Ecclesiastes

I really enjoy doing a full series on a single book of the Bible.  It's good to see passages in the broader context of the book, and then to see how they fit into the even broader context of the Bible.  As Mike pointed out on Sunday, the Bible is really one big story - God's story.

As we do studies like this, one thing I find helpful is to look at resources that help summarize or outline the main points and flow of the book.  One way of doing this is by looking at the introductory notes in a study Bible.  Another way that I've come across in the past couple of years is a series of overview sermons preached by Mark Dever at Capitol Hill Baptist Church.  I was able to listen to his message on Ecclesiastes, Wisdom for the Successful, before we started studying Ecclesiastes, and I listened to it again today, after finishing our study.

I found his concluding comments to be quite helpful when left with the mire of meaninglessness that the Teacher points out throughout Ecclesiastes.  He begins by looking back at the phrase we've seen so often in the book - "under the sun":

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It occurs twenty-eight times in this short book, and it refers to life as viewed entirely from the perspective of this earth, a life considered apart from God.  Such a truncated and circumscribed life, of course, is meaningless. "All come from dust, and to dust all return" (3:20). 

Friend, can you see how the Teacher's honesty about sin, the Fall, and its consequences helps us understand why the world is like it is, and how we should respond to it?  Hear him!  This world is a bad place for your final investment!  It was not made for that!  As long as you keep trying to cobble together meaning from the scraps of this world, the Teacher of Ecclesiastes will pursue you and point out the paltry and passing, flimsy and fleeting nature of your materials.  There is more to life than what we find under the sun, and God has not made us to be satisfied with this world alone.  As the Teacher says, God has "set eternity" in our hearts (3:11).  Yes, our lives are lived out under the sun, but our hearts' desires stretch infinitely beyond the horizon.  Eternity goes beyond the sphere of what is under the sun. 

Throughout the book we read of him who dwells in the heavens, above and beyond the sun.  The book is not as faithless as it is sometimes made out to be.  In the last few verses, we read, "Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear god and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.  For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil" (12:13-14). 

Some people feel that these last verses of the book spoil it.  The real message is stark, but it's honest, brave, and commendable, perhaps even necessary to survive in the world.  Maybe these last verses were just tacked on, they've thought. 

But I don't think so.  These verses bring us to the ultimate message of this book: only with God do we have a clear and true perspective that gives meaning to life.  That is the perspective we must have. 

For life to have meaning, we need what lies beyond it.  We need judgment (cf. 8:10-13; 12:14); and we need hope.  It is because God the Author will finally evaluate what we do that life has meaning.  In the same way that a book cannot read itself, you and I cannot give meaning to our own lives.  We were created by someone bigger than us, for his purposes and for his ends.  Only from him can we learn meaning and truth. 

When we view our lives from his perspective, what do we see?  What do we see when we turn away from our self-centered, beneath-the-sun perspectives and adopt the Teacher's own God-centered perspective?  We see, first, our rebellion against God.  This becomes evident as soon as we stop measuring "success," "fair," "good," and "valuable" from our own vantage point and begin using God's standards.  Second, we see the promise of judgment that our rebellion requires.  But third, we learn in the Scriptures, marvelously, that God is not only holy, he's loving; and he has given his Son to die on the cross and take upon himself God's judgment for the rebellion of all those who will ever repent of their sins and believe in him! 

CONCLUSION 

So is futility final?  No.  Ecclesiastes was never meant to be a substitute for the whole Bible.  As we have seen, some of these cynical sayings, taken by themselves, can be confusing and even appear false.  To know the truth of God, we need the full revelation of God himself that he gives us in the whole Bible.
So, I ask again, is futility final?  Outside of the answer that is found in Christ, there is no final answer to the futility of life.  Only God's revelation of himself in Jesus Christ assures us that there is something beyond the sun and beyond the grave.  In that sense, the good news that we as Christians have to share is the key to getting "beyond the sun."  Christ came to live, die, and rise again in order to bring us forgiveness of sins and a restored relationship with God.  This good news is the key to getting beyond and over the sun and to gaining the life full of the meaning and purpose that God intended for us.  The afterlife is not an old Christian dogma that we can simply push aside.  The afterlife, says the book of Ecclesiastes, is essential to this life and to understanding the truth of who God made us to be.  And only through Jesus Christ do we see the death of death and the birth of a new life that will endure forever. 

"Therefore is anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" (2 Cor. 5:17). 

"Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain" (1 Cor. 15:58b). 

We will find meaning only when meaning extends beyond this life and world.  Only eternity with God makes a life "successful" and "worth living."  And we will find such meaning only in Christ!

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You can download the sermon here or read it as a part of Dever's book The Message of the Old Testament: Promises Made.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-15

Here are my notes, worked in alongside the text of the class handout, from teaching Life Group on Sunday.  We had some good discussion towards the end of class that seemed to hover around the difference between man's perspective "under the sun" and God's sovereignty.

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A TIME FOR EVERYTHING

INTRODUCTION

This is the most widely celebrated passage in the entire book of Ecclesiastes. Many musicians and songwriters have latched on to it to explain the seasonal nature of life. Unfortunately, many have also missed the main point: God is sovereign and in control of all the seasons of our lives. His timeliness in our lives is perfect.

DISCUSSION

Imagine and discuss what life would be like without seasons of grief, struggle, or pain.

EXPLANATION

• God is sovereign over every season of our lives.

• Merism – a figure of speech in which two polarities make up a whole.

In addition to the use of merism, the number of pairs – 14 (2 x 7) indicates the fullness or perfection of the poem covering all of life.

This poem may remind us of the poetry of chapter 1 talking about “seasons” in creation – the sun, the wind, the streams & seas. And the question of v. 9 (what gain has the worker from his toil?) reminds us of verses 2 & 3 in chapter 1 – all is vanity, the worker gains nothing. So in looking back to the pairs in this poetry, they all essentially cancel each other out – you're born and you die, and there's nothing left, a tree is planted and uprooted, it's gone; stones are scattered, stones are gathered as if they were never scattered, a garment is torn and a garment is sewn like new. But we're only left with vanity “under the sun," i.e. without God.

The Teacher goes on to say that although we see these things happening all around us, and we have no control over most of them, God controls them and uses them for His purposes, making them beautiful. He has even put eternity into our hearts, an awareness of past & future, even though we cannot completely figure them out or comprehend them. We can no more know the distant past than we can the future.

• The eternal longing in our hearts is at odds with our present mortality. C.S. Lewis explains it this way in Mere Christianity:

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.”

• 3:12 and 3:14 (NIV) begin with the verb ‘I know’ and reveal Solomon’s two conclusions:

1. Rejoice and do good. Once more we see a repeated theme, this time in verse 12. Despite our lack of understanding of the times, we can see God's gifts to us, and “rejoice and do good,” taking pleasure in them.
2. God’s sovereignty inspires reverential fear of Him. But why does God work this way, when we cannot “find out” all that He does? Verse 14 holds the answer – God has done all this, God sovereignly controls all things & times so that people fear Him. Though we cannot see God, we come to see how He works things at certain times to accomplish His plans. This was not only true in the days of ancient Israel, but we see this throughout the Bible and can trust that God is no less sovereign today. Consider the “times” mentioned in the New Testament:

• Galatians 4:4-5 - “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” (ESV)
• When Jesus began his ministry, he said in Mark 1:15 - “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”
• When Mary comes to Jesus at the wedding at Cana to tell Him they ran out of wine, Jesus initially tells her, “My hour has not yet come.” (John 2:4)
• At one point when people were seeking to arrest Jesus, “but no one laid a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come.” (John 7:30)
• Before the Last Supper, John writes that “Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father” (John 13:1)
• Romans 5:6 - “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.”
• The time that Christ would be in the tomb was set. In Mark 8:31, Christ taught His disciples that after three days He would rise again.
• Jesus talked about the timing of His return - “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.” (Matthew 24:36)
• Again, Jesus tells His disciples just before His ascension, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.” (Acts 1:7) – This sounds a lot like Ecclesiastes 3:11, that man cannot find out what God has done from beginning to end
• Just as Paul wrote to the Galatians that Christ first came “when the fullness of time had come,” he wrote to Timothy that Christ's return will be “at the proper time” (1 Timothy 6:15)
• And when Christ returns, He will usher in the new heaven and new earth that John saw in the revelation he received from God.:

[3] And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. [4] He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

[5] And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

(Revelation 21:3-5, ESV)

• Listen to how the poem from Ecclesiastes 3 is turned on its head. Tears are wiped away, and there is no more death, mourning, crying, or pain. And remember from Ecclesiastes 1:9, that there is nothing new under the sun? Well, under the sun, without God, there is nothing new. But the Creator of all will re-create all as a part of His (& His people's) eternal kingdom.  Like the people to whom the Teacher wrote Ecclesiastes, we are called to consider God's sovereignty and stand in awe.  Let us join in the heavenly chorus praising our great God and the Lamb who was slain.

APPLICATION

• Share your stories of experiencing the sovereignty of God in each of these seasons of life.
• How does knowing that God is sovereign over time help you to wait on His timing in your life?