Everything is Meaningless

I don’t know if you’ve ever initiated a new project in your work place, or perhaps a home development and just when you’ve got to far into it completely regretted your decision...

Well that is what I’ve begun to think about tackling the OT book of Ecclesiasties this term!

I had earlier last year intended to hit us all with a years worth of sermons no Leviticus - but decided the value of that epic book might be beter served in a mini-series overview of about 4 weeks, and that - i ddin’t have time to prepare over the summer.

instead suggested one of the elders (who will remain nameless as it may prove to be unfair to pass the blame for such a decision - we are going to have a go at Ecclesiastes!

I’m sure his 4 sons will appreciate the decisons though.

His name rhymes with

I’m sure his 4 sons will appreciate the decisions though.

The Message of Ecclesiastes: A Time to Mourn, and a Time to Dance Facts to Face from Experience

One of the most fascinating passages in the book is a tour of exploration into the rewards and satisfactions of experience.

The Message of Ecclesiastes: A Time to Mourn, and a Time to Dance Facts to Face from Experience

We start with wisdom—the most promising of pursuits. But in a disordered world ‘he who increases knowledge increases sorrow’ (1:18) by the very clarity of his insight. And in the last analysis, whatever else wisdom can do for one, it can do nothing about the end of life. In that crisis the wise man is as naked as the fool (2:15–17)—and if his wisdom counts for nothing at that point, it is a pretentious failure.

So we swing to ‘madness and folly’ (1:17; 2:3b)—and this has a modern ring, chiming in with some of our attempts to by-pass the rational by exploring the absurd and the world of hallucinations. Pleasure, of course, is yet another realm: a many-sided one with its appeal to sensual appetites at one end of the scale (2:3, 8c), and the aesthetic joys of the connoisseur and the creative worker at the other.

Even the best of these pursuits, though, will satisfy us only in passing. There comes the reckoning—‘Then I considered all that my hands had done’ (2:11)—and because of death the final count comes out at nothing.

Author

Job, Ecclesiastes & Song of Songs Author

Furthermore, the Teacher, even if he was Solomon, is clearly not the author of the book of Ecclesiastes, in spite of some popularly held interpretations that insist on this view. There is a second voice in the book—that of an unnamed wise man who uses the Teacher’s words and life story to teach the dangers of embracing “under the sun” perspectives (12:12). This unnamed wise man talks about the Teacher in 1:1–11 and 12:8–14. By contrast, the Teacher’s distinct voice can be recognized by the fact that he speaks in the first person in 1:12–12:7. The second wise man, whose words frame the Teacher’s speech, could be called the “frame narrator” (Fox 1977). The authorial voice is more closely connected with this second wise man, who chose not to give his name.

Thus, in the final analysis, the book of Ecclesiastes, like many other Old Testament books, is anonymous. Due to its presence in the canon, though, we can affirm that its ultimate author is God himself, because he speaks through the human author.