Ecclesiastes 1:1-18

For Reading and Meditation:     Ecclesiastes 1:12-18

We said yesterday that one of the reasons why Solomon uses so many vivid illustrations is to break through our defensive attempts to avoid reality. It was T. S. Eliot who said that "humankind cannot bear very much reality." Psychologists warn that we should be careful about stripping away people's defenses, as...

For Reading and Meditation:     Ecclesiastes 1:8-11

It is surprising how many Christians have never read the Book of Ecclesiastes. One woman told me that Ecclesiastes was the one book in the Bible she could not read. "I am put off by all that pessimism and gloom," she explained. There is, however, a purpose behind this pessimism and gloom. Dr. Cynddylan Jones, a...

For Reading and Meditation:     Ecclesiastes 1:3-7

Francis Schaeffer wrote that there are times "when a negative message is needed before anything positive can begin." That sums up the Book of Ecclesiastes. It seeks first to silence us with the utter futility of life before turning our gaze to the one and only reality - God. In the passage before us today the author...

For Reading and Meditation:     Ecclesiastes 1:1-2

We begin now a study of what has been described as "the most dangerous book in the Bible" - Ecclesiastes. Why dangerous? Because in it one comes face to face with the utter futility of trying to find happiness and meaning in the things of time. And that discovery, for some people, could lead to opting out of life...

Everything sublunary is on the move, time knows nothing of rest. The solid earth is a rolling ball, and the great sun himself a star obediently fulfilling its course around some greater luminary. Tides move the sea, winds stir the airy ocean, friction wears the rock: change and death rule everywhere. The sea is not a miser's storehouse for a wealth of waters, for as by one force the waters flow into it, by another they are lifted from it. Men are born but to die: everything is hurry, worry,...

We finish our years like a sigh. The days of our lives are seventy years; and if by reason of strength they are eighty years, yet their boast is only labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable. § Here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come. § I am the Lord, I do not change. § Our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus...

Eve … bore Cain, and said, “I have acquired a man from the Lord.” “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens.” … The Lord scattered them. § Lot chose for himself all the plain of Jordan … It was well watered everywhere … like the garden of the Lord … But the men of Sodom were exceedingly wicked and sinful against the Lord.I set my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is grasping for the wind. For in much...