Today, we turn to the Book of Ecclesiastes, which was written by “the Preacher,” who is generally recognized to be King Solomon. If we were to summarize the book in the vernacular of our day it would be, “Life sucks, and then you die.” Solomon tells us of all the different approaches he had taken to discovering the meaning of life “under the sun,” or “under the heavens.” The phrases “under the sun” or “under the heavens” are instructive, because it helps us see Solomon’s frame of reference: the here and now, the physical world and the physical life we live. We do get glimpses that Solomon pictured something more. He talks about eternity being placed in our hearts. While the idea of heaven and eternity weren’t well-developed among most of the Jews in Solomon’s day, Solomon at least hoped in something more than the “vanity” or futility of this life. As we read its 12 chapters over the next four days, let’s not make the mistake of reading into them our post-resurrection of Jesus perspective, but let’s remember many of the principles we find here push us to a deeper gratitude to God for sending Jesus to redeem us from sin and death, to give us meaning and purpose here and now, as well as to live with Him for eternity!
In Ecclesiastes 1:1-11, the preacher tells us all is vanity or futility. He writes of the circular nature of so much in nature. He writes of the futility of many human pursuits, because in the end we end up where we started. He devoted the remainder of the chapter to the vanity of pursuing wisdom. While he had pursued wisdom more diligently than anyone in Israel, he concluded the person with greatest wisdom experiences the most vexation and sorrow. Perhaps, that’s where we get the saying, “Ignorance is bliss,” but Solomon’s consideration of wisdom as vanity, came from his making wisdom the goal or the end of life. Wisdom is always a means to an end, a means to coming to know God, and to serve Him faithfully. James would eventually point out the demons believe or know the truth about God, and shudder, because their lives are not transformed by Jesus or committed to serving him.
As we move to Ecclesiastes 2, Solomon devotes the first eleven verses to the vanity of having fun, accumulating possessions, and pursuing pleasure in life. As we move to verses 12-17 Solomon compares wisdom and folly and tells us while wisdom is better than folly, in the end everyone dies and is forgotten, so once again it is all vanity. In the concluding verses, Solomon considers the vanity of toil. The vanity here is after a lifetime of work, we must leave the return of our labor to someone else. We don’t know whether our heirs will be wise or foolish, so we could work all our lives only to see our legacy wasted. Solomon does conclude there is nothing better in life than to eat and drink and be satisfied with our work. If this life is all there is, then that makes sense. Thank God, this life is not all there is!
Ecclesiastes 3 was made famous by The Byrds, a rockband from the 1960’s although Pete Seeger had “written” the song in the late 1950’s. It included a word-for-word transcription of the first eight verses of Ecclesiastes three. There King Solomon tells us there is a time for everything that happens and a season for every purpose under heaven. This is a powerful principle. Our lives are lived in moments and seasons. How important it is for us to understand which season we are in at the moment, and live accordingly. Solomon drew a different conclusion. While he made this statement: 11He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. Ecclesiastes 3:11 (ESV) Solomon touched on eternity, and that God had put it in our hearts, yet he concluded in the remainder of the chapter no one knows whether human beings go to a different place at death than the animals. He hoped we do, but wasn’t certain. Again, thank God, we know we get to be with God forever, through the salvation purchased for us by Jesus.
As we return to Luke 23, we find that more than a third of the chapter is devoted to Luke telling us neither the Roman Governor Pilate nor King Herod found any reason to put Jesus to death. The religious leaders had somehow convinced the crowds to vote against Jesus, and because of the potential political consequences of a riot, Pilate condemned Jesus to die. While the women cried, and wailed at seeing Jesus walking to His death, while carrying His cross, Jesus told them to mourn for themselves and their descendants, because this was only the beginning of much worse to come. When Jesus was crucified most of the people who gathered mocked Him, and challenged Him to save Himself as He had saved others. Two criminals were crucified with Jesus and one of them also mocked Jesus, but the other asked Jesus to “remember” him when He came into His Kingdom. Jesus told the man he would be with Him that day in paradise. Jesus demonstrated who He was in so many ways that day. He called on His Father to forgive those who crucified them, because they didn’t know what they were doing. He didn’t respond to the crowds’ mocking with insults of His own. He surrendered His Spirit to His Father and died with dignity. The Roman centurion in charge of the crucifixion had undoubtedly seen many crucifixions, and as a result when he saw how Jesus died, he proclaimed “Surely this man was innocent.” Jesus’ body was taken down by Joseph and Nicodemus and put in Joseph’s tomb. The woman watched as they did so, because they were going to finish the embalming process when the Passover Sabbath ended on Sunday morning.
As Andy Stanley has pointed out, at that moment “Nobody expected no body.” That is nobody expected Jesus to rise from the dead on Easter. Nobody believed what Jesus had told His followers over and over, “I will rise on the third day.” As “Good” Friday ended, it appeared the movement Jesus came to initiate was over. It wasn’t!