Four Lessons Ecclesiastes Offers

After preaching through the whole book, here are my favorite lessons

For the past 18 weeks, our church has been studying the enigmatic book of Ecclesiastes. The book is (in)famous among Bible readers for being gloomy, confusing, and blunt. Many simply avoid reading it. Spending so long soaking in it has helped me see that many of the caricatures fail to see the whole picture that the book offers and the profound resources it gives to all Christians in the day to day of life “under the sun.”

In fact, it has now become one of my favorite books in the Bible. Here are some of my favorite lessons I gleaned from the book.

The key phrase of the book “vanity” literally means smoke or vapor.

Life is really good

Because of an unfortunate translation decision by the NIV, many readers believe that the primary message of Ecclesiastes is “Everything is meaningless.” (Eccl 1:2, NIV). This is a very misleading word choice,¹ leading the reader to assume that the Preacher’s message is nihilistic, “There is no point, everything is dead and stupid.” That is not what the Preacher wants to communicate.

One of the most prominent themes throughout the book is how wonderful life is. Seven times in the book, the Preacher commends a life of joy.² Food, drink, marriage, laughter, friendship, work, youth, beauty, light—even perfume and clothing (Eccl 9:8): all are gifts that God gives for the express purpose of us being happy. Full stop. One reason some people feel uncomfortable reading the book of Ecclesiastes is how unreserved it is in commending pleasure for no other purpose than pleasure’s sake. “Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do,” (Eccl 9:7). I love Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of that verse:

Seize life! Eat bread with gusto,
Drink wine with a robust heart.
Oh yes—God takes pleasure in your pleasure!

If you are under the impression that a “spiritual life” is somehow a life of “do not taste, do not touch” then you may be under the influence of religion that has “an appearance of wisdom” but is foreign to the pages of Scripture (Col 2:20-23). God has made “everything beautiful in its time” (Eccl 3:11) and reveals Himself to us through the implanted pleasures scattered liberally throughout the world.³

Life is really hard

In its commendation of joy, Ecclesiastes isn’t naive about the pain of life. You cannot escape the brutal honesty that the book provides about how life “under the sun” can be punishing. For instance…

• Life is exhausting (Eccl 1:8; 2:23)

• People will soon forget you (Eccl 1:11; 2:16; 9:5)

• There are problems that you can never fix (Eccl 1:15; 7:13)

• The more wisdom you gain, the sadder you become (Eccl 1:18)

• Funerals, not feasts, will teach you more about life (Eccl 7:2)

• Sometimes, your wildest dreams break your heart (Eccl 5:10-13; 6:1-9)

• Sometimes, bad guys win and good guys lose (Eccl 4:1; 7:15)

• It is really easy to ruin your life (Eccl 7:29; 10:1)

• You cannot predict what will happen tomorrow (Eccl 8:7; 9:11-12)

• You cannot control most of what happens in life (Eccl 11:5-6)

• Life is short; you will die much sooner than you think (Eccl 12:1-8)

There are two ways to approach joy and pleasure in life.

One is to use it like a narcotic to dull your senses. You don’t want to pay attention to the unpaid bills, the tension in your marriage, the guilty conscience. So you watch movies, drink, pack your schedule with things to do. You don’t want the quiet or slowness to give you the chance to contemplate your problems.

Another way, the Preacher’s way, is to enjoy life amidst its pain. To stare at the cracks and splinters of life squarely, and still enjoy a good meal with friends.

The first option may seem more attractive at first, but it doesn’t work in the long run. It is like trying to drape a table cloth over a corpse and pretend it isn’t giving off a stench. You may throw a very exciting party, but no amount of champagne or loud music will remove the smell of death.

Pay attention to the pain. Be honest about it. And then go enjoy the many good gifts still available to you amidst the pain of life. Your hope ultimately lies beyond this sin-stained world in the place where all tears will be wiped away. You can stare down any sadness in this life because you have a confidence of the joy that swallows it in the next. This paradoxical wisdom is summed up in one verse: “Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad,” (Eccl 7:3).

The pathway to your heart being glad is the path of sadness. Consider the scene from Pixar’s Inside Out where Sadness is finally able to take control of the console. Forced Joy cannot bring the cathartic relief that Sadness can.

And, against all our expectations, when we give Sadness its due, we find a new dimension of Joy on the other side, a joy that isn’t ignoring pain, but is now deeper and richer for it.

Life is in God’s hands

Ecclesiastes, without flinching, lays the responsibility for our seasons of joy and suffering squarely at God’s feet: “In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other,” (Eccl 7:14).

God is the one who gives wealth, but also can withhold the “power to enjoy” that wealth (Eccl 6:2). And, surprisingly, the Preacher feels free to call this dilemma “evil” (Eccl 6:1). Something that God has done is…evil? (See also Eccl 4:1-3). Even more provocative, at the beginning of the book, the Preacher comments on how things that are “crooked” cannot be made straight (Eccl 1:15). But then later, he comments: “Consider the work of God: who can make straight what he has made crooked?” (Eccl 7:13). God makes things crooked?

Lastly, consider:

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. For man does not know his time. Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them. - Eccl 9:11-12

“Time and chance” of course are dictated by the God who controls all time (Eccl 3:1-11). Yet, when misfortune arises, the Preacher says: this is evil. When evil events come across the Preacher’s path, he feels free to both label them as such (evil) and to also see them as coming from the hand of God.

The book of Ecclesiastes, alongside the rest of Scripture,⁴ has no qualms with seeing God as a cause of good and bad in life. All of our life is in God’s hands. We can (and should) add some theological clarifications on top of those statements to clear away misunderstandings—God exists outside of time and space, thus He is not a material cause of evil. We must always interpret God’s acts in accordance with His spiritual, timeless, immutable nature. Augustine helpfully argues that God does not create evil, but He does order it.⁵ Further, we can affirm that what Satan and the world may intend for evil against us, God can bend towards our good.⁶ God never wounds us needlessly.

Nevertheless, there is an unyielding admission of God’s sovereignty throughout the book, and it’s intended emphasis is to drive home its main ethical argument: Fear God and keep his commandments, (Eccl 12:13). In other words: you are not God.

“I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him,” (Eccl 3:14).

Life, without God, doesn’t work

The Preacher’s quest to find “gain” apart from God in the first two chapters demonstrates the futility of life under the sun. No one had more money, more sex, more intellect, more power, more prestige than Solomon. And yet, at the height of his success, vanity still found him out. “Then I considered all that my hands had done…and there was nothing to be gained under the sun,” (Eccl 2:11).

This was the painful lesson Tolstoy himself learned through his existential collapse and constant struggle with suicide:

When Solomon attempts to live life disconnected from God he finds that he “hated life” and gives his “heart up to despair.” (Eccl 2:17, 20). Life is hard no matter what, whether you fear God or don’t. And people who don’t fear God sometimes wind up on top…for a little while. Yet, the Preacher tells us that their judgment will come (Eccl 8:12-13). But their final judgment leaks back into their current life. Those who ignore God live like fools and so destroy their life through their arrogance, their words, their anger, and their lust (Eccl 7-10).

A life lived in fear of God, keeping His commandments, on the other hand, will make you wise—will quite literally make you a full human being (Ecc 12:13).

1. The Hebrew word hebel (הֶבֶל) concretely refers to breath, wind, smoke, or vapor. Conceptually, it can be applied to situations that are are baffling or enigmatic (picture yourself trying to physically grab a puff of smoke; you can’t get a handle on it). Substantively, it can be applied to something that is insubstantial or weightless (think of how wind/breath is essentially no-thing). Or, temporally, it can refer to something that is transient or brief (picture how quickly a puff of smoke dissipates). Like most words, there are a range of meanings and the context it is used in is determinative.

2. Eccl 2:24-26; 3:11-13; 3:22; 5:18-20; 8:15; 9:7-10; 11:7-10

3. “Yet he did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.” - Acts 14:17

4. For example, Deut 32:39; Job 2:9; Isa 30:16; Amos 3:6; Hos 6:1; 2 Cor 12:7

5. This is a very helpful summary of this: https://www.wyattgraham.com/i/151950487/doctrine-of-god-and-evil

6. Rom 8:28