We could almost say that Ecclesiastes is an expository sermon on Matthew 6:19-21. To wit:
“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Matthew 6:19-21 ESV
The book of Ecclesiastes is a book for our time. It provides four major things we need: it gives us the central meaning of life, comfort, inoculation, and warning.
It gives us the truth we need, as Christians, to live in a fallen world by stating the obvious truth we’re trained to suppress – and that is that all men die in this sin-sick world. Nothing is more obvious than death and yet nothing more repressed. The Preacher addresses the proverbial elephant in the room and then reminds us of the context – the biblical worldview – through which we are to observe this fact of facts. The meaning of life is faithfulness to the Lord Jesus Christ. Since we’re His creation and this is His world, to live outside His will is to metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical suicide.
It provides comfort in that we learn, even in our greatest despair, that God is always in charge and this is still His world. It inoculates us from the false expectations of idolatry and humanism and all their false promises. Spurgeon said, “If I know God, and yet live for my own profit, for my own honor, for my own comfort, then I do not glorify God as God.” And “until we get rid of selfishness, we shall never feel constant joy.”
The warning is that Satan is, as our Lord said, the father of lies (John 8:44). The promise of Satan, Rushdoony said, is that every man is his own god, determining good and evil for himself (Genesis 3:5). To exchange the truth about God for a lie is to live in a make-believe world that can only break our hearts. Ecclesiastes warns again and again against the fleshly impulse to chase the shifting winds of false/self worship.
Our age today, despite the abundance of material blessings, the technology, the healthcare, and all that, hasn’t changed man’s fundamental nature (as sinners) nor problem (of sin’s penalty: death). This is the point around which the message of the Preacher coalesces. Far from being a depressing book, it’s a book about depression. Far from being a book that says life is meaninglessness, it tells us what life truly means. So, indeed, when the Preacher says that there’s nothing new under the sun (1:9) he isn’t claiming that iPhones were in the hands of the ancients. What he’s saying, and we need to listen, is that nothing “under the sun” has the power to change man’s fundamental nature or problem.
Except Jesus Christ.
The problem with interpreting any part of the Bible, but especially Ecclesiastes, is that we often conform too much to this world in contradistinction to the clear command of Romans 12:1-2. Ecclesiastes is a Biblical meditation about the meaning and purpose of our lives this side of heaven. It’s the only true source, given to us by the only One who would know, about real life. It’s a book of realism and, therefore, it’s a meditation upon the subject of both happiness and depression. It’s the Lord’s answer to the solemn and deep inquiries of the heart. It’s the realism that’s possible only to the One who knows all things and tells us those special and careful things we need to know. We walk through the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23) – both literally and figuratively and there’s no discharge from it.
“None of us can hold back our spirit from departing. None of us has the power to prevent the day of our death. There is no escaping that obligation, that dark battle. And in the face of death, wickedness will certainly not rescue the wicked.” Ecclesiastes 8:8 NLT
The Divine psychiatrist defines us as truth suppressors who refuse to face reality (Romans 1:18-23). Have we thought seriously and deeply about this? We should. It sets everything aright…it delivers us from those haunting shadows of a hostile world of meaninglessness and confusion, and brings us into that resplendent sunlit place where we say in our soul, because of Christ, that we will fear no evil because He is with us and for us (Psalm 23:4-6).
A carelessness, a vacuous and hackneyed optimism, that says, “it’ll all work out” is not Christianity. It’s not even close. In fact, it’s horribly dangerous. Do we wonder why our kids struggle emotionally? Do we wonder why sleep resists us in the long, grim nights? It’s because those dark imaginings are real! Indeed, they are. And to choose a happy-go-lucky theology is to literally declare war on reality. To be told – that is, commanded – to “test everything” (1 Thessalonians 5:21), to be renewed in our minds and test all things (Romans 12:2), to think deeply about truth (Philippians 4:8), and to “set our minds” on the Lord (Colossians 3:2) – is, in all, a commandment to seriously consider life as it really is.
Ecclesiastes is a wake-up call. It’s God calling us before Him so that we will consider life’s sorrow, and death, and therefore learn to think Biblically about these things. Many Christians are duped, though. The Wormwoods’ out there convince us, obtusely, that the Christian life is like a nice tea party with polite friends where everyone dresses nice, uses their inside voices, and enjoys all the nice things that are so nice about our nice life. And we go along like this, suffering quietly, enduring aloneness and fear and anxiety, because Wormwood (with all due respect to C.S. Lewis) and culture has us thinking that being Christian is being nice. But then we lose our temper with the dog, we say some ugly things in traffic or while doing a project around the house, or we’re tossing in the night as if rolling this way and that will chase away all the disquiet. But this is all the shock that comes from getting punched in the nose by reality.
All that quiet misery builds like water against the dam of our veneer, and sometimes we feel the pressure more than others, and it can be so bad that we almost need to towel off because the water splashes out and into our daily lives. This is the terrible toll of cruising along a freeway of pretense and make-believe. And the Preacher, praise the Lord, seeks to deliver us from all this. He’s not calling a congregation of atheists together. He’s calling you and me…God’s chosen, those He’s redeemed.
A common, but erroneous interpretation of Ecclesiastes is that it’s saying that life without Christ is depressing…all vanity and repetition and all that. But once we come to God, the flawed reasoning goes, we escape that existential dread and dispiritedness. That’s missing the whole thing. Completely. The Preacher, as Luther rendered the name of the book, isn’t saying that at all. In fact, Koheleth (Ko-hay-leth), which is the Hebrew name for the book, is assembling the saints to teach a serious truth that we’re prone to suppress – and that is that we’re living in a fallen world still. It has its sunshine, yes, but it has shadows and long nights too. The Preacher knows nothing of this ludicrous notion that Christian life under the sun, in this present age, is all moonbeams and beaches. He pulls no punches as the saying goes. He treats us like big boys and girls.
Imagine this scene: the Preacher calls us together to deliver the toughest sermon he could ever tell us. He’s not preaching the Gospel, but be sure that it’s assumed at every point – salvation by faith alone. You are God’s people and this is for you and you must hear it. You and I are called to our Father’s knee, to sit, and hear some nice bedtime stories sometimes. But Ecclesiastes isn’t that time. This is no bedtime story. It’s the talk a father has with the child he loves about a world of sorrows and challenges – about the world as it is.
To see it correctly we must know that the Lord so loved His people that He gave His only begotten Son so that whoever believes in Him would be delivered from sin and death. And yet…oh, and yet…we’re like the disciples in the upper room discourse, afraid and unsure. Do you see yourself there? Do you see yourself like Thomas, saying, “Lord, I don’t know what you’re talking about…I don’t know the Way…I don’t understand…and I’m scared. I’m scared of tomorrow. I’m scared of losing something I can’t replace…I don’t even know what it is, Lord…it’s just an apprehension I have, a foreboding. And I’m afraid of death. I’m afraid of failure. And I’m afraid, so very terrified deep in my core, that you’ll change your mind about me.”
Do you see this for yourself? Can you admit it?
Good.
Now we’re being honest and we’re getting rid of this drivel and hooey about real life. Ecclesiastes and the rest of Scripture, for that matter, never fails to take seriously both the reality and consequences of sin. But when we read that Jesus was a man of sorrows we tend to not think enough about this fact.
“He was despised and rejected— a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care. Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins! But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed. All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all.” Isaiah 53:3-6 NLT
Sorrow is part of a fallen world as surely as two plus two is four. Heartbreak, failure, and death are all guaranteed this side of heaven or, as Koheleth puts it, under the sun. Nothing will fully satisfy us until we are fully in the presence of God and sin’s penalty, presence and power have all been abolished. That day is coming. But that day isn’t today, is it? To be told that we rejoice in our sufferings (Romans 5:3) and reminded almost incessantly throughout the Bible to “fear not” is inconsistent with any muddle-headed and heretical prosperity gospel. We are in the ring called life under the sun and we cannot make straight what God has made crooked. All of nature groans in travail due to its bondage to decay. This world, beautiful and wonderful though it is, through which we can see God’s divine nature and eternal power, is also a world of death and sorrow. Eternity is written on our hearts, the Preacher tells us, because we’re not made for death. We’re made for Him and by Him and He’s rescued us from sin and its penalty.
But the thing is, the truth of Genesis 3 is that we still live, move, work, and raise our kids in a world cursed because of sin. Ignoring this fact and its implications is a sure fire way to end up in the deepest despair. To those who are righteous by faith and live in faith (Romans 1:17) we experience the incredible pleasure and privilege of right now being delivered from the penalty and power of sin! Ah, but we haven’t been delivered as of yet from the presence of sin, have we? It’s to this fact that Koheleth speaks. We’re everywhere beset by the presence of sin. And some of us struggle in our walk to break free from its power too, though that victory can and will be ours in Christ. But hard work, boredom, midlife crisis, anxiety, oppression, political turmoil, financial hardship, feelings of uselessness, failures, frustrations, irritations, and a multitude of sin’s other consequences rain down upon us like an incessant drizzle even on an otherwise sunny day. At times the sorrow and presence of sin is like a tempest. Yes. That’s true. But it’s not the last word. For us in Christ, sin is never the last word but that’s not to say that it has no word here at all. We all experience this truth and Koheleth would see to it that we admit this critical fact if for no other reason than for our spiritual health.
The Meaning of Life
The fact that all men die confirms the Bible’s central claim about the world we live in. Omitting the fact of death from our thinking is actually bad for us, so to say, insofar as it causes us to focus entirely upon life under the sun. The very thing that brings life into focus is the fact of Hebrews 9:27 – that is, that all are appointed a time to die, and then there’s judgement. The Preacher, when he doesn’t state it directly, has this truth running in the background throughout the book. It’s in light of this that we live. The knowledge of the end informs and directs the particulars of our every day.
A book of comfort
Leupold says it was written primarily for the godly in Israel and is primarily, first and foremost, a book of comfort. It shows God’s people how to meet their difficult problems. He says, “it’s for this reason that the second half of the book gives counsel and comfort for evil days exclusively.” To miss this central thing is to throw our interpretations to the wind. Ecclesiastes meets the complexities and perplexities of life head-on. It comforts by shattering simplistic interpretations of a world that’s riddled with sin and is, by virtue of being created by the triune God, paradoxical.
Inoculation from false hope
By teaching the utter vanity of all earthly things, the Preacher protects us from false expectations about life. Not only that, but the book provides wonderful comfort in a way we often overlook. The prose is beautiful and true. If you’re prone to fear God in an unhealthy way…terrified that He is angry with you – you, His dear child for whom Christ died, that’s come to Him in faith, come weeping over your sin – please take comfort that He makes sure to tell you these hard things in such a soft way. Our Heavenly Father isn’t like some abusive authority we may have suffered under in our past. He’s perfectly holy, yes…and He hates sin, yes. But we’re holy through faith alone – that faith which is a gift and it’s counted to us as righteousness (Romans 4:3). Therefore, we have peace with God and have access to Him and this is a taste of this glorious access.
By learning the vanity of earthly endeavors and goods we have an inoculation from the emotional ravages of hedonism and Epicureanism. We have in Ecclesiastes an exposition upon Jesus’ admonition about not forfeiting one’s soul for the smoke of passing things.
“And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” Mark 8:34-38 ESV
Leupold says, “…men who know the vanity of all things are well prepared for the trials of depressing times.
Warning
Koheleth also is careful to warn us against being conformed to this world. Note again that this is written for God’s people, so that means that, yes, it’s quite possible for us to be saved and yet to live as paupers of grace. How many times do we see in America’s cities, in a land of mind-boggling wealth, a homeless person picking through trash, wearing rags, shuffling along? It’s hard to look. But this is the spiritual state, that in which the soul resides, invisible to observers, of the Christian who trusts in this world. They are most impoverished of all men because they’re billionaires who live in the squalor of the spiritual streets of vanity and vexation. The Preacher warns us: where our treasure is, there is our heart also (Matthew 6:21).
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