverbs and the Song of Solomon—the book of Ecclesiastes is either written by or about King Solomon, the wisest sinner who ever lived.

Ecclesiastes 1:1—The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

On its surface it seems the author of this book is Solomon. After all, he was a son of David and a king in Jerusalem. Solomon was also a wise man who wrote many proverbs.

But the book actually doesn’t say it was written by Solomon.

It says the author was a king in Jerusalem from David’s line, so it could be Solomon, but not necessarily.

Many faithful Old Testament scholars have offered linguistic reasons why this book may not have been written by Solomon, and may have actually been written during the exile.

And yet, it’s quite obvious in several places that the author wants us to think about Solomon as we’re reading this book. We’ll see this most clearly when we get to chapter 2.

For my part, I’m inclined to think Solomon was the author, especially since the earliest Christians overwhelmingly supported Solomon as the author.

But more important than the human author of Ecclesiastes is the truth that God is speaking to us in its pages.

2 Timothy 3:16–17—All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

When the Apostle Paul wrote this, the book of Ecclesiastes was already recognized as Scripture by the Jewish people. [9]

So Christians today universally agree with Paul who believed that Ecclesiastes is the Word of God.

This means we have to carefully reckon with the words in this book, even when they are painful and uncomfortable.

Even when they hurt. Because God intends to use the message in this book to make us “complete, equipped for every good work.”

I agree with Leland Ryken who calls Ecclesiastes “the most contemporary book in the Bible. Ecclesiastes is a satiric attack on an acquisitive, hedonistic, and materialistic society. It exposes the mad quest to find satisfaction in knowledge, wealth, pleasure, work, fame, and sex.” [10]

We need this book because we need God's wisdom to think rightly about all these things that occupy so much of our daily lives.

The first key to understanding Ecclesiastes is to recognize it is God’s wisdom.

Our second key is to understand that...

2) Ecclesiastes has a Unified MESSAGE.

There’s an old joke about a group of young preaching students who asked their seasoned preaching professor, “How many points should a sermon have?” Without missing a beat, the professor answered, “At least one.”

Often young preachers try to accomplish more than they should in a single sermon.

So they cram their sermons with all sorts of true and helpful information, without clearly explaining how it all fits together.

And inevitably people leave wondering what the point of the sermon was.

Some people accuse the Preacher in Ecclesiastes of having the same problem.

He talks about wisdom, work, wealth, time, sex, injustice, loneliness, relationships, pleasure, pain, life and death.

Some say the book is so disjointed they believe as many as nine different authors worked on the book. [11]

I disagree.

I think the Preacher has a unified message throughout the book, even if it’s sometimes hard to understand.

And like a good Preacher, the author of Ecclesiastes tells you his big idea right at the beginning...

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

Imagine the book of Ecclesiastes like a 1000-piece puzzle taken from the box, thrown on the floor, and kicked around the room. [12] That word “vanity” is like the picture on the front of the box.

The word is “hevel” in the original Hebrew.

SHOW HEVEL SLIDE

It is used right here in the introduction, right before the conclusion in Ecclesiastes 12:8, and 38 times total in the book, which is more than half of its total usage in the Old Testament.

It is arguably the most important word in Ecclesiastes , [13] but what does it mean?

Hevel literally means “breath” or “vapor.”

Everybody do me a favor and inhale for a moment. Now exhale, but don’t let your breath get away from you. Grab on to it and keep it right there in front of you.

You can’t because your breath is hevel. You cannot control it. You cannot save it. It’s there for a split second, and then it’s gone.

The word hevel can be translated as temporary, transitory, meaningless, senseless, futile, incomprehensible, pointless, absurd and uncontrollable.

And just think through some of the things that the Preacher calls Hevel...

Effort (Eccl. 1:14, 2:11, 17, 19), hard work (Eccl. 2:15, 21, 26), pleasure (Eccl. 2:1), youth (Eccl. 11:10), success (Eccl. 4:4), wealth (Eccl. 4:7-8, 5:10, 6:2), desire (Eccl. 6:9), laughter (Eccl. 7:6), popularity (Eccl. 4:16, 8:10), injustice (Eccl. 8:14), the future (Eccl. 11:8), life (Eccl. 3:19, 6:4, 12, 7:15, 9:9), and everything (Eccl. 1:2, 12:8).

And to drive his point home, the Preacher utters that memorable phrase, “Vanity of vanities!”

The Bible often does this if you think about it.

The “Song of Songs” is the best of all songs about the best human relationship.

The “Holy of holies” is the most holy place in the temple.

Jesus is the “King of Kings,” meaning He is above every king everywhere.

When the Preacher says “vanity of vanities” he is doing his dead-level best to pop every balloon you think will make you happy. None of this stuff, none of it will satisfy.

Not your sports team. Not your video games. Not your social media. Not your money. Not your house. Not your pets. Not your family. Not your wife. Not your kids.

All of it is vanity. Vanity. Vanity.

How can the Preacher say that everything is vanity?!?

To answer that question, think back to our analogy of the puzzle. What’s the first step to putting together a puzzle?

Finding all the edge pieces! They set the boundary for the puzzle!

If “vanity” or hevel is the picture on the puzzle box, what are the edge pieces for the puzzle? What sets the boundaries for the Preacher’s statement that everything is vanity?

The answer will help us to make sense of the entire book of Ecclesiastes.

Ecclesiastes 1:3—What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?

That phrase “under the sun” is used twenty-nine times in the book and nowhere else in the entire Bible. [15]

Like the edge pieces of the puzzles, this phrase sets the boundaries for the central message of the book of Ecclesiastes.

On the one hand, "under the sun” means the Preacher’s message is universal in scope.

This is not merely a message for Jews, or for ancient people, or for philosophers or religious people.

All of us live under the sun.

On the other hand, “under the sun” means the Preacher’s is talking about life from an earthly perspective.

There is One who lives “over the sun” and that is our Triune God, who eternally exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Preacher might seem like a pessimist, but he’s actually not. He’s telling you an inconvenient truth.

All the things we enjoy under the sun are absolutely meaningless if you divorce them from the One who lives over the sun.

The book of Ecclesiastes incorporates two perspectives on the same events.

The first perspective is like looking at the back side of a tapestry. All you see are tangled threads — knots, loose ends, and colors that don’t seem to match. That’s life “under the sun”: confusing, repetitive, often unfair. The Preacher shows us that if we only look from this limited perspective, everything is vanity — fleeting and meaningless.

But when you turn the tapestry over — when you begin to view life in light of the fear of God — you start to see the pattern. It may not explain every thread, but it shows there’s a Weaver, and that the design has purpose. Life is still complex, but it's not random. The Preacher invites us to trust the God who sees the whole picture, and to receive each moment — joy and sorrow — as a thread in His meaningful design.

So when the Preacher says “everything is vanity,” he is considering life from the back side of the tapestry. Without God in the picture everything is meaningless and absurd.

Here’s the unified message of the book: Ecclesiastes takes us down a dark path—confronting the emptiness of life without God—so we can discover the deep joy only He gives.

I’ve called this a dark path because it’s painful to admit how meaningless life can be. It’s far easier to adopt a Hakuna Matata lifestyle and live for the next distraction.

But the problem with that kind of escapism is that it doesn’t really work. Eventually the hevel of life has a way of interrupting your social media feed and reminding you that life hurts.

So if you want deep joy—the kind that doesn’t fall apart when bad things happen to good people—you need to listen to the unified message in this important book.

That’s what we’re going to learn together as we study this book over the next few months.

The second key to understanding Ecclesiastes is to recognize it has a unified message.

Our final key is to understand that...

3) Ecclesiastes Ultimately Points to JESUS.

I said earlier that in some ways, the Bible is like a library.

That is a helpful analogy to explain the different genres in the Bible.

But the Bible is such an amazing book that there’s no single analogy that tells us everything we need to know about it.

So here’s another analogy...

The Bible is kind of like the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

At first, it looks like you’re just watching a bunch of different movies—Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Black Panther, or my favorites The Guardians of the Galaxy. Each film has its own characters, storylines, and conflicts. But the more you watch, the more you realize: these stories are all connected. Each one is a piece of a much bigger story—a story that built toward an epic finale in Avengers: Endgame.

The Bible is similar.

At first, the Bible can feel like a collection of disconnected stories—Adam and Eve, Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, and so on. But when you look closer, you begin to see the connections. The Bible is telling one big story—the story of God redeeming His people through Jesus Christ.

Just like the MCU, each “episode” or book of the Bible contributes to the unfolding plot. There are heroes and villains, promises and fulfillments, hints and foreshadowings. And Jesus is like the climactic moment when all the threads come together—He is the center of the story.

We know this is the right way to think about the Bible because Jesus tells us...

John 5:39—You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about Me.

Long before any of the New Testament books were written, Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for missing the point of the Bible. The point of the Bible is Him!

Before He ascended into heaven, the resurrected Jesus appeared to some of His disciples and showed them how the Bible pointed to Him...

Luke 24:27—And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.

Now, to be sure, Ecclesiastes doesn’t point to Jesus in the same way as other books of the Bible do.

After all, unlike most other Old Testament books, there are no promises of the Messiah in the book of Ecclesiastes. [16]

But even if it may take us some time to figure out how Ecclesiastes points to Jesus, we can be sure that it does. Because Ecclesiastes is Scripture. And all the Scriptures ultimately point to Jesus!

I love the way Douglas O’Donnell puts it in his commentary...

“Jesus Christ redeemed us from the vanity that Pastor Solomon so wrestled with and suffered under by subjecting himself to our temporary, meaningless, futile, incomprehensible, incongruous, absurd, smoke-curling-up-into-the-air, mere-breath, vain life. He was born under the sun. He toiled under the sun. He suffered under the sun. He died under the sun. But in his subjection to the curse of death by his own death on the cross, this Son of God “redeemed us from the curse” (Gal. 3:13). By his resurrection, he restored meaning to our toil. And by his return, he will exact every injustice and elucidate every absurdity as he ushers those who fear the Lord into the glorious presence of our all-wise, never-completely-comprehensible God.” [17]

Ecclesiastes shows us that nothing under the sun can give us lasting meaning. But the gospel reveals Someone who came from beyond the sun. Jesus descended into our world of hevel to redeem it.

Let me ask you friend, do you know Him? Have you turned from your sins and trusted in the life, death, and resurrection of King Jesus?

Until you do, your life is a life without purpose and without meaning.

And like the breath you just exhaled, it is outside your control and it will be gone before you know Him.

Would you turn from your sins and trust Him today? Before it’s too late?

If you’ve already done that, you don’t need to be afraid to take the dark path of deep joy.

You can trust Jesus—even as you walk through the valley of the shadow of death—because He has already been there.

You can allow the book of Ecclesiastes to splash cold water on your face because you know life is more than what’s under the sun.

Here’s my prayer for Christians: that God would use the axe that is Ecclesiastes to break up the ice of materialism and escapism that’s settled over our hearts so they will burn brighter for what matters.

… Only one life, a few brief years, Each with its burdens, hopes, and fears; Each with its days I must fulfill, living for self or in His will; Only one life, ’twill soon be past, Only what’s done for Christ will last.

When this bright world would tempt me sore, When Satan would a victory score; When self would seek to have its way, Then help me Lord with joy to say; Only one life, ’twill soon be past, Only what’s done for Christ will last.

Give me Father, a purpose deep, In joy or sorrow Thy word to keep; Faithful and true what e’er the strife, Pleasing Thee in my daily life; Only one life, ’twill soon be past, Only what’s done for Christ will last. . . .

Only one life, yes only one, Now let me say, “Thy will be done”; And when at last I’ll hear the call, I know I’ll say ’twas worth it all”; Only one life,’ twill soon be past, Only what’s done for Christ will last. [18]

Prayer of Thanksgiving

All I Have is Christ

Benediction (Hebrews 13:20–21)