Lesson 2

Ecclesiastes

The Things That Don't Work!

4. THEME AND PURPOSE OF THE BOOK

It is often attacked as nihilistic, fatalistic, skeptical, cynical or materialistic.

To the twentieth-century "man in the street," life is a puzzle. He feels that he, like his culture, has become plastic. For just as plastic now symbolizes the chief achievement of research, technocracy, and massive sales and distribution agencies, so also plastic people feel themselves to be the fruit of sociological research and constant manipulation by economic, political, social, and religious technocracies. Life has lost its zip.

Meanwhile his universe grows silent as he turns away from God, and twentieth-century man is gripped by an inexplicable loneliness. Is there no one home in the universe?

Truth with a capital T continues to disappear, almost in direct proportion to the disappearance of God from modern thought. "All is relative," goes the slogan, and that is the only absolute left.

Ecclesiastes is the best news around for such baffled modern men. It is the book for men who want to live again-now. It is the working man's book: it answers his boredom with the routine of joylessly eating, drinking, and earning a paycheck.

Ecclesiastes has as its central concern that basic hunger of men to see if the totality of life fits into a meaningful pattern.

REM: This is written from Solomon's personal experience and from his painful insight in many areas.

This is emphasized by the use of the term under the sun (29x) - refers to the source as earthly - human.

7 times he says I set my mind (KJV = communed with his own heart) which indicates to us that he is giving us his own human vpt - albeit from the wisest man of all time (none before or after) instead of seeking God's thinking - vpt on the subject in view.

The one in view who could be expressing this vpt could be:

#1 - an unregenerate individual who is therefore w/o hope in this life.

or #2 - a Bel'r who is living in perpetual carnality - under the sin nature's rulership and therefore duplicates the thinking - the emo's - the sentiments of the unregenerate.

PURPOSE: To show mankind the utter emptiness - the futility of pursuing all that is under the sun - pursuing as the focus of life what is on the earth - what is temporal - & therefore what is transient - what is passing away and will ultimately bring you no lasting satisfaction.

There are 4 commonly held and often heard lies related to life that fit right in to the human vpt that Solomon will develop.

#1 - "Laugh and the world laughs with you, Cry and you cry alone."

#2 - "Every day in every way our world is getting better, better, better."

#3 - "There's a light at the end of every tunnel."

#4 - This one comes from a very popular song of a generation or so ago:

You know why they tell us those things? There's really a very simple answer, to make us believe there's purpose and happiness if we simply keep on hoping, keep on dreaming.

But true hope cannot exist in a vacuum where the facts are ignored. The fact is that the world isn't wonderful.

There are several closely connected phrases that weave a very important thread thru the book.

#1 - Fear God -> (7x)

#2 - Receive all the good things of life as a gift from God. (4x)

#3 - Reflect on the fact that God will judge the righteous and the wicked - (5x)

#4 - Remember that God presently reviews the quality of every man's life style. (7x)

The EPILOG gives us the antidote to the emptiness - the vanity of life. Something we as believers should keep in mind as we go thru this study. Eccl 12:13-14