Ecclesiastes Lesson 1

6-1-97

This morning we are going to go to a portion of Scripture not well known and it’s a book that probably one in a hundred Christians have even read, but it’s a book that falls into a classification of Scripture. And to get over there I want to first turn to Luke 24:44 so that we can observe how our Lord divided the Scriptures. We must never forget that our Lord was a Jew, that the Bible is a Jewish book, that Israel was the custodian nation in history and still is, to bring into existence, to preserve and to eventually bring in world peace. Israel is the hub of God’s program in history. And in Luke 24 when Jesus referred to the Old Testament He divided it into these three parts and these are traditional Jewish division of the canon, the Old Testament canon. “He said to them, ‘These My words which I spoke unto you while I was still with you, that all things might be fulfilled, which were written in the Law of Moses” category one, “and the Prophets,” category two, “and in the Psalms concerning Me.’” Now by the word “Psalms” there He was referring to the third section of the Hebrew Bible.

As a confirmation that He studied His Hebrew Bible very well, if you turn to Luke 11:51, when He is talking to the disciples there He refers to two events. In verse 50 it says, “the blood of all the prophets, shed since the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation,” this is the generation who had seen, who had heard the Messiah, who had had very clear revelation and turned their backs and as a result God was going to discipline in a very, very severe way that generation. They lived through one of the most horrible assaults on Jerusalem that history has ever seen, where women got to the point where they were so hungry that they would eat their own babies. All of that is prophesied in the Torah, that said since you people are the custodian nation, you have been given grace upon grace, then I am going to require certain things of you and if you don’t play the game then you’re going to learn the hard way, but you will learn one way or the other. So Jesus is warning them in verse 50 that this is coming.

And then He says, verse 51, “From the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zechariah, which has perished between the altar and the temple. Verily I say unto you, It shall be required of this generation.” Some have wondered about verse 51 because why pick those two events, the blood of Abel, the murder in Genesis, and the blood of Zechariah which is recorded in 2 Chronicles. That’s not the beginning and the end of our Bible, but yes it is in the Hebrew Bible. This Bible starts with the book of Genesis and ends with the book of 2 Chronicles; all the other books are re-arranged. And it’s the third section of this book that we’re looking at this morning and for the next four Sundays. It has to do with wisdom. So we can summarize the first three parts of the Old Testament as The Law, the Prophets and some say The Psalms or we can categorize it more broadly by saying The Writings.

What is true of this third section is that it has to do with wisdom. And the Hebrew word for “wisdom” is chokmah, it is the word that means, the definition of it is skill in living this mortal life. There are a lot of things in those books, in fact, if you were to read the Hebrew Scriptures you would be shocked to realize that one of the books in the Old Testament in The Writings section is Daniel; you normally think of him as a prophet but actually he’s in the book of wisdom. So this Hebrew word, chokmah, is the theme of all of those books. Daniel is in The Writings section because Daniel, we forget, was the foreign minister of two countries, Iraq and Iran. He was a man who was in the privy councils of power during his career, he was intimate with public policy, he was also a very great believer, he knew a lot of the prophetic teachings of the Scriptures, God blessed him, God revealed more prophecy to him but it was always in the context of his role, from his perspective of talking and communicating to the political decision makers of his time. And therefore since that role is a chokmah role, or an advisory or counselor role, even the book of Daniel is in that section of the Bible.

Now what is true of chokmah literature? Think about. Psalms, that’s songs, then there are books like Daniel, there’s 2 Chronicles there. What unites all of these? The following are traits of all of these books. One of them is that they tend to emphasize the responsibility of the individual over against the community. In other words, in the Mosaic Law there’s a lot of talk about worship together, the feasts, everybody comes together for worship, but in the wisdom literature it deals with details of life. How do I make a decision about how I run my home, how do I budget, how do I raise my children, how do I decide on my career, what do I do with problems of death, how do I deal with pain. These are the subjects of the chokmah literature; it’s all emphasizing the individual.

A second characteristic of the chokmah literature is that instead of dwelling on the advanced truths, like we see in Ephesians, Colossians, about life in Christ, the chokmah literature emphasizes truths that are universal to all men, that is for believer and unbeliever alike, and therefore the literature of this whole chokmah section really is set up to deal with the missionary point of contact. These pieces of literature are great for communicating to unbelievers because unbelievers know these truths.

A third characteristic is that instead of specific religious activities, the chokmah literature emphasizes artistic expression. And this is why a lot of the music, for example, all of the music in the Scripture is clustered in the chokmah section. But most of all, from our point of view as Christians one of Jesus’ titles that is often overlooked, it’s in Col. 2 and 1 Cor. 1, is that He is the “wisdom of God,” the wisdom of God! God the Son is the wisdom of God. What does that mean? It means that God the Son is co-equal with God the Father as the Creator of the universe. In fact, Jesus Christ created the universe and as such His mind contains the plan of every molecule, every atom, every electron, every proton. So Jesus Christ is the wisdom of God.

Now in this chokmah we are going to concentrate on one book, which is Ecclesiastes. Frenchmen can’t talk without their hands and I can’t talk without an overhead projector. Ecclesiastes is part of the Proverb/Psalms section. What Ecclesiastes gives us is a tremendous critique of this world. It is written by one of the all-time geniuses of history. And it is a book that prepares the human heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. It prepares the human heart for living the Christian life. See, the problem with a lot of us is that we become Christians out of a half-Christian, half-pagan environment and we pick up the buzz words and we roll on and then some crisis hits and we wonder why we flake out. The problem is because if we had come to Christ in sort of an agonizing way by being dumped on by having seen that this life has nothing to offer, then when we come to Christ we would appreciate it and fully realize that our ultimate authority is the Word of God, that is sufficient unto every good work. But many of us don’t come to Christ through that approach, so we tend to come with a mixed set in our heart.

The book of Ecclesiastes is going to take all those loose pieces in our heart and is going to rearrange them; it is going to be a masterful critique of the world system. So when John the Apostle, for example, says “love not the world, for the world passes away,” the book of Ecclesiastes is going to give us a very detailed exposition of how this world passes away and in the course of this exposition Ecclesiastes will give you a lot of conversation pieces, little fishhooks that you can perhaps use in your own personal conversation with other.

So we are going to come to the book itself and we want to get some background on it, and one of the first things we want to notice about the book of Ecclesiastes is that it has a number of very serious problems. Down through history it was this book that barely made the Old Testament canon. There were a lot of people in the Church who said this thing can’t possibly be inspired Scripture; this is so pessimistic, so bleak, so seemingly devoid of anything spiritual that the Holy Spirit cannot be the author of this text. So the book barely made the canon by a hair. Then to add to its misery the book was horribly translated. There were a group of Jewish people who tried to popularize the Hebrew Bible before the time of Jesus Christ, you’ve probably seen this in literature, the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek and the Latin symbol for seventy appears for this, for the Septuagint translation. And the Septuagint translated a number of terms, out of the Hebrew Bible of course because it was Greek, Greek was the popular language, everybody wanted a copy, sort of The Living Bible of its time.

And then for some reason people did revisions and they started revising pieces of this thing. And somebody took it upon themselves, it’s not known exactly who, perhaps it’s Rabbi Aquiba in about 70 AD, somebody took it upon themselves to retranslate the book of Ecclesiastes. And when they did they followed a mechanical doctrine, much like the NIV does for the same book.

The key word in this book is “vanity,” obviously, and what they did is they chose to translate that Hebrew word with one Greek word, which we’ll study as we go on, and this seriously misled the Church in understanding the book; it led Protestants in the form of Martin Luther to say that this book was not written by Solomon, this book was something that impersonated Solomon, it was anti-grace, it was anti-truth and all the rest of it. So it has not been warmly received in the Church.

So therefore I will teach it this Sunday and the next four.

It has a number of problems and let’s look at these problems. The first problem is the problem of authorship. I’m sorry we have to spend some time in the background on this; some of you wonder why we can’t get into the text right away, here’s why: the author gives you the background from the text on how it’s written, what kind of a viewpoint comes out of this text and unfortunately we have some of our Christian young people who go to universities and get taught in some class on religious literature about why John couldn’t possibly have written John, Solomon couldn’t possibly have written Ecclesiastes, Moses couldn’t have written… you know, there are millions of people in the world but we know absolutely that John could not have written John. Then they come back and their faith is shaken. Now it takes a couple of PhD degrees to figure out why John couldn’t possibly have written John, or Solomon couldn’t have written this book, so let’s respond to that criticism.

What you will be told, why Solomon is not the author of this text, is you’ll see that in the first verses of the book he’s not identified as Solomon when he is in Proverbs. Proverbs starts out these are the words of Solomon, etc. Why is it that Solomon’s name doesn’t occur here? A second thing is in 1:12 it says that “I, the Preacher, was king,” well, whenever was there a time when Solomon wasn’t king, so see, that means that Solomon couldn’t have written it because this guy was a king and he got kicked out somehow, and so on. So that’s an evidence against it. A third evidence against it is that it shows oppression, political intrigue, it shows all kinds of injustice and upheaval, and they say this couldn’t have been typical of the time of Solomon. And another characteristic is, and this is a decider for most people, is that the language of this book is Aramaic, apparently, and very late. It has expressions typical of late Jewish literature, not early Jewish literature.

So how do we answer that? Just because you believe in the Bible does not mean you turn your brains off and there are answers. The reasons our answers aren’t often accepted is not because they’re not answers, it’s because our answers proceed from the assumption that the Word of God is what it says it is. And we work out from there; we choose deliberately to put full trust and truth in the Word of God instead of putting full trust and truth in the mind of man. And that strikes a lot of people as offensive.

Here’s the response on why this book is Solomonic. The first thing is in verse 1 and verse 12 the author is clearly a son of David, he clearly reigns in Jerusalem, and he clearly reigns over Israel. There could not have been another king that did all those three things, who was a son of David, of the house of David or the dynasty of David, who ruled Israel, who was known in the later time as the Northern Kingdom, who had a completely different dynasty, and did it from Jerusalem. So right away there’s a problem here; if you deny the Solomonic authorship you have a lot of explaining to do with verse 1 and 12.

Now for some back ground on Solomon the man. This is important material because it’s going to fill your mind’s eye. I want you to dream a little bit as you think about this and create in your mind what sort of a man wrote this text. God the Holy Spirit worked in and through Solomon. Let’s go back to the Old Testament further and pick up a little bit about the history of this amazing individual. 1 Kings 3:5 it says, “In Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon in a dream by night; and God said, Ask what I shall give thee.” And verse 9, Solomon’s answer, a famous vision and a famous answer, “Give, therefore, thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad. For who is able to judge this thy great people? [10] And the speech pleased the LORD, that Solomon had asked this thing. [11] And God said to him, Behold, Because you have asked this thing, and have not asked for thyself long life; neither has asked for riches, you haven’t asked for the life of your enemies, but have asked for thyself understanding to discern judgment, [12] Behold, I have done,” now we want to watch the details of this verse, this verse is making a claim that people don’t take seriously. It’s been my contention the older I get and the more I read about Scripture and the critical attacks against it the more I wonder whether the critics and even some Christians read the text seriously. You know, the “days” in Genesis 1 can be anything but “day.” Now we come here in 1 Kings and this can be anything but Solomon was a minor king. Now how do you reconcile that with verse 12?

Look carefully at what the text in verse 12 is saying, “I have done according to thy words: lo, I have given thee a wise and understanding heart,” now look at this clause, “so that there was none like you before you, neither after you shall any arise like unto you.” Now without having a PhD what can we infer from this verse? That Solomon is claimed by the text, now we can argue with the text and say the text is wrong, but the text says that Solomon was the wisest man who ever lived. That’s what the text says. We can do with it as we please but we can’t twist what the text says. So that’s the background of the author of this book, the wisest man who has ever lived. Probably in history the only man that comes close to Solomon and his wide range of interest is Leonardo DaVinci, the so-called Renaissance Man. Those of you who study art know about Leonardo and his sketch books but even you engineers understand that Leonardo had first conceived a helicopter, Leonardo had drawn pictures of the airplane, he had thought about these things, he was a great genius and he was a genius in many, many different areas of his life. He truly became the Renaissance Man. The problem Leonardo had was because he didn’t take the Bible seriously he never had a place to rest, he had no resting place in all his diversity. Solomon did, however, and we’ll see that he never left that as he writes.

Let’s look at some more things about Solomon in 1 Kings 4; this is a hasty review of this man’s background so we can understand how he can say what he says and where’s he coming from. In verse 29, “And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding, exceeding much, the largeness of heart, even as the sand is upon the seashore.” Now can you get an idiom in literature that’s any more powerful than that? [30] “And Solomon’s wisdom,” now we want to look at what happened. The question to ask the text in verses 30-34 is in your mind’s eye, right now, visualize a map of the world, visualize a map of that central area of the world, and as you read through verse 30-34, mentally color a section on the map that’s under the influence of Solomon.

Verse 30, “And Solomon’s wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country, and all the wisdom of Egypt.” What were the two greatest civilizations that you always study about? The Mesopotamian plain with the Babylonians and the western part, Egypt. So what this is saying is the two greatest civilizations, their wisest people could not exceed the wisdom of Solomon. Verse 31, “For he was wiser than all men,” and then they name the people who are the contemporaries of Solomon who were in great reputation at the time, “Ethan, the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Calcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol; and his fame was in all nations round about.”

Verse 32 begins to list Solomon’s accomplishments, “And he spoke three thousand proverbs,” three thousand, we don’t have all of those, there are not three thousand proverbs in the book of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes; “and his songs were a thousand and five.” Those are his, he made those, he created those. It shows you and idea of the genius of this man. Now verses 33-34, an astounding list of the areas where this man excelled. He not only got grade A+ in one subject, he got grade A+ in every subject. Not only that, but he majored in every subject, and in effect had an advanced degree in every subject.

In verse 33, “And he spoke of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springs out of the wall,” so he was a botanist, he knew all about horticulture; “he spoke also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fish.” So he was a zoologist and he studied that. And I will note something in verse 33 and verse 32, notice the verb, that will come back to haunt us a little bit later in the study, notice what he’s doing, the office that he’s executing all of his wisdom, “he spoke,” who did he speak to? That’s a question we’ll come back to. Verse 33, “He spoke of the trees,” half way through “he spoke of the beasts,” who did he speak to? Verse 34, “And there came from all the people to hear the wisdom of Solomon,” now notice who came to hear him, “from all the kings of the earth, which had heard of his wisdom.”

So this man had a very cosmopolitan life. He was in the center of the culture of his time, and not only influenced Israel but he influenced people round about him, we’ll see more of that. Further background on this genius, in 1 Kings 5 we’ll look at some of the things he did and who he had business dealings with; he also was an excellent business man. Verse 1, “Hiram, king of Tyre, sent his servants unto Solomon; for he had heard that they had anointed him king in the room of his father; for Hiram was ever a lover of David.” So here’s one of David’s old cronies, David knew him years ago, probably witnessed to him about the gospel as known in the Old Testament, might have even led Hiram to the Lord. Hiram, however, was a king of a very important group of people. It says he was the “king of Tyre,” and so this is important for the spread of Solomonic wisdom throughout the world. In the eastern end of the Mediterranean there was a very famous colony, a very famous land, the land of Phoenicia.

The Phoenicians were the greatest navigators of all time, probably since the sons of Noah. The Phoenicians went out and they mapped what looks to be like the eastern coast or North America. These people, long before Columbus, had ventured across the oceans of the earth and had mapped them very carefully which means they had solved problems of finding latitude and longitude at sea. Latitude is easy, you can solve it by the angle of the sun, longitude is very difficult because you cannot measure longitude except by clocks so the question is how did the Phoenicians measure longitude, what sort of clock system did they use? So these people went all out, not only throughout the Mediterranean but they went out through the Strait of Gibraltar, so the Lord only knows where the influence of Solomon was. We do know that there are Semitic words spread throughout the earth and we know that this happened for some reason early on in history.

It says here in verse 2 that “Solomon sent to Hiram,” cashing in on the relationship his father had, and he said “You know that David, my father, could not build an house unto the name of the LORD his God because of the wars which were about him on every side, unto the LORD put them under the soles of his feet. [4] But now the LORD my God has given me rest on every side,” that’s his name by the way, it’s sort of a pun on his name, Shalom in Hebrew means rest, and his name is Shalom. Verse 5, “And, behold, I purpose to build an house unto the name of the LORD my God, as the LORD spoke unto David, my father,” and now verse 6 he wants to do a deal, so he enters into an international agreement whereby he will pay Hiram of Tyre a certain amount if Hiram will dig out, cut down the long tall cedars of Lebanon, move them to the Phoenician coast and ship them down where he can get these in Israel.

How’s he going to do that? He’s going to do it with a navy and this leads us to a second great accomplishment here in this text; turn to 1 Kings 9:26 we’ll see another of Solomon’s great contributions. This man not only built one navy, he built two navies. So he started a merchant marines and he built a naval force for Israel. “And King Solomon made a navy of ships in Ezion-geber,” I visited Ezion-geber twenty years ago and then the Israeli navy to this day has its patrol boats docked in the same place where Solomon built the first Jewish navy. The light attack boats that the Israeli’s use, a group of them are stationed there at Ezion-geber, so at “Ezion-geber, which is beside Eloth, on the shore of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom. [27] And Hiram sent in the navy,” notice what’s going on in verse 27, these are details again to get the flavor of this man and the book that we’re about to study. “Hiram sent in the navy his servants,” now who are the servants that become the personnel on these ships, because here’s the Red Sea, and Ezion-geber is down here at the peak of the Red Sea, and Solomon wants a navy there. By the way, you wonder why does Solomon want a navy at the north end of the Red Sea, the answer is very simple, because the Suez Canal isn’t dug yet and that’s the only way he can get the resources out of Africa. So this navy is going to go to Africa and it’s going to go and mine the wealth of Africa, that’s the story, the famous film many years ago, King Solomon’s Mines.

In 1 Kings 9:27, “And Hiram sent in the navy his servants,” now here’s the important point, “shipmen that had knowledge of the sea,” see that little clause, that’s how Solomon built his navy; he was a very shrewd individual, he knew that the Jewish guys didn’t know navigation, couldn’t get latitude and longitude, that was beyond his technical capabilities so he hired these men for his merchant marines from Hiram. [28] “And they came to Ophir,” down in the African area, “and fetched from there gold, four hundred and twenty talents, and brought it to King Solomon.” And he begins to acquire tremendous resources which he will use to finance his economy.

In 1 Kings 10:22 he builds a second navy, “For the king had at sea a navy of Tarshish with the navy of Hiram;” Tarshish is up here, so he has navy number two up along the Mediterranean coast and navy number one down in the Red Sea, so now he has free commerce, he can acquire minerals, he can do trade, he can do business in both areas of the world. He can spread into the eastern hemisphere out through the outlet of the Red Sea and he can go westward to the North American continent if he wanted to through the Mediterranean and the Strait of Gibraltar. So here’s a man who is very, very astute, and in verse 22 it says “For the king had at sea a navy of Tarshish, with the navy of Hiram; once in three years came the navy of Tarshish, bringing gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks.” So this was a group that he sent on two year, three year naval expeditions, and then they would come back with all the booty for Solomon.

Let’s see what else we can know about Solomon. [Tape turns] [He had a] spiritual problem in his life toward the end, 1 Kings 11:1, Solomon followed in the grand tradition of Adam, “King Solomon loved many strange women; in addition to the daughter of Pharaoh,” etc. and it says that the women took away his heart. That’s not to excuse, as in Adam’s case with Eve, it’s not to excuse the man for abdication of responsibility. But it goes on to describe in verse 3 all the people he had… you say well how on earth could this man marry so many people. Verse 3, “he had seven hundred wives,” I don’t know about you but one is a major challenge, one keeps you humble, what do seven hundred of them do? In fact, you’d probably have to have a Rolodex to remember their names. Then on top of that he had “three hundred concubines,” no wonder his wives turned away his heart. He had two navies and a thousand women.

Now the background of this man would lead you to suspect there’s a reason here. We just went through all of his international dealings. Why did he acquire all these women? The answer was in the ancient world treaties were sealed usually with king’s daughters, and they were basically held in marital hostage and if I wanted to make a deal, King so and so wanted to make a deal with King A, King A and King B, what they would do to make sure that each one would adhere to the deal, they wouldn’t sign a contract because each could break the contract, so here’s King A and here’s King B and King A would say to King B okay, I want to make a deal with you and here’s how we’re going to lock it up; I’m going to take one of my daughters and you can have her for your harem, and King B said okay, I’ll ship one of my daughters over to you and put her in your harem. Now what did that do? That meant that if they ever went to war they had a hostage on each side, so basically it was sort of the same thing we used to have in the cold war with Strategic Air Command, I can nuke you, you can nuke me, and it’s a mutually assured destruction. And that was how they maintained peace. So he acquired all these women, they were all foreign women, that’s the point, and he had been told in the Mosaic Law don’t enter into league with foreigners, people who have no idea of the culture, who know not the Lord, who have no background and here you are importing these people and you’re assuming the obligation, the responsibility to handle these women, to provide for them, and they are of an utterly different faith.

In verse 7 you see what happened, it wasn’t long before one of the daughters said, “Oh Solomon, won’t you please build me a temple because you have a temple to your God” and they put the heat on and s in verse 7 here’s what happened, “Solomon built an altar place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, in the hill that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech, the abomination of the children of Ammon,” so it looked like the United Nations; on one block he had the temple to Jehovah, on the next block he had a temple for Chemosh, on the next block he had a temple to you know what, Baal and everything else and you’d just go down and take your pick. It was sort of a religious cafeteria.

In verse 8 he went further, he “did for all his strange wives, and he burned incense and sacrificed unto their gods,” in other words, he participated in their religious services, he abdicated a Biblical faith for compromise. As a result of that in verse 9, “And the LORD was angry with Solomon, [because his heart was turned from the LORD God of Israel, who had appeared unto him twice,]” and the Lord lowers the boom on Solomon and Solomon gets the shock of his life, and it’s that shock that prepares us for the book of Ecclesiastes. God says to him, you basically have done this thing, I have appeared to you twice, and in verse 11, “Wherefore, the LORD said unto Solomon, Forasmuch as this is done by thee, and thou hast not kept my covenant and My statutes, which I have commanded thee, I will surely rend the kingdom from you, and I will give it to thy servant. [12] Nevertheless, in your days, I will not do it, for David thy father’s sake; but I will rend it out of the hand of your son.”

So Solomon has adequate background. We’ve gone through his background, he knew all of this word; we submit to you that that’s adequate background to characterize the author of Ecclesiastes.

Now we come to the problem of teaching, I won’t spend much time there because the problem of teaching you’ll see its answers; it comes out as we go on. Basically the teaching is always looked upon, even by evangelicals… here’s a quote from Ken Taylor who started The Living Bible: “Ecclesiastes is a dirge of despair, the thoughts of a man who knew little of God.” And that’s very typical and it’s that teaching that turns people off. But we’ll show you that a lot of that teaching comes about through a very bad translation.

The third thing about this background of the book is the effect of Israel’s wisdom on the world. We actually have a document from Egypt that shows all the world, like it comes out of the book of Proverbs 22; I’m reading here just briefly to show you the evidence that Solomon’s influence is documented outside the Scripture. I’m reading from Dr. James Pritchard’s book, Ancient Near Eastern Text, which is a standard reference book, he taught many years at Princeton University. Here is the instruction of Amenemope, it’s a famous and very unique piece of Egyptian wisdom literature and Dr. Pritchard says that this is unique, it is not typical Egyptian; there is a different theme of humility in this literature and they can’t explain it; the Egyptologists cannot explain this document, but listen to the document. I’ll just read one or two verses out of it: “Give thy ears, hear what is said, give thy heart to understand them, to put them in my heart is worthwhile but damaging to them that neglects them; let them rest in the cask of thy belly,” that reference if you want to compare it is Proverbs 22:17-22. Proverbs 22:17-22 found in an Egyptian piece of wisdom; how did it get there? The date of this? Right after the reign of Solomon. So obviously and clearly Solomon not only wrote the book but he had a profound influence on the world.

Now let’s go to Ecclesiastes and look at verse 1 and its title. The title there is called “Preacher,” but actually that word is not “preacher.” In the Hebrew that book is known as q^ehillah, and qahal, these three consonants are the verb stem in Hebrew, that means to assemble together. Remember I just said in the background of Solomon he spoke, he spoke his proverbs, he spoke his songs, he spoke about botany, he spoke about zoology. To whom did he speak? He had a wisdom office as well as a kingly office and so he is saying here, he takes the title in verse 1, not of Solomon, because by this time in his life the sentence of doom has been pronounced upon him; like Moses he will never in his lifetime be able to enjoy the blessings, but his people would enjoy, because it’s been taken away from him through disobedience. God said to Moses because you hit the rock twice, you didn’t obey me; you’re not going to go into the land. I love you, you are secure with me, but because of what you did there are certain consequences. And because of what Solomon did with his many women and his intrigues and his political dealings, there were consequences in his life. And so he had to live with those consequences.

So now in verse 1 he adopts the title “I am the one who assembles,” Mr. Assembler, which is a more modest title than Solomon the king, he is the one who brings people together to seek wisdom. In Ecclesiastes 12 at the end of the book you see that this is also answered there in verse 9. It says “because the Preacher was wise, he still taught the people knowledge; yea, he gave good heed, and sought out, and set in order many proverbs.” So he spent the last part of his life in sort of a melancholy way, meditating upon the discipline that had occurred to him and the disaster that he had made of his life and basically of the country. And he came back to teach these wisdom principles, this is how you can avoid doing what I did. That’s basically the book of Ecclesiastes.

So we come in verse 2 and this is the topic of the sentence and it’s here where we want to correct a translation error. If you err here at this point you cannot interpret this book correctly. This is the key word; those of you in Bible Study Fellowship and Precepts, you know the value of key words and the key word in this book is this hevel, I gave you the Hebrew consonants in the text and there was a translation divergence and here’s the key that happened. Hevel was a Hebrew word that was translated into Greek by whoever it was that amended the Septuagint and they translated it with this thing, mataiotes; that word in the Greek has a nasty connotation; that’s the word you see Paul using in Ephesians 4, vanity in the sense of not only despair but hopelessness, carnality, and it definitely has a moral overtone, heavy moral overtone to it.

But thankfully the correct translation of this word was preserved inside largely Jewish circles and later translators in the Christian church argued and said that is not the way to translate hevel, it should be translated by this word in the Greek, atmos, and you can guess what that word means because that Greek word looks like our English word, atmosphere or air. Can you think of a New Testament passage that talks about life is a vapor that passes away? Lo and behold that’s the concept in James. And what is James but a wisdom epistle in the New Testament. So that’s the flavor of this word. We could, if we had time this morning, but we don’t have time so I’ll just give you some references for those of you who are students and want to check this out. Here are the verses where hevel occurs in the Old Testament, where you can see clearly it does not mean something evil; it means simply air, chaos, and insubstantiality: Psalm 39:5-6 [“Behold, thou hast made my days as an handbreadth, and mine age is as nothing before thee. Verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity. Selah [6] Surely every man walks in a vain show; surely they are disquieted in vain; he heaps up riches, and knows not who shall gather them”.]; Psalm 78:33 [“Therefore, their days did he consume in vanity, and their years in trouble.”]; most important reference, Psalm 144:4 [“Man is like to vanity; his days are like a shadow that passes away.” Isaiah 57:13, [“When thou criest, let thy companies deliver thee; but the wind shall carry them all away, vanity shall take them; but he that puts his trust in Me shall possess the land, and shall inherit My holy mountain.”]

So the core meaning of this word, it’s a picture of breath on a cold morning that dissipates; that’s the primary physical picture, nothing evil in and of itself. The derived meaning are the following, and these meanings all occur in the book of Ecclesiastes. Transitory, it means things that don’t last; temporary, insubstantial. Another meaning attached to this word is something that’s ineffective; it doesn’t have any lasting results.

We could summarize, then, the thought of verse 2 with the following translation: “Oh, how utterly transitory are all things.” Oh, how utterly transitory are all things! Now think of that in the light of the background we just got on Solomon. Here you are, you’ve had the great kingdom of the world, kings have flocked to you from all over the world. You have been given by God this tremendous gift, you’ve built two navies, you’ve encountered thousands of treaties, you’ve made business dealings, you have more gold than we used to have in Fort Knox. You have acquired massive wealth, you have built a kingdom, and suddenly God comes to you and says this kingdom is going to be taken away from you. It’s all over Solomon, the game is up; I told you how I wanted you to live your life, I told you that I was the most important thing in your life, and you made something else to replace Me so I’m going to take My blessings away, you’ve had it.

That’s the background now and this is the melancholic thing that happens and verses 3-11 are sort of a summary poem which we’ll quickly go over. The key phrase in this poem is the title of it. Verse 3, “What profit has a man of all his labor which he takes under the sun?” That’s the question of the book. The answer of course is verse 2, because all is transitory. Given the fact that everything is transitory and contingent, what then profit do I have of every area of my labor that I do in this mortal life under the sun; that’s the question! It’s this question that must penetrate to our hearts because when we are tempted by the evil one to place emphasis on things, people and everything else that we should be placing on Him, what we’re doing, in effect, the moment that happens, it happens in a split second, it happens so fast sometimes we don’t even perceive it, but that thought comes into our head in a split second of time and we’re deflected. And what’s happened is we’ve bought into the fact that the world is not transient, that the world is ultimately important.

Now for a background for our series these five Sundays I asked a Christian teacher in the congregation to do a student survey. This was done in a local county school and the respondents here are 103 from ages 14-18. And our Christian teacher asked them several questions. One of these questions was: what are the three most important things in the world to you? Now don’t get me wrong, some of these we’d put down, they’re not wrong in themselves unless they become, some of them are funny, some are humorous, but let me just read you some. This is ages 14-18 in our own county here. What are the three most important things to you in the world? Family and friends. Why? They’ll always be there for you. They’ll always be there for you? Do many of you have the experience of them not being there for you? Money, pay for stuff. Cars, go to see my friends and spend my money. Here’s another one: my family, I love my family, my horse, he’s the reason I work. My health, I need to be healthy to be me. What do people do as they reach old age and their health begins to go, how would they go with this one. I need my health to be me! Really? Here’s three choice ones. Athlete: soccer; why? Because it’s fun. Lacrosse; why? Because it’s fun. Ocean City, because I go there every weekend of the summer. Here’s another one, this is a 15 year old. What are the three most important things to you? Sports, I plan to use it someday to make money. My dirt bike, it gives me something to do. Friends and family, they give me someone to rely on and someone to talk to. But what happens when they’re not there is the more powerful question the book of Ecclesiastes asks.

We could go on and belabor the point, here’s another one: my guitar, I like playing it, one of the three most important things in my life they rate as number one, number two in this particular student’s life, his guitar was first his parents were second, they take care of me, and number three, not in necessary order but it was money, I’d be nothing without it. Nothing without his money! Well, a lot of lessons to learn there.

Let’s look quickly at verses 4-7 and see what Solomon begins to chip away at that viewpoint. Again, those of you who are used to studying the Bible, quickly we’re going to go through this. Verses 4, 5, 6 and 7, what do you observe about the nouns in each one of these verses, something peculiar that unifies all four of these verses, in contrast to verses 8, 9, 10 and 11. There’s a shift between the first four verses and the second four verses. Notice in verse 4 one of the nouns is “the earth abides forever.” Verse 5, “the sun rises…and hastens to its place where it rose.” Verse 6, the wind is the subject. Verse 7, rivers or water is the subject. What do you notice about land, sun, wind and water in the ancient world? What was considered the primary elements of nature? All four of these.

So what Solomon is saying, the basic elemental forces of nature, and now he begins to describe them and it’s interesting the construction he uses in the original language. In verse 4, verse 5 the last half, verse 6 and the nouns in verse 7 are all Hebrew participles. And Hebrew participles are not point action but they are durative meaning the emphasis is on the action keeping on keeping on; it goes on and on and on so by making every one of these verbs a participle he’s emphasizing what about natural things? They’re there, they’re there, they’re there, they’re there! They go on and on and what does he say about man in verse 4? He says while this is all going on in our background a “generation is passing away, a generation comes.” How often have we seen this, the very same day somebody has died, a loved one in a family has died and the very same day there’s been a new baby born; one generation comes another generation goes, and so it is.

So the words of verses 4, 5, 6 and 7 poignantly show that nature cannot be the source of comfort; nature is only there as a long backdrop. Nature is there forever compared to man’s life; we are cut down to size in verse 54, 5, 6 and 7. We are but a temporary fleecing vapor seen in the background of nature, and nature is just silent, it just sits there and goes. It’s very interesting, in verse 5 where you read the word, in my translation it says the sun “hastens to its place where it rose,” the verb there isn’t hasten but the verb is an animal that is tired and panting. See, the picture is that the universe goes on and on and on and on, and the universe itself is tiring. Today we’d say this is the second law of thermodynamics working.

Verses 8-11, that’s the background, the setting we’re in in this creation and Solomon says you are crazy if you think you’re going to put your hope, your trust in something man is going to do. Man is fleeting, the universe outlasts him. Verse 8, he says “All things are full of labor,” they’re tired, including the universe itself he’s saying. He says that “man cannot utter it.” Verse 8 has a very important verb, we’ll come back to this again and again but we’ll just mention it quickly, “man cannot utter it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.” In other words, you and I can never comprehend this thing that we live in, this universe; no matter how much we study it, and he studied it. He was a man who majored in ever subject; this is the man speaking who was the wisest man who ever lived and he said I cannot comprehend life, it is beyond me. And so he is saying, as you will see later on, he is saying it is foolish, it is stupid for a person to try to build their life on their own intellect and out of their own resources, out of their own bootstrap operation; it doesn’t work he’s telling us. And he’s going to tell us in a hundred different ways that this is a failed approach.

In verses 9, 10 and 11 he says there’s nothing ever new out there, there’s no progress, man really doesn’t invent anything; he only discovers things that are already there. You can run down a quick list, think of the lens in the camera, we think we invented the lens in the camera. Oh yeah, what is your eyeball? Your eyeball is a sensitive light meter, it is an automatic focusing lens, it is full color, instantaneous reproduction, and it automatically stores its images, without a hard disc, without a jiffy drive, and it’s instantaneous recall. Moreover the eye does something your camera never can do; it cleans itself. A pump, we think about that, oh, we invented the pump. Really? What is our heart? It pumps 100,000 times a day, 70 years without one shutdown for maintenance. Has anybody you know built a pump that maintains itself, takes itself apart, replaces pieces in it? If you have found somebody run to the patent office immediately and find out what his stock is selling for.

Radar, we think we’ve invented radar; for a long time before radar the idea of a transmitter receiver with many decibel differences between them was already done and is done every night by the bat, with sonar, same principle. We think we invented air conditioning, every beehive is maintained at a constant 94 degrees Fahrenheit temperature because it’s structured that way; bees can’t live without that hive being within a certain temperature frame and they’ve devised systems of air conditioning and heating long before we did. What about a computer, certainly we’ve invented those. Have we? Our brains contain more nerve lines than all the phone lines in the world put together. This little contraption that we have, this miniaturized thing that God has made, links 200,000 temperature cells to 500,000 pressure centers and three to four million pain sensing cells and instantly integrates all the data constantly reporting it to our conscience. We think we’ve invented something—Solomon says no.

Finally he says in verses 10-11 the only time, he says, that you can say something is new is because you forgot. That’s what verse 11 is. So what profit is there under the sun in all of man’s work? We want to explore that deeply for the following Sundays because, people, this is where Satan tempts us, to think that there’s some area of profit in our lives if we’ll do it his way, if we will do it in conjunction with his plan for the cosmos. And this is disarming, this is antitoxin, this is an antitoxin that spiritually can prevent us from slipping into that mode of thinking.

Let’s bow for prayer. We want to ask where are we today, where are you? Have you stored down the things in your heart this morning? What’s down deepest? What’s the most important thing in your life right now? What is ultimately underneath everything, so if everything goes what do you have at the bottom? Is it your health? You know we’re all dying, we have since Adam. Is it our family? Is it your family? They’re dying too and who knows what your children will do after you. Is it your job? It can be done away with tomorrow with a pink slip. Is it the fun times; they don’t last. When you think of those [can’t understand word], whether it’s dirt bikes, guitars or CD’s, these are important but we have to go beyond them. The book of Ecclesiastes reminds us to go above the sun. Father, we thank You for Solomon’s work and for the Holy Spirit in his life, that in spite of sin, in spite of disaster, in spite of all those things, something good came out of Solomon; it was the most piercing, penetrating, comprehensive look at the entire world that man has ever heard. We thank You for including this little book in the canon of Scripture and may it teach our hearts to respect You and to have the remembrance that the fear of the Lord is the only beginning of wisdom. In Christ’s name, Amen.