1 These are the words of the Teacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem:

2 “Futility of futilities,”
says the Teacher,
“futility of futilities!
Everything is futile!”

3 What does a man gain from all his labor,
at which he toils under the sun?

REFLECTIONS

Written by Stephen Shead

This month we are going to read the puzzling, thoughtful, and sometimes challenging Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes. For today, I want to give a quick introduction to the book and its main theme.

Ecclesiastes is one of the Old Testament wisdom books. Proverbs is the most positive book of Old Testament wisdom – it describes the normal pattern of life in God’s world, where living by “the fear of the Lord” will generally bring positive benefits. But that “normal” pattern often doesn’t match our experience, which is why Job and Ecclesiastes are also in the Bible. They balance the perspective of Proverbs by exploring the dark parts of life that challenge simplistic answers. Job does that by asking: What about when the righteous suffer unjustly – do God’s wisdom and goodness fail? Ecclesiastes does it by considering a different challenge … which we’ll get to on Friday.

The book is mainly a collection of sayings by someone who is simply called “the Teacher.” Who was he? We’ll come back that question on Wednesday – the answer is not quite as simple as it seems.

What is the book about? Verses 2 & 3 tell us the three most important things to understand this book.

First, what is the Teacher’s perspective? He is looking at and thinking about the world “under the sun” (v 3). That is, he is trying to work out if he can find meaning and purpose in life only by observation and making logical deductions. For most of the book, he leaves God out of the equation, and limits himself to what he can see and hear and touch. He’s taking the perspective of a rationalist.

Second, the main topic he explores is “labour” or “toil” (v 3). He’s trying to figure out what we achieve through all our effort and sweat and tears. Do we actually achieve anything permanent and lasting?

That leads to the third thing, which is the conclusion he comes to in the end: “Futility of futilities! Everything is futile!” (v 2). If you leave God out of it and only consider what we can observe in the world, you have to conclude that we achieve absolutely nothing. Zero. Zip. Life is meaningless, and our most grand and solid achievements will ultimately turn out to be as permanent as a puff of wind.

I love the brutal honesty of the Teacher – he’s far more honest than many apparently clever atheists, who somehow convince themselves that even though we’re nothing more than random and meaningless clumps of biomatter (or so they believe), life somehow has meaning and value. As we work through the book, the Teacher is going to unveil the foolishness and emptiness of their philosophy.

Now if you were only to read Ecclesiastes, you’d get very depressed. But the ultimate goal of Ecclesiastes is to drive us to Jesus, the Son of God who gives us a view of life “above the sun.” If you know Jesus, you know God, you can know for sure that life is full of meaning and purpose. Thank God now for the ways in which knowing Jesus gives you a sense of meaning and purpose.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen is our senior minister.