I gave a cut-down version of this, mostly the back half when dealing with Chapter 12, to a retirement home in the lead-up to this talk. Below is more or less what I said. The audio is probably up on my church site.
What is life all about? We all have a life, so what is it all about? What do we do in the time that we have? What are our motivations? What is the point of work and money and stuff if you can’t take it with you? What are we doing here?
This question of meaning and purpose had dogged every generation from all time. We know that Douglas Adams solved this question in the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy with the answer to life, the universe and everything as being... 42. That answer was a letdown in the book as well. But I have good news for you today. In my research for this series, I found someone who has the answer to life.
<a video of the fist 30 seconds of Day 15 Core Blend: ENGAGE with Elise Joan (by Beachbody). She starts with a reflection saying "I AM the meaning of life">
There you go, life has no meaning, but you have meaning, so you are the meaning of life. Just so we are all clear, that is the wrong answer. That is not true, this fitness instructor hasn’t solved this problem.
But what she puts forward is sort of the sentiment of our age. We believe the universe came from nothing and is going to nothing, so really there is no meaning to life, we can’t deny that, so all that is left is... you.
This is captured well in a poem that came through my Instagram feed a few weeks ago. I saw it and thought this will work for this series. It’s called Life Has the Significance You Give It, and yeah she has some cool eyes:
That poem has about 125,000 likes. It resonates with people. This poet says, it is valid that life has no meaning, but we can choose our own outlook, we can still have hope. There is no reason given in this worldview for why we should hope, except that we have a choice. We can exercise our will to be hopeful.
This captures really well the disconnect between the large reality of nothing and the pleasure and enjoyment we experience now. And the truth is we don’t want to face the reality that our lives is nothing, that everything is going to nothing, that is for science textbooks, but not for us.
In Ecclesiastes, we will meet the Teacher and they will have you look at your coming death and force you to think whether you are living consistently between the big ideas and the little moments of life.
You are going to die, so how are you going to live? The Teacher would ask this poet and our current generation what is the point of your empowerment to choose if there is nothing anyway. Be consistent.
Because Ecclesiastes talks like this, people say this book is depressing, it talks about death and forces us to think hard about what we are striving for. But I think this book has gotten a bad wrap as in our culture. We don’t like talking about things addressed in this book. We don’t like to be told some frank observations, we prefer sometimes to ignore the truth.
But as I have read this book a few times, I think it is actually helpful and even freeing (Kirk Patston said something like this). Face your mortality, know your limitations and live within your lot in life. Know that God is God, you are not, and that He gives good gifts even if things don’t make any sense.
In Moby Dick, one of the characters says that Ecclesiastes is the truest of all books. Tim Keller says you don’t get to that point after the first time you read it. It would be worth your time by yourself or in your Life Groups to read large slabs of this book. In a staff meeting recently we read the whole thing out loud. It took about 30 or so minutes.
Today we are going to look at the introduction and conclusion of the book. My aim to sort of help orientate you around. More questions might be raised than answers today, for this can be tricky, but so is life.
Some people take the tone of the Teacher's words to be bleak, as an example of what not to think, as a cynic and we are to engage with this worldview by countering it. But that is not my take. I think the Teachers words are “upright and true” because that is what the text says.
Some people take the Teacher to be Solomon. And it could be, but the text doesn’t say. It wouldn’t rattle my faith if somehow we found that Mark or Matthew didn’t write their namesake Gospels because the text doesn’t say it was written by them. In this book, it sort of alludes to Solomon, it evokes the idea or gives the impression it is Solomon, but I am not sure it is. I think they wanted to come across as Solomon-like, Solomon-ish but I don’t think it is him, for a few reasons and we can talk about them afterwards if you want.
[ Not included, but some of my points for this:
What is life all about? We all have a life, so what is it all about? What do we do in the time that we have? What are our motivations? What is the point of work and money and stuff if you can’t take it with you? What are we doing here?
<a video of the fist 30 seconds of Day 15 Core Blend: ENGAGE with Elise Joan (by Beachbody). She starts with a reflection saying "I AM the meaning of life">
There you go, life has no meaning, but you have meaning, so you are the meaning of life. Just so we are all clear, that is the wrong answer. That is not true, this fitness instructor hasn’t solved this problem.
But what she puts forward is sort of the sentiment of our age. We believe the universe came from nothing and is going to nothing, so really there is no meaning to life, we can’t deny that, so all that is left is... you.
This is captured well in a poem that came through my Instagram feed a few weeks ago. I saw it and thought this will work for this series. It’s called Life Has the Significance You Give It, and yeah she has some cool eyes:
the reality is that you have a choice
there are two paths you can embark on
you can choose to believe that there is no sense or meaning to life
and that belief is valid
you are a speck on a rock revolving around a star in an infinite Universe of question marks
or you can choose to create meaning to decide that life has the significance you give it
you can choose to love with the time you are given
you can squeeze life like lemons and add sugar if it's sour to drink
your power is in the hope you assign to tomorrow
and yes you are still a speck on a rock revolving around a star in an infinite Universe of question marks
but when given the decision to be a speck in despair or a speck with hope
may you choose hope every time
That poem has about 125,000 likes. It resonates with people. This poet says, it is valid that life has no meaning, but we can choose our own outlook, we can still have hope. There is no reason given in this worldview for why we should hope, except that we have a choice. We can exercise our will to be hopeful.
This captures really well the disconnect between the large reality of nothing and the pleasure and enjoyment we experience now. And the truth is we don’t want to face the reality that our lives is nothing, that everything is going to nothing, that is for science textbooks, but not for us.
In Ecclesiastes, we will meet the Teacher and they will have you look at your coming death and force you to think whether you are living consistently between the big ideas and the little moments of life.
You are going to die, so how are you going to live? The Teacher would ask this poet and our current generation what is the point of your empowerment to choose if there is nothing anyway. Be consistent.
Because Ecclesiastes talks like this, people say this book is depressing, it talks about death and forces us to think hard about what we are striving for. But I think this book has gotten a bad wrap as in our culture. We don’t like talking about things addressed in this book. We don’t like to be told some frank observations, we prefer sometimes to ignore the truth.
But as I have read this book a few times, I think it is actually helpful and even freeing (Kirk Patston said something like this). Face your mortality, know your limitations and live within your lot in life. Know that God is God, you are not, and that He gives good gifts even if things don’t make any sense.
In Moby Dick, one of the characters says that Ecclesiastes is the truest of all books. Tim Keller says you don’t get to that point after the first time you read it. It would be worth your time by yourself or in your Life Groups to read large slabs of this book. In a staff meeting recently we read the whole thing out loud. It took about 30 or so minutes.
Today we are going to look at the introduction and conclusion of the book. My aim to sort of help orientate you around. More questions might be raised than answers today, for this can be tricky, but so is life.
The Teacher
So to start off, in verse one we are introduced to this Teacher:The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem: (Ecclesiastes 1:1 NIV)Most of this book will be first-person observation from this Teacher. We will be told all that they see. They will from time to time slip into speaking proverbs or poems and occasionally address us and offer us wisdom. But they are not the only voice in this book. There is a narrator in this verse that introduces the Teacher and at the end, this narrator will also conclude their teaching and add their own summary. This framed narrator helps us to know about the Teacher's words we are going to listen to.
Some people take the tone of the Teacher's words to be bleak, as an example of what not to think, as a cynic and we are to engage with this worldview by countering it. But that is not my take. I think the Teachers words are “upright and true” because that is what the text says.
The Teacher searched to find just the right words, and what he wrote was upright and true. Ecclesiastes 12:10 NIVThe narrator will add a bit more to the Teachers words, and in some moments of this book, what they say may seem a little off, but in broad brushstrokes, I don’t think the Teacher is a villain or a functional atheist. He is a thinker, someone who may run thought experiments and say things to provoke, but we need to remember that his words are upright and true.
Some people take the Teacher to be Solomon. And it could be, but the text doesn’t say. It wouldn’t rattle my faith if somehow we found that Mark or Matthew didn’t write their namesake Gospels because the text doesn’t say it was written by them. In this book, it sort of alludes to Solomon, it evokes the idea or gives the impression it is Solomon, but I am not sure it is. I think they wanted to come across as Solomon-like, Solomon-ish but I don’t think it is him, for a few reasons and we can talk about them afterwards if you want.
[ Not included, but some of my points for this:
- Solomon later in life died apostate.
- The Teacher boats in verse 16 how he is better than any who has ruled over Jerusalem, which isn’t a great boast if its Solomon only his father David ruled in Jerusalem. He comes from a line of one ruler of Jerusalem, as David moved into this royal city. Although it may also be a reference to non Israelite kings that may have ruled there.
- The idea that this Teacher is a king, is strong in the first few chapters, but it seemed to have been forgotten later, and in 10:20 the king is even seen as a threat.
- Also in the Hebrew there are something called “loanwords” from Persian in this book, that people say show the post-Assyrian exile influence, as these words weren’t in use around Solomon's day.]
I think this book was written closer to Nehemiah than toSolomon. In saying that I am moving the location of this book about 4 or 500 years. But that is also a trickiness of this book. It is hard to pin down a time period for when this is set, for it talks about everyday life. Of thinking, and pleasure, and work and wealth. Of eating and friends and injustice. Of things that has been going on all the time. Of normal everyday life in this fallen world.
Now the word “meaningless” here is hard to tie down. The Hebrew word appears 73 times in the Old Testament and outside of Ecclesiastes only one other time is it rendered “meaningless” (Job 27:12). For some reason the translators tried to pick a consistent English word throughout this book, but they didn’t use that approach in other wisdom books like Psalms or Proverbs.
The word used can mean, vain, nonsense, empty. It literally means vapor or breath. In Proverbs
This Hebrew word is hard to render. When I encounter this word in in Ecclesiastes, in my head I actually use the word mistiness. I think that works a little bit better in this book.
It is what James says
Our life is like the steam from a hot cup of coffee in the winters sun, it doesn’t last, it is hard to get hold of. It moves, it is transient, things are in a state of flux. It’s fleeting and will vanish, and that is our live. All of it.
Jesus says you can’t add any more height to yourself by worrying, this Teacher asks, can you even gain anything from working?
From verse 4-11 we then get a poem that starts the exploration for gain. It looks at our life in comparison to the natural world around us.
The sun, wind, streams and sea - they do their thing, over and over again, but they aren’t in search of gain, they aren’t seeing a profit or surplus. The water goes into the ocean and the ocean is never full, it never says that’s enough. The Sun moves around the Earth with great consistency, there is no goal of optimizations or speeding up or earning more time. There is no Senate inquiry that we need to enact into the movement of the winds trying to work out how we can make them more efficient (Kirk Patson). They just do their things, in their season. They aren’t speeding up, they aren’t slowing down. They are not gaining anything
But with us humans, from verse 8, our senses are never full, we are always set on consuming and gain. We fill our eyes and ears with new things. We never say, "I have seen enough sunsets, I don’t need to see another". No matter how good our dinner was last night, we will be hungry again. We are constantly talking about new things and chattering about change. All the suburbs in the Tuggernong Valley has come in the last 40 years. And Urambi Hills... well, they have always been there and will always be there. People come and strive and seek their fill, but the natural world will continue without them.
- The Teacher boats in verse 16 how he is better than any who has ruled over Jerusalem, which isn’t a great boast if its Solomon only his father David ruled in Jerusalem. He comes from a line of one ruler of Jerusalem, as David moved into this royal city. Although it may also be a reference to non Israelite kings that may have ruled there.
- The idea that this Teacher is a king, is strong in the first few chapters, but it seemed to have been forgotten later, and in 10:20 the king is even seen as a threat.
- Also in the Hebrew there are something called “loanwords” from Persian in this book, that people say show the post-Assyrian exile influence, as these words weren’t in use around Solomon's day.]
I think this book was written closer to Nehemiah than toSolomon. In saying that I am moving the location of this book about 4 or 500 years. But that is also a trickiness of this book. It is hard to pin down a time period for when this is set, for it talks about everyday life. Of thinking, and pleasure, and work and wealth. Of eating and friends and injustice. Of things that has been going on all the time. Of normal everyday life in this fallen world.
Meaningless - Mistiness
And so from this everyday life, we see in verse 2 the Techers summary.“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” Ecclesiastes 1:2 (NIV)
This also is the same verse in 12:8, this is like a summary of the Teachers teaching and between these two verses, we have their extended thinking on this matter.
Now the word “meaningless” here is hard to tie down. The Hebrew word appears 73 times in the Old Testament and outside of Ecclesiastes only one other time is it rendered “meaningless” (Job 27:12). For some reason the translators tried to pick a consistent English word throughout this book, but they didn’t use that approach in other wisdom books like Psalms or Proverbs.
You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you.That word for breath is our meaningless word.
Everyone is but a *breath*, even those who seem secure. Psalm 39:5 (NIV)
The Lord knows all human plans; he knows that they are *futile*. Psalm 94:11 (NIV)That word for futile is our meaningless word here.
The word used can mean, vain, nonsense, empty. It literally means vapor or breath. In Proverbs
A fortune made by a lying tongue is a fleeting *vapor* and a deadly snare. Proverbs 21:6 (NIV)Vapor is the word
Charm is deceptive, and beauty is *fleeting*; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Proverbs 31:30 (NIV)Here it is fleeting, it doesn’t last.
This Hebrew word is hard to render. When I encounter this word in in Ecclesiastes, in my head I actually use the word mistiness. I think that works a little bit better in this book.
It is what James says
Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. (James 4:14 NIV)
Our life is like the steam from a hot cup of coffee in the winters sun, it doesn’t last, it is hard to get hold of. It moves, it is transient, things are in a state of flux. It’s fleeting and will vanish, and that is our live. All of it.
What is there to Gain?
So from this intro we start with the main question to kick this whole thing off. In the following 2 or 3 chapters the Teacher will set out to export this issue, they askWhat do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun? Ecclesiastes 1:3 (NIV)The Teacher is looking for gain. What is there to gain in this life? Death is coming, so why are we in this transactional, commerce world of buying and selling and producing. What is the point, where is the gain to life?
Jesus says you can’t add any more height to yourself by worrying, this Teacher asks, can you even gain anything from working?
From verse 4-11 we then get a poem that starts the exploration for gain. It looks at our life in comparison to the natural world around us.
The sun, wind, streams and sea - they do their thing, over and over again, but they aren’t in search of gain, they aren’t seeing a profit or surplus. The water goes into the ocean and the ocean is never full, it never says that’s enough. The Sun moves around the Earth with great consistency, there is no goal of optimizations or speeding up or earning more time. There is no Senate inquiry that we need to enact into the movement of the winds trying to work out how we can make them more efficient (Kirk Patson). They just do their things, in their season. They aren’t speeding up, they aren’t slowing down. They are not gaining anything
But with us humans, from verse 8, our senses are never full, we are always set on consuming and gain. We fill our eyes and ears with new things. We never say, "I have seen enough sunsets, I don’t need to see another". No matter how good our dinner was last night, we will be hungry again. We are constantly talking about new things and chattering about change. All the suburbs in the Tuggernong Valley has come in the last 40 years. And Urambi Hills... well, they have always been there and will always be there. People come and strive and seek their fill, but the natural world will continue without them.
We don’t even remember those who came before us. Go back three generations, do you know your great-great-grandparents names? Do you know who they were or are they just names? What was their job, what was their favourite colour? So in three generations time from us, you know what that means? You too will be forgotten. Is that depressing or the just the truth?
It seems we humans have forgotten our place in this world.
We constantly try and shape things for our own needs. Even today we ignore the seasons, we expect to be able to buy apples and bananas all year round. We think we live in this plastic world which we can shape it to our own needs. We even think we can modify ourselves with going to gym, changing our diets and performing all sorts of body modifications and putting on beauty products.
But whatever we achieve, and whatever we try to shape and control, if we get a 6 pack or not, Urambi Hills will still be there in 200 years time. The sun will still rise, the wind will still blow, streams will still make their way back to the ocean. Our lives are footprints along a seashore, the natural process is that we will be eroded and forgotten over time.
The Teacher challenges us to think about how we see the world and our place in it.
We will see in this book, that it has a series of things the Teacher sees, “under the sun”. This is a curious phrase and when they are in this mode of thinking they seem to be looking around the world and hitting a dead end. Getting frustrated with what they see, as they can’t see any gain or reason or fairness in what they see.
This is not to say they don’t believe in God, they have much to say about eternity and gifts from God and God’s wisdom. The Teacher knows eternity is set in our hearts, which you can’t see, and that God is above, which we can’t see, and He will judge in the future, which you can't see.
But in different moments of this book, the Teacher is leaning into the John Lennon song, Imagine
In the last mid-week talk Ian gave, he mentioned playing Monopoly with his family when he was young and how things would get competitive. Monopoly is a rough game as the goal is to crush the other person, to make them bankrupt. And so when emotions would spill over his mother would say “it all goes back in the box in the end”. No matter who became bankrupt, who owned all the hotels, it all goes back in the box at the end. And that is like life. We can’t take anything with us, except our souls.
It seems we humans have forgotten our place in this world.
We constantly try and shape things for our own needs. Even today we ignore the seasons, we expect to be able to buy apples and bananas all year round. We think we live in this plastic world which we can shape it to our own needs. We even think we can modify ourselves with going to gym, changing our diets and performing all sorts of body modifications and putting on beauty products.
But whatever we achieve, and whatever we try to shape and control, if we get a 6 pack or not, Urambi Hills will still be there in 200 years time. The sun will still rise, the wind will still blow, streams will still make their way back to the ocean. Our lives are footprints along a seashore, the natural process is that we will be eroded and forgotten over time.
The Teacher challenges us to think about how we see the world and our place in it.
“Under the Sun”
On the observable world, notice in verse 3 and 9 and 14 and 29 times in this book the phrase “under the sun”.
We will see in this book, that it has a series of things the Teacher sees, “under the sun”. This is a curious phrase and when they are in this mode of thinking they seem to be looking around the world and hitting a dead end. Getting frustrated with what they see, as they can’t see any gain or reason or fairness in what they see.
This is not to say they don’t believe in God, they have much to say about eternity and gifts from God and God’s wisdom. The Teacher knows eternity is set in our hearts, which you can’t see, and that God is above, which we can’t see, and He will judge in the future, which you can't see.
But in different moments of this book, the Teacher is leaning into the John Lennon song, Imagine
Imagine there's no HeavenAnd the Teacher says deal. Let's do this. Let's see what we find (Tim Keller said something similar). And just in this introduction, we see that there is no profit under the sun. The challenge the Teacher wants us to ask is why are you living for gain? There is none in nature, why do you think you will get gain for all your work?
It's easy if you try
No Hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today
Gift not gain
And so one of the challenges to our worldview we may encounter is that there is no gain under the sun, but none needs to be found.There is no gain under the sun, but none needs to be found.
We will see in this book that "There is sufficient reward in life itself, if it is received as a gift from God and lived well" (Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs Original Meaning)
We aren’t to eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. Instead, we are to eat drink and be merry for they are gifts from God and foretastes of what we will be doing after we die (Living Life Backwards by David Gibson).
If there is any talk of gain in the Christian life, Paul hits it right on the head in Philippians:
Last week at church, at our 10 am service, during one of the last songs, I looked out the window and saw something I think encapsulates this idea of gift not gain. In the courtyard, I could see one lady was sweeping up all the leaves, just before the service was going to end. There was also our creche kids outside, these little 2-year-olds running around. As this lady was sweeping up the pile of leaves, these kids would do what 2 years old do when they see a pile of leaves. They would run to the pile, grab big handfuls and throw it up in the air.
Now was that frustrating or marvellous? The work became futile, there was nothing to gain in sweeping up the leaves. But it was marvelous. These kids had so much joy in throwing these leaves around. It made the work worth it. There was no gain, but there was the gift of fun with two-year-olds. (Now, I think the lady had this in mind when she first started sweeping.)
This week one of our SOAP readings this week said
So to spoil the book in one sense, or to help with our bearings to see where we are heading, we see the narrator come into the picture again. They just peeped their head in at the beginning and now they come in at the end, they take the mic and sum up the Teacher’s words and wraps this all up.
They say the Teacher was wise, they looked for the right words, and on this they probably could go on and on and write more books on this. Just wait till the Greeks come along and invent philosophy, then more books will be written on this matter. So the narrator cuts it off and says right at the end:
In this book, we will see work and toil, injustice, old age, inheritance wasted, foolish kings and wise people forgotten. We see that we don’t know everything, we can’t tell the future and people will let us down. In this book, we see the real world.
In facing all the ups and downs in this bumpy road of life, we are told to fear God and keep His commandments, for our deeds will be judged in the end.
In fearing God and obeying Him, we are being told to stay the course. To keep going. When things all around us seem hard, or confusing, we are told to keep moving forward. God is still there, even if we don’t understand what is going on.
And in Jesus we can take a lot more comfort, knowing that Christ also entered this fallen world and suffered with us. Our God knows, experientially, what it means to live in this world. To keep God’s command in this life. He has suffered, and in His suffering, He has saved us, and so in our suffering, we can become more like Him (I forget where I got this line from).
And then it says these words come from the one shepherd. This is a new idea in the book, we haven’t heard of this shepherd before, but we are told that these words come from this one source, a shepherd, one who will care for those they are prodding. The one who is encouraging us to keep moving.
And as Christians, we know who our great Shepherd is. Jesus is the good shepherd who lays His life down for His sheep. His sheep hear His words and they follow. Jesus had much to teach about life and how to live. He was called "Rabbi", which means "Teacher". The wise man is to build their life of the words of Jesus, like someone who builds on rock and not sand.
Jesus said
In Luke 13 there is this interesting story where people ask Jesus why did some people get killed by Pilate or why did 18 people die when a tower fell on them. Jesus says, do you think it was because they were more sinful than everyone else that they died, “I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”
Random and chaotic things can happen to us. It is not related to how sinful or wise we are. Life is confusing and we will not understand, but know that in the end God will judge our actions, good or bad.
Our duty is to live in love to God. We aren’t to shriek back from suffering, or from facing our coming deaths. We are to live for God. As one commentator said:
I pray that you would see your life as a transient thing, in which our God gives good gifts. There is also chaos in this world, which we don’t understand, but even in that, may you still move forward, and continue in your faith till the end. For in this life, there may not be gain. But for the Christian, we know that to live is Christ and to die is gain. For when we die we will be present with our Savior, and our great Shepherd and Teacher. Remember his wise words and live knowing He will judge and reward His Children.
We aren’t to eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. Instead, we are to eat drink and be merry for they are gifts from God and foretastes of what we will be doing after we die (Living Life Backwards by David Gibson).
If there is any talk of gain in the Christian life, Paul hits it right on the head in Philippians:
For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. (Philippians 1:21 NIV)Gain is in death where we will be with Christ forever. So here and now, we can still enjoy moments, without gain. For all our moments here are really without profit, but all our moments here we can see them as gifts that can be enjoyed.
Now was that frustrating or marvellous? The work became futile, there was nothing to gain in sweeping up the leaves. But it was marvelous. These kids had so much joy in throwing these leaves around. It made the work worth it. There was no gain, but there was the gift of fun with two-year-olds. (Now, I think the lady had this in mind when she first started sweeping.)
This week one of our SOAP readings this week said
Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Ephesians 5:19–20 NIV)That is to be our attitude, not striving for any gain, but seeing gifts and giving thanks to God.
The Conclusion
Alright, so that is just the framing of the start of this book, we are now going to jump quickly to the end. I was in a Life Group where there are people who do this with detective books, they read the last chapter to know what is coming. If you do this, you are a monster. This breaks the tension and is not the authors intent. But we are doing this today, with the main idea to help us to know where we are going for this is a tricky book. This is more that 2,500 years old, so this isn’t going to be a great spoiler. You have had your chance.
So to spoil the book in one sense, or to help with our bearings to see where we are heading, we see the narrator come into the picture again. They just peeped their head in at the beginning and now they come in at the end, they take the mic and sum up the Teacher’s words and wraps this all up.
They say the Teacher was wise, they looked for the right words, and on this they probably could go on and on and write more books on this. Just wait till the Greeks come along and invent philosophy, then more books will be written on this matter. So the narrator cuts it off and says right at the end:
Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind.
For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil. Ecclesiastes 12:13–14 (NIV)
In this book, we will see work and toil, injustice, old age, inheritance wasted, foolish kings and wise people forgotten. We see that we don’t know everything, we can’t tell the future and people will let us down. In this book, we see the real world.
In facing all the ups and downs in this bumpy road of life, we are told to fear God and keep His commandments, for our deeds will be judged in the end.
In fearing God and obeying Him, we are being told to stay the course. To keep going. When things all around us seem hard, or confusing, we are told to keep moving forward. God is still there, even if we don’t understand what is going on.
And in Jesus we can take a lot more comfort, knowing that Christ also entered this fallen world and suffered with us. Our God knows, experientially, what it means to live in this world. To keep God’s command in this life. He has suffered, and in His suffering, He has saved us, and so in our suffering, we can become more like Him (I forget where I got this line from).
Wise Shepherd
Ecclesiastes was written so that we can be wise in this life. Some of that wisdom is knowing that we will never know. But we are not in the total dark. We can know wisdom from God, which can help us to live. Verse 11 is a strange one for it uses an old term I had to look up, but I think it is pretty key.The words of the wise are like goads, their collected sayings like firmly embedded nails—given by one shepherd. (Ecclesiastes 12:11 NIV)A goad is like a stick with a pointy end, it was like an ancient cattle prod, used to encourage the animals to move in a certain direction. Here in this verse, it is saying, that wise words can prod us, it can hurt but they can stick with us, like a firmly fixed nail. Wise words can slap us in the face, it can wake us up, it can shake our sensibilities, which this book might do.
And then it says these words come from the one shepherd. This is a new idea in the book, we haven’t heard of this shepherd before, but we are told that these words come from this one source, a shepherd, one who will care for those they are prodding. The one who is encouraging us to keep moving.
And as Christians, we know who our great Shepherd is. Jesus is the good shepherd who lays His life down for His sheep. His sheep hear His words and they follow. Jesus had much to teach about life and how to live. He was called "Rabbi", which means "Teacher". The wise man is to build their life of the words of Jesus, like someone who builds on rock and not sand.
Jesus said
For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? (Matthew 16:25–26 NIV)We are to trust in Jesus, no matter what we are going through. For in Him, our soul is secure. In Him, we can have eternal life. We can sometimes forget, when we see the world around us, that God is a good Father who wants to give gifts to His children. It can be hard and we can ask why does bad and random things happen to people.
In Luke 13 there is this interesting story where people ask Jesus why did some people get killed by Pilate or why did 18 people die when a tower fell on them. Jesus says, do you think it was because they were more sinful than everyone else that they died, “I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”
Random and chaotic things can happen to us. It is not related to how sinful or wise we are. Life is confusing and we will not understand, but know that in the end God will judge our actions, good or bad.
Our duty is to live in love to God. We aren’t to shriek back from suffering, or from facing our coming deaths. We are to live for God. As one commentator said:
The one who is truly wise will continue to trust and follow God, even when she is weary and worn from trying to make sense of God. He is never more our God than when he bids us to follow, even when we have every good reason not to. And we are never more his servants than when we obey - regardless. (Peter Enns)There are lots of things in this world that you may have experienced that you can not explain. Why did my baby die? Why did the financial markets crash just before I was going to retire? Why did my parents have to divorce? Why did my spouse have a stroke? What is going on in this world? But the person who has experienced troubles in this life, who has gone through hard things that they may not understand, and when they still continue to follow God, they can be invincible in their faith (Peter Enns). For they know, nothing can separate them for the love of God.
I pray that you would see your life as a transient thing, in which our God gives good gifts. There is also chaos in this world, which we don’t understand, but even in that, may you still move forward, and continue in your faith till the end. For in this life, there may not be gain. But for the Christian, we know that to live is Christ and to die is gain. For when we die we will be present with our Savior, and our great Shepherd and Teacher. Remember his wise words and live knowing He will judge and reward His Children.
Oh Lord of History Ruler of all ages
You who arranged the events of time,
Have also arranged the events of our livesIn particular, you know the right time for everything.
Your purposes are not always clear to usBut we know that you make no mistakes.Teach us to trust your Providential Rule
And help us e to listen to our great Shepheard and wise Teacher-King
Our Saviour Jesus Christ
Amen.
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