Life Under The Sun

The Book Of Ecclesiastes

Peter Howe. Creation Magazine. October 2024

Preamble: You may recall that we foreshadowed an Easter Special Edition of T&S earlier this year and sought articles for inclusion. In anticipation, we approached Creation Ministries International for permission to include this article which I had found to be of particular value and interest. This was granted – one might say – with enthusiasm. Unfortunately, no other articles were forthcoming so Special Edition has been put on the back burner for the time being. We have instead included it here in TSR as a divider between Prof. Runia’s series on “Sunday Observance and Sunday Labour” and Rev J.W. Deenick’s reply, “Confusion Around The Lord’s Day” which will start next week.
Why Ecclesiastes? It, like many other books, particularly in the O.T., eg. most of the Pentateuch, Lamentations, the Minor Prophets and others are seldom, if ever, preached from the pulpits of our churches. The reason for this may well be Paul’s words in 1 Cor. 2:2 –
“For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” This seems to be the focus of much, if not most preaching today. Many would argue this is as it should be. But is this really all that is needed? Paul was speaking specifically to the Corinthians. This was not always his main focus in his other letters.

Life Under The Sun

Of all the books in the Old Testament, one of the most mysterious and least understood must surely be Ecclesiastes. To the Christian reader, many of its thoughts and reflections seem negative and depressing. This impression is immediately created by the opening statement: Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher … . All is vanity (1:2). This kind of sentiment is repeated in different ways throughout the book. One could easily conclude that the Preacher thinks of life as a sick joke, with himself and the rest of humankind as the punchline.

Why is it in the Bible?

No other book speaks in quite the same tone. The Preacher knows that God is the One to whom we are accountable (3:17; 11:9), but he is in no hurry to explore or develop that point. He puts himself—and his readers—in the shoes of the secularist, one who gives little thought to God. The Preacher wants us to look closely at the visible world and the answers it seems to give before he will do more than drop hints of where he is taking us.
The first of these hints comes, however, in the phrase, under the sun (Ecc 1:3), which is something of a keynote to the book. The Preacher’s focus is on the world we can observe. He intends our observation point to be at ground level. His approach will be to demolish, one by one, false hopes and expectations before at last pointing to God as the true goal of life’s pursuit.
By the end of the book, it will be clear that the Preacher is a person of faith. But in the meantime, every path will be relentlessly explored until it is seen to lead nowhere but down a cul de sac (e.g., Ecc 1:12–2:26). If every earthly pleasure or pursuit has been tried and found wanting (Ecc 2:10–11), that is exactly the conclusion the Preacher wants us to draw. Yes, this life does have its pleasures and satisfactions, and we should thank God for them (Ecc 2:24–25; 5:18–19; 8:15). But in the final chapters, the Preacher will point to the ultimate answer once we have learned that nothing under the sun can completely and permanently satisfy. That, I suggest, is why this book is in the Bible.
In chapter 3, verse 11, the Preacher drops another hint of where he is going. He writes: “He [God] has made everything beautiful in its time.” This is an indirect reference to Genesis 1:31: “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.”
The Preacher continues, saying God “has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” Here is the implicit recognition that we have been created in God’s image (Genesis 1:27), with the capacity to relate to Him at a personal level. But from our creaturely position “under the sun”, without biblical insight, much of this life can look like the wrong side of a tapestry. A thread here, a knot there, and a long strand somewhere else. An untidy chaotic mess, with no apparent rhyme or reason. We never have the satisfaction of fully understanding what God is doing (see also Ecc 8:16–17).

We need God’s revelation

This is the Preacher’s whole point: we cannot plumb the mystery of life on our own. We have arrived in the middle of life’s drama, not knowing the plot. Without the backdrop revealed to us in the early chapters in Genesis, the truth about our beginnings, and why the world is now broken, will remain a mystery to us. The book of Ecclesiastes will end with the call to acknowledge the limits of our perspective and our understanding, and to accept our status as creatures under the dominion of our Creator (Ecc 12:1 ff).
Throughout the book, the Preacher continues his demolition of false hope and self-sufficiency. He notes the harshness of life (Ecc 3:16; 4:1) and the breakdown of law and order (Ecc 8:11) as part of the evidence of humankind’s bias toward evil. His observations are summed up in chapter 7, verse 29: “See, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.” This is another indirect reference to Genesis, this time to Adam and Eve, created originally “upright” before their disobedience in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:1–6).
In seeking to be “like God, knowing good and evil”, they chose to deny their creaturely status by reaching for more than God had granted them. Ever since, mankind has had a propensity to evil, and the originally perfect world has become harsh and chaotic. G.S. Hendry comments:
The eyes of Ecclesiastes are fully open to the vanity and the corruption to which the creation is subject (Romans 8:20 ff), and the whole book has been aptly described as an exposition of the curse of the Fall (Genesis 3:17–19).¹
By the end of chapter 10, the Preacher’s work of demolition is complete; the site has been cleared. Chapters 11 and 12 point us to the end of the matter (12:13). These two chapters fall into three sections which can be summed up in three crisp commands:²

1. Be bold! (Ecc 11:1–6)

We are here warned against being overly cautious: “He who observes the wind will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap” (v. 4). Few great enterprises have waited for ideal conditions; no more should we. “Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days” (v. 1). There is an element of risk in any enterprise, says the Preacher, but it is better to launch out and fail than to keep our resources to ourselves.

2. Be joyful! (Ecc 11:7–10)

Verse 7 captures the bliss of being alive, but this is balanced by the knowledge that life’s pleasures will give way to “the days of darkness” (v. 8). We are warned against letting life’s gifts beguile us into living for them alone. Verse 9 puts us on the right path: “Rejoice, O young man, in your youth … Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes. But know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment.” The prospect of divine praise or blame makes every detail of life significant. To know this is to be reminded that we reap what we plant.

3. Be godly! (Ecc 12:1–8, 13–14)

The final chapter speaks of honouring God with our lives while we have the ability to do so, before our strength fades and our bodies return to the dust. To “remember … [our] Creator” (v. 1) is to drop all pretence of self-sufficiency and to commit ourselves to Him. Verses 2–7 use rich imagery to remind us that death is inevitable.
In verse 2, the chill of winter is in the air as the rains persist, and the clouds turn daylight into gloom. In the verses which follow, the various members and faculties of the body are pictured as a household that has suffered the ravages of time. The scene in these verses brings home to us the fading of physical and mental powers that will always accompany advancing age. One by one, old friends disappear, familiar customs change, and hopes long held must be laid aside.
One’s youth, then, is the best time to face this stark reality:

“Remember … your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years draw near when you will say, ‘I have no pleasure in them’” (v. 1).

When this world has given us its finest things, there is still a hunger in us that only God Himself can satisfy.
The Preacher has brought us at last to “the end of the matter” (Ecc 12:13). Here finally is the goal for which we were made: the eternal God toward whom the eternity in our hearts (Ecc 3:11) was meant to lead us. When this world has given us its finest things, there is still a hunger in us that only God Himself can satisfy. These immortal souls of ours cannot live on the wretched husks of a purely materialistic philosophy. Sooner or later a famine sets in. That immaterial part of us that we call the soul or the spirit can never quite delude itself that the atmosphere of a secular society is its native air. We were made for eternity, and nothing “under the sun” can fully or permanently satisfy.
Centuries after this book was written, One greater than the Preacher said to a lonely Samaritan woman standing beside a well:

“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:13–14).

References and Notes

1. Hendry, G.S., ‘Ecclesiastes’ in Guthrie, D., Motyer, J.A., Stibbs, A.M., and Wiseman, D.J. (Eds.) The New Bible Commentary revised, London, IVP, p. 570, 1970.
2. These three headings are found in Kidner, D., A time to mourn and a time to dance, Leicester, IVP, p. 96. 1976.

Printed with permission. https://creation.com/en/articles/ecclesiastes-life-under-the-sun

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