Thoughts on the Book of Ecclesiastes
Part 3
John G. Reisinger
In our last article, we defined some philosophical terms that are currently prevalent in our society, especially as used by the news media. It is important to understand these terms on three counts: 1) They will continue to be part of our cultural vocabulary. 2) They will enable us to understand the Seeker’s anguish in his dismal failure of not “living life successfully.” 3) They help us to see why our society is going down the same road with the same disastrous result. An under the sun philosophy must and will lead to the secular humanistic philosophy of existentialism that rules our society today. The under the sun philosophy expressed by the Seeker in 1:2 inevitably leads to the sad lament of 1:3.
In verses 8-11 of chapter one, the Seeker finds more evidence for his thesis that all of life is vain and without meaning. There is an incurable sense of futility and restlessness in the human heart, simply because nothing apart from God himself can give real and permanent satisfaction. Augustine was right when he said that man was made by and for God and restless he will be until he rests in God. Life seems useless and without any real or ultimate meaning, simply because God designed it that way. Nothing at all finally satisfies, because God has deliberately made himself indispensable.
All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow. (Eccl. 1:8-11, NIV)
In verse 8, the Seeker states that it is not possible to describe fully the restlessness and meaninglessness he experienced. He gives two reasons for man’s inability to find meaning and fulfillment. First, our human desires are never fully satisfied, and second (v. 9), the more and wider our experiences, the more we realize there is nothing new or lasting. It is the same old thing with a different label, packaged in a different box. We always want more and we want to it be the latest and the best, but the more we get, the more dissatisfied we become. “The eye is never satisfied” because God established it that way. Modern man may think himself superior to his predecessors, but like the ancient Seeker, he is never satisfied. The more truly ‘modern’ man becomes, the more dissatisfied and restless he will be. On the one hand, it seems that there is so much to see and experience; on the other hand, the more we actually do see and experience, the more keenly we realize there is “nothing new under the sun” after all. Ours is an age controlled by the advertising experts. Their appealing promotions are designed to make sure we want the best and the latest of everything. Too often, our latest purchase is outdated before we get home with it.
All our acquisitions and experiences are ultimately useless and without any real meaning. Nothing is worthwhile, simply because nothing at all finally or fully satisfies. This is true on both the personal and the philosophic level. Verse 8 describes humanity’s never-ending search for that special something that will lead to true contentment. Our experience is that one bubble after another bursts. With all our genius and effort, we cannot know fully and finally one single thing.
In verse eight, the Seeker again emphasizes the total dissatisfaction of life under the sun. We never quench the insatiable desire for more of the latest and the best. The Seeker mentions two areas where this constant disappointment is manifest. First, “the eye is never satisfied.” In his day, Qoheleth devoted himself to study and to acquisition of wealth. He observed all the things that were done under the sun, and concluded that all of them were meaningless. In our day, we do not have to go far to see our hearts’ delights. Madison Avenue constantly bombards our eyes with advertising designed to make us feel we simply must have the latest product, and easy credit removes the obstacles that would prevent us from acquiring them.
In 1985, I bought my first computer. The computer and printer cost $3,500. I could store nearly one-hundred pages of print, or 512 K, on one floppy diskette! Five-hundred twelve K is half a megabyte of space. I had to take out one diskette and put in another and wait for it to load, but that was a small inconvenience in exchange for being able to store all that material on one 5 ¼ inch diskette.
Very shortly thereafter, the industry developed the first computer hard drive. It held ten megabytes of information; over two-thousand pages of typed material. Best of all, I did not have to change any floppy diskettes. We thought we were in a writer’s heaven. Then, the forty-megabyte hard drive came along with a “stacker program” that could double the memory. Several months later, I bought an eighty-meg hard drive that could be stacked into one-hundred sixty Megs. It was fantastic! The salesperson tried to talk me into a brand new two-hundred fifty-meg hard drive that could store an eight-thousand-volume library, and I laughed and said, “Who would ever need that kind of memory?” A year later, I bought a four-hundred twenty-meg hard drive and the next year, I got a hard drive with one-million Megs. I think they call that a gigabit. I cannot even keep up with the terminology.
The standard hard drive on the most inexpensive computer today is a million times more powerful than the one I bought in 1986. I paid $3,500 for a machine in 1986, and today I can get one a million times more powerful for less than $1,000. My wife refuses to allow me even to look at a computer magazine, let alone visit Circuit City or Staples. I really think I simply must have one of those new flat screens. Wow! It does not matter how many upgrades I buy, or how much new equipment I purchase, there will always be something newer and better tomorrow. The eye never has enough of seeing.
The Seeker then mentions the second area, “the ear [is never satisfied] with hearing.” Camera buffs and pure-sound buffs amaze me with their passion for the latest piece of equipment. Just when I began to learn how to program a VHS player, the CD industry came out with pure digital sound equipment that made my equipment ancient. I am told my VHS will soon be as obsolete as the old eight track cassettes. This passion is not limited to just equipment. I know people who own a thousand CDs and still buy new ones every week. They cannot possibly listen to more than one or two percent of all they already have. Please do not misunderstand the point. In no sense is the Seeker condemning new things, including the very latest thing; rather he is showing how shallow and insecure life is when we live only for those things.
In verses 9-11, the Seeker shows not only that man is never satisfied, but also that he has a short memory. He revels in the good old days that were, as I remember, not all that good. I remember the days before we had an inside toilet. We went about a hundred feet back of the house to a little wooden shed called the outhouse. Sometimes we had to shovel a foot of snow away before we could open the door. We sat on a very cold wooden board with a hole cut in it. The only toilet paper available was a Sears and Roebuck Catalogue. So much for the good old days! My mother used to say, “I would love to go back to the good old days, as long as I could take the refrigerator, the air conditioner, and the hot shower with me.”
The Seeker’s conclusions are set in a different era than the one in which we live. The ingenuity of man has produced many modern inventions, but people, dreams, hopes, sins, and conquests, the things that make up real life, remain the same under every era. As someone has said, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Some people mock the Bible by asking how a book written by men who lived in times and cultures so far removed from our own can have any relevance for us today. We will ignore the obvious twenty-first century arrogance in the question and reply accordingly.
What has really changed since Bible times? Back then, a husband and a wife had a fight at breakfast. The husband stomped out of the tent and pulled the tent flap shut so hard he made a twenty-four inch tear in it. He jumped on his camel and kicked it so hard that he broke four of the camel’s ribs, and rode off in a cloud of dust. That was way back then in the dark ages before we had advanced into a modern educated and cultured society. But what has really changed? Today husbands and wives fight at breakfast over the same issues they fought over then. Husbands still stomp out of the house, slam a $400 storm door, and break the glass. They jump in a car with a four-hundred fifty-horsepower engine, floor the gas pedal, and speed off in cloud of smoke, leaving ten dollars worth of rubber on the driveway. Like the Virginia Slims ad used to say, “You’ve come a long way baby.” What has really changed that could give modern man a basis for boasting? How is the twenty-first century world fundamentally different or better than the ancient world?
Pleasure-seeking man’s short-term memory is deliberate. No matter how disillusioned he is with his latest toy, he will still go after the next one with a zeal and confidence that has no basis in reality. He never really admits that all is vanity, and therefore, he keeps going in the same meaningless circles. There really is nothing new. This reality kills twenty-first century man’s egotism. If he is elated at breakfast with his latest acquisition, he is deflated by lunch when he learns something new and better has come along. When the Seeker writes that there is nothing new, he does not mean that cave dwellers had computers and aboriginals had automobiles. There are many new particulars, but there is a sense in which the things that make up life, the essentials, never change. Inventions may become obsolete while still on the drawing board, but man’s sinful nature and attitudes have not changed at all.
Many of our amazing technological discoveries were already operating in nature. We merely copied what we observed. We learned a lot from the bees, even though we still do not know how they can fly. I understand it is aerodynamically impossible for a bee to fly. Happily, the bee does not know that.
Style and fashion change like the weather. It is amusing to see young girls wear clothing and shoes that are almost identical to those worn by their grandmothers. Old ways as well as old sins take on new names with new definitions. Living together without marriage used to be called shacking up, and was considered a sin, but it now is called a committed relationship without any real legal commitment. Our culture insists that we no longer view homosexuality as sinful, but as a different and socially acceptable alternative lifestyle or sexual orientation.
The Seeker is not downgrading either inventions or knowledge. He is showing how futile and empty life is without a knowledge of the Creator. At best, under the sun, we get a glimpse of how, but never why.
Verse 11 is the bitterest pill of all for the arrogant unbeliever.
There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after. (KJV)
Rich and powerful men do everything possible to make themselves memorable. They give huge sums of money to have buildings built with the understanding that the building bears their name. They write autobiographies or pay others to write about them. However, the past is soon forgotten, along with those who made the past all that it was. The cry is, “What have you done for me today?” Remember that today is all there is in the secular existential society. The Apostle Peter, quoting the prophet Isaiah, echoes the same truth as the Seeker.
For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: But the word of the Lord endureth forever. (1 Peter 1:24-25a, KJV)
Yesterday I was a little boy, today I am a great grandfather, and tomorrow I will be gone and no one will know I was here. We are indeed like the flower. A seed is planted, a stem comes up, a flower appears, and the next day it withers and blows away. That is not true with the Word of God. That word is eternal and everything that it begets, including believers, is eternal. It is true that both our deeds and we will soon be forgotten. We will all share the fate of Joseph in Egypt. “A generation arose that knew not Joseph,” and so a generation will arise that does not know us. Our peers will die; those who knew us personally will pass, and soon there will be no one who remembers us—even if our names are on the front of a fifty-million dollar college gymnasium. I wonder how many readers of this article know their grandfather’s middle name or their grandmother’s maiden name.
We need to look at the context of the Old Testament verses that Peter quoted. Some critics believe that two different writers wrote the Book of Isaiah. “First” Isaiah wrote chapters 1–39 and “second” Isaiah wrote chapters 40–66. One of the primary reasons for this idea is the radical difference in the content in these two sections. Isaiah 1–39 is concerned with judgment, and Isaiah 40–66 addresses the hope of the coming Messiah, embodied in the gospel promises. Isaiah assures the people that even though all men will forget, the everlasting God will never forget his promises. His Word is unchanging and his promises are secure.
The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the LORD bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand forever. (Isa. 40:6-8, KJV)
The key word in the Isaiah passage above is the word but in verse 8. Everything in creation will wither and fade, BUT the Word of the Creator of all creation will abide forever. There is someone over the sun! Notice the radical difference between the hope expressed by Isaiah and the utter despair of the Seeker in Ecclesiastes. Isaiah is talking about a genuine hope that leads to godly comfort and security.
Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the LORD’s hand double for all her sins. The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it. (Isa. 40:1-5, KJV)
The message of Isaiah 40:6-8 does not seem to speak comfort; instead, it is dismal and negative. It is not “I’m okay and you’re okay.” It is not “think positively, everything is lovely.” Things are indeed bad, BUT a great change is coming! There is still hope!
Isaiah 40:9-11 expands on the comfort spoken to Jerusalem; it introduces the gospel as the means of her comfort.
O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God! Behold, the LORD GOD will come with strong hand, and his arm shall rule for him: behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him. He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young. (KJV)
That message of comfort is rooted in God’s unchanging covenant character. Those words spring from God’s unchanging purpose of grace for his elect people. Isaiah’s message of comfort is Paul’s word of encouragement in Romans 8:28: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” Do you acknowledge the truth of Paul’s words, or is Isaiah 40:27 your complaint? “Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the LORD, and my judgment is passed over from my God?” Do you feel that nobody really loves you; that no one really understands or cares; that life is both futile and a heavy burden? Read the first chapter of Isaiah!
Compare the writer of Ecclesiastes, “Who can show me anything certain and real? Who can direct me to a sure foundation where I can rest and feel secure?” with Isaiah 40:28, “Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? There is no searching of his understanding,” An over the sun philosophy recognizes that there is a God and he is not subject to the same limitations as humanity. He is the Creator that establishes the meaning of life; his self-revelation is the only means by which we can understand that meaning. Compare Ecclesiastes 2:24-26 with Isaiah 40:29-31.
(Eccl. 2:24-26) There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labor. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God. For who can eat, or who else can hasten hereunto, more than I? For God giveth to a man that is good in his sight wisdom, and knowledge, and joy: but to the sinner he giveth travail, to gather and to heap up, that he may give to him that is good before God. This also is vanity and vexation of spirit.
(Isa. 40:29-31) He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.
The under the sun philosophy of the Seeker simply is not enough. Man’s soul is vexed by what he observes and by what he concludes from those observations. There must be more, and thank God, there is more! True, creation has a clear witness (Romans 1:18-20), but it is a limited witness. It is more than sufficient to condemn all men, but not enough to save one man. Our spiritual blindness makes even this witness to be unclear. We need God himself to speak from his throne in the heavens and reveal himself to us.
Because of our self-will and sin, all we can see is a closed system. Under the sun is the sum total of the knowledge and experience of the unbeliever. A comparison of Jude19 and John 14:16 and17 will help clarify this point.
These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit. (Jude 19, KJV)
The word sensual here does not mean sexually immoral. Jude contrasts the spiritual and the physical realm; living by sight and living by faith in God’s revelation. The sensual person bases his life and worldview on what his senses of touch, taste, smell, sight, etc. can teach him. He cannot discern spiritual things, simply because he is spiritually dead (1 Cor. 2:14). The lost man lives completely in the flesh, that is, in the realm characterized by physical sensation alone. The Christian, because he is born of the Spirit, lives in the spiritual realm as well as the physical realm. The lost man lives in a closed universe. He can only experience what is under the sun. He can discern nothing by faith; neither can he understand God’s self-revelation. A person without the Spirit is locked into what his senses can teach him. Jude 19 is the best verse in all of Scripture to describe a lost person. He is “sensual, having not the Spirit.” The sum total of all that he can know or experience is that which he can filter through his senses. Unless he can smell it, touch it, taste it, hear it, see it, etc., it is beyond his capacity to comprehend. Since God is not known through our physical faculties, but only through the Holy Spirit’s opening of our minds and hearts and his gift of faith, the lost man is locked into his self-imposed closed universe. He can live only on an under the sun level. John elaborates on this truth.
And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. (John 14:16-17, KJV)
The lost man cannot know or receive the things imparted by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, simply because he cannot see the Holy Spirit. The under the sun view of life cannot know anything about a spiritual world. The physical senses cannot discover and experience spiritual life. Until the Holy Spirit gives spiritual life, the world of reality is a closed system, with no hope of help. Only special revelation plus the quickening of the Holy Spirit can take us past the sun. Explaining spiritual truth and reality to a man who is lost is like trying to explain what a rainbow looks like to a man who is blind. It is beyond his capacity to experience the reality that you see and are trying to explain.
Everything under the sun, including man, has been subjected, by God’s sovereign decree, to vanity and futility by God (Romans 8:20-21). Sovereign grace is humanity’s only hope.
The major theme in Ecclesiastes 1:3-11 is the utter futility of life when it is lived without meaning and purpose. Our greatest joys will become our deepest sorrows and our greatest exploits will turn to meaningless victories. We put our very best into attaining what appears to be a worthwhile goal, only to see its value vanish the moment we reach out to pick it up.
The story is told of a king who desired to reward a faithful servant who had been responsible for saving his life. The king told the man, “I will establish a starting point and will give you as much land as you are able to cover in eight hours. The only condition is that you must return to the exact point from which you started before eight hours are over.”
The man was given two months to train and to explore the land. He carefully mapped out the places where he must turn in order to cover the most ground and to be able to return to the starting point in eight hours. He developed a clear, exact plan. The night before he was to run, he made sure he got a good night’s sleep. He ate a good breakfast the morning of his run. The king placed a large rock at the beginning point and the man put his hand on the rock. When the clock began to strike twelve, the man took off. He knew exactly where to turn and he paced himself with confidence. The news quickly spread that the man was covering an amazing amount of ground. After seven hours and forty-five minutes, the crowd saw the man re-approaching the starting point. He was panting for breath and wiping the sweat from his face with his arm. The clock began to strike eight and with a last lunge, the man reached out and touched the stone just in time. The crown roared and the king smiled with pleasure.
As the crowd cheered, “He made it! He made it!” the man’s wife went over to the stone, only to discover her husband, clutching the stone, was dead from exhaustion. People shook their heads and said, “The poor joker, all his valiant efforts were for nothing!”
That is the story of Ecclesiastes; this is the story of our lives!
Before we start to follow the Seeker on his futile search, let me say just a bit more about getting a feel for this book. We may compare the Old Testament Scriptures to an opera that utilizes a wide range of notes of music and movements of the body. It appeals to all of our senses in order to arouse us to a response. God designed Scripture to elicit worship with emotions as well as intellect. It appeals to the whole person. We have the impassioned preaching of prophets; the cool reflective logic and wisdom of clear thinkers; poetry; law; psalms; story-telling; and visions almost beyond description. There is no book quite like Ecclesiastes in the rest of Scripture. At its core, however, we find the same message as the rest of Scripture, even though at times that message is a bit hard to find. The Seeker’s final word confirms his agreement with the rest of God’s Word.
Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man’s all. For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil. (Eccl. 12:13, 14, NKJV)
Proverbs 9:10 is surely a page out of the same book of truth.
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
To fear God means to take God seriously, and to be wise means to live life skillfully. In other words, taking God seriously is the only way to live successfully in the eyes of God. You cannot be successful at something you really do not take seriously. This message resonates throughout the entire Bible. This fear of God enables one to live and die successfully, regardless of the circumstances of life. A believer takes God seriously, but a lost man ignores God. The believer sees past time and under the sun to eternity with God over the sun, but the unbeliever experiences only what he can touch, taste, smell and see under the sun. It is impossible to live successfully as God meant life to be lived without taking God and his revealed truth seriously. In the end, the unbeliever’s greatest successes will be his greatest defeats, because God defines success as moral uprightness or rectitude.
Given his basic presupposition, the Seeker’s conclusions are no surprise. If one looks for truth while consciously rejecting God’s revelation of himself, then the sad lament of 1:3 is inevitable. What is surprising, however, is the way the Seeker arrives at his conclusion of “Meaningless, meaningless, all is meaningless,” as well as the way he states that dismal conclusion. He does not speak as a stern prophet with a sword, demanding law and order; he is not a monk suggesting withdrawal to a mountain monastery and renunciation of good food, refreshing drink, fun and laughter. He does not try to enlist recruits in a revolutionary cause, nor does he use a politician’s approach of promising everything to everybody. Most of all, he is not a dreamer who speaks and writes of an unreal world of fantasy. He is a realist who accurately pictures life under the sun, lived without any reference to God.
We have established the Seeker’s presuppositions and his conclusions. Let us look next at how he organizes and presents his information. Here is a short outline of the early chapters of Ecclesiastes.
Chapter 1:1-3. Introduction of author, theme, and tenor: We see the man, Solomon, son of David (v.1), his message, “Meaningless, meaningless, all is meaningless” (v.2), and his mood of despair (v.3).
Chapter 1:4-7. Argument from nature: The author describes the ever constant and but never-deviating monotony of nature. He compares its permanence to human transience.
Chapter 1:8-11. Argument from human endeavor: There is no true and lasting meaning or satisfaction in anything.
Chapter 1:12-18. Argument from human wisdom: Wisdom is both a joke and a burden. The best that wisdom can do is to clarify how bad things really are without being able to change anything. There is a sense in which ignorance is bliss.
Chapter 2:1-3. Argument from human pleasure: Mirth and laughter are hollow and empty, and only highlight the misery of life.
Chapter 2:4-11. Argument from human wealth and work: The attainment of even the greatest of accomplishments offers no true enjoyment. The result rarely compares to the initial dream, and the process of working toward the goal drains the finished product of all its satisfaction.
Chapter 2:12-23. Argument from certainty of death: Ultimately, the wisest man seems to be no better off than the fool is. Both die and leave everything behind. There are no U-Hauls behind the hearse as it heads for the graveyard.
Are you ready to quit? Are you about to ask, “John, why did you ever pick such a depressing book, especially in view of the particular society in which we live? Why don’t you write about Romans 8 and give some hope instead of nothing but despair?” If we truly understand both Ecclesiastes and Romans 8, we will know they both have the same basic message. They merely arrived at the same place by different routes. Ecclesiastes 2:24-26 is, in one sense, the heart of the book. Consider these verses.
Nothing is better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that his soul should enjoy good in his labor. This also, I saw, was from the hand of God. For who can eat, or who can have enjoyment, more than I? For God gives wisdom and knowledge and joy to a man who is good in His sight; but to the sinner He gives the work of gathering and collecting, that he may give to him who is good before God. This also is vanity and grasping for the wind. (Eccl. 2:24-26, NKJV)
On the surface, verse 24 sounds like the motto of the sixties, “Strike up the band, bury every inhibition and let it all hang out.” It echoes the philosophy of hedonism, “Let us eat, drink and be merry. Let us enjoy ourselves and forget everything and everybody and ‘do our own thing.’” However, we must look at the rest of the verse. The author’s conclusion pushes him to acknowledge the existence of God. “This also, I saw, was from the hand of God.” Solomon’s attitude at this point reflects a deistic viewpoint. He acknowledges that there is a God who has established a certain order in the affairs of men. Yet, that God is not connected intimately to his creatures; he is not involved personally in the lives of those he has created. This kind of a God does not inspire meaning in life any more than no God at all does. Up to this point, the Seeker has been looking at all of life as man-centered. It is life under the sun without thought of any special revelation from God. Remember that under the sun sees everything in the light of what man wants, what he thinks he needs, how he feels, how he reacts to reality. Everything so far (apart from a brief mention of God in 1:13) has started and ended with man. Now, the Seeker recognizes that God orders life’s experiences, but, apart from revelation, God seems distant and uncaring. What is the sure result of the world and life-views of both atheism and deism? A life without God personally connected to humanity at its center and its foundation cannot possibly have true and lasting meaning, but only will lead to ultimate despair.
The child of God has a God-centered world and life-view. Everything begins with God and reflects his glory. Everything, including the bumps in the road and the tough hills to climb, are seen as a gift from God. One of the gifts from God includes the ability to see and believe that all things come from God! In the age of the New Covenant, a God-centered worldview will focus on Jesus Christ as God’s ultimate and final revelation of himself to humanity. Knowing and loving God as he has revealed himself in Christ provides meaning and fulfillment in all of life.
No child of God, no matter how difficult his life may be, will ever stand on the shores of eternity, look back over his life, and lament with the Seeker, “Meaningless, meaningless, all is meaninglessness.”
We must remember that everything said by the Seeker is the product of his under the sun philosophy. He will make statements as they appear to his human wisdom, but in reality are not true. The situation is similar to the words of Job’s friends. The Holy Spirit has faithfully recorded exactly what they said, but some of what they said was false; it did not reflect reality. So too, the Book of Ecclesiastes records the conclusions of the Seeker’s reasoning, although his reasoning often is wrong in the light of God’s revealed Word. The Seeker, in several places, insists that men are no different from animals because both die. Likewise, a wise man is no better off than a fool, since both die. Ecclesiastes contains many statements that appear to solely human reasoning to be true, but are seen as false by any student of Scripture. We must remember that what is true of the man in 1 Corinthians 2:14 (a man without the Spirit of God is unable to discern the things that come from the Spirit of God) is true of the Seeker.
What view of God do we find in Ecclesiastes? Even though the Seeker writes out of his under the sun philosophy, he is a man who once knew and walked with God, and who later was restored to fellowship with God. This fact is never very far from the surface.
The first mention of God is in 1:13 and sets an undertone for the book.
And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith. (KJV)
God is sovereign in all the affairs of man! The only word for God used in Ecclesiastes is Elohim; used thirty times. Elohim is a name that denotes the absolute sovereignty of God. The writer never uses the word Yahweh, translated LORD, which is the covenant name for God.
In spite of his under the sun philosophy, the Seeker has three distinct views of God that come through in the book. God is (1) the Creator, (2) the Lawgiver, and (3) the Judge. He designs, controls, and judges all of life. If life were a play, God would be the writer, the director, the producer and the stage manager. If life were a ballgame, God would own the ballpark, make the rules for the game, and enforce them as the umpire. He is the sovereign Creator who controls everything. He chooses the times, the seasons, the places, and the events; he ordains them all and his absolute sovereignty brings each one to pass in his time, and each thing is beautiful in his time (Eccl. 3:11). The under the sun philosophy finds this perplexing and frustrating, because God is, in this philosophy, impersonal and unknowable.
For those with an over the sun philosophy, the message is, “Relax!” “Trust him!” Just say “Great” and keep on going. The sovereign creator, lawgiver and judge is the father who loves his children and works all things together for their good. He is not distant and uncaring, but loves his people so much that he came to earth to become one of them. He identifies with their limitations and temptations, and is not ashamed to call them brothers. Such a sovereign and loving God is one whom we can trust and love in return.
To be continued.