Living with Futility, Frustration and Forgetfulness (Ecclesiastes 1:1-11)

What kind of book is Ecclesiastes? In the Bible there are several types of literature. There is history, there is biography, there are records of religious requirements, there is poetry, there are proverbs and there are letters to churches and to individuals. We should not treat all of them in the same way. For example, a proverb usually is a brief sentence that states a general truth. It is not a promise, and we make a mistake if we treat it so. For example, one proverb says that if we train a child in the way that he should go, when he is old he will not depart from it. That is not a definite promise as much as it is an observation. Similarly, we could take a verse in a psalm by itself and inevitably take it out of its context.

Ecclesiastes belongs to the category of literature called wisdom literature and from the Old Testament the Book of Job, some of the psalms, the Book of Proverbs, the Song of Solomon and the Book of Ecclesiastes are located in this category. In Israel, there were several important groups that contributed to the intellectual and practical life of the nation. Among them were the priests, the prophets and the wise men. Sometimes, the roles would overlap in an individual. The priests were responsible for the smooth running of the religious requirements given by God; the prophets usually called on the Israelites to remain loyal to God, although at times they also predicted the future; the wise men gave advice about everyday issues, whether as counsellors of the rulers or as instructors of the people in general.

The wise men often spoke about what they could deduce from the created world. They noticed its patterns and commented on them. Sometimes they would come to contradictory applications. For example, one might deduce from the regularity of the seasons that they indicated God was in control; another might deduce from the same pattern that everything was fixed and nothing could be changed by us – after all, no human, no matter how powerful, has the ability to change the seasons. In a sense, both interpretations are right.

The investigations of the wise men allowed them to borrow truths from other cultures in ways that the priests and the prophets did not do so. The obvious example of this is the Book of Job, which is set in a non-Israelite culture, and in which several individuals contribute to the debate concerning why bad things had happened to Job. One of them suggests to Job that he should acquaint himself with God, with the obvious implication that Job did not know him. Yet that is the problem that the book is about because Job knew God very well, yet also did not know a great deal about him or his ways. At some stage, the story of Job, a non-Israelite, was accepted as belonging to the wisdom literature of the Bible. Yet we can take verses from it out of context and misunderstand the point that the speaker is making. Even with the verse just mentioned, we should teach the truth of the verse and not merely what truths we can read into them.

In Ecclesiastes, the author investigates several aspects of life in order to discover what it is all about. His probing is a reminder that we are all designed to be searchers, looking for meaning in life and aiming to discover what can be learned about what we do, why we do it, and in what way is God involved. Searching involves going down many paths, and this book reveals that the author explored several of them.

Why study the Book of Ecclesiastes?

No doubt, we are all familiar with verses or passages from this book. Yet why should we study it as Christians? After all, is it not a book that only contains a list of complaints? Here are some reasons why we should do so?

First, God placed it in his Word. As Paul reminded Timothy, ‘All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work’ (2 Tim. 3:16-17). By ‘scripture’, Paul certainly had in mind the books of the Old Testament, including Ecclesiastes. God knew that we would need the contents of this book in order to become and remain balanced Christians.

Second, Ecclesiastes considers the big questions that life throws at us, demanding answers. We are not the first generation to ask these questions. In a sense, philosophy has been asking these questions without providing any answers for centuries. But we will discover that Ecclesiastes gives answers.

Third, Ecclesiastes advises us that we should listen to the wisdom of others and merely to the opinions of everyone. It is especially true today that people imagine that their opinion is as valid as anyone else’s. I have watched the chancellor give a talk on the television and discovered I did not know what he was talking about. At the end of his talk, members of the audience were invited to ask questions, which some did and in the process revealed they were as ignorant as me as far as understanding his ideas. It was obvious that their opinions were not wise. Instead they were incompetent. But if I could find a wise person who could explain what the chancellor meant, it would be correct to listen to him.

Fourth, Ecclesiastes teaches us how to see the hand of God in everyday life. We will discover on several occasions that the author will say that God has done something about a situation. Maybe he caused it or perhaps he allowed it. At times, he overrules it. But he is active, and that is one of the important messages of this book.

Who is speaking?

In verse 1, the author introduces himself, perhaps in a way that we would not have expected: ‘The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.’  Why not say that he was Solomon? Perhaps because he wanted his readers to have a particular grasp of who he was as a messenger of God. We know it was Solomon from the description he gives of himself in verse 12: ‘I the Preacher have been king over Israel in Jerusalem.’ Only two kings – David and Solomon – ruled over Israel from Jerusalem. After the death of Solomon, the kingdom was divided and the kings who lived in Jerusalem only ruled over the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin.  

The word translated ‘preacher’ is sometimes translated as a personal name, Qoheleth. But this is unlikely. Instead he is indicating one of his roles. The word Qoheleth comes from the Hebrew word to call an assembly, which explains the name we have given to the book – Ecclesiastes contains the Greek word for assembly. The author addressed this assembly. So what we have here is a sermon or set of sermons about the way life was for him. Moreover, what we have is a set of sermons inspired by the Holy Spirit (2 Tim. 3:16), so we can say that the contents of his sermons were not limited to his original hearers, but were also designed by the Spirit as a model of preaching throughout all time.

The preacher tells us who he was. He was the son of David. David was a poet and his son was a preacher, and so we might merely say that they were gifted men. But both of them were kings, and one role of the king in Israel was to expound the law of God. Of course, times had changed since Moses was given the law by the Lord on Mount Sinai. Israel, in Solomon’s day, was no longer a loose collection of tribes just delivered from captivity. It had developed over the centuries and in Solomon’s day had ascended to becoming one of the leading nations of the world. How does one apply God’s law in a changing culture? Solomon shows us one way in this book of Ecclesiastes.

Moreover, Solomon tells us where he wrote the book. It was in Jerusalem. I doubt if he is providing a postal address. Instead I would suggest he is indicating an observation point from where he could assess life.  Jerusalem was the place from where one could assess life from God’s perspective. Similarly we are called to evaluate our society, but from the point of view of the new Jerusalem. We live in a changing world and we may try to assess it from what we think happened here in the past. But we cannot do that, if only because we cannot live in the past. Instead we have to assess everything from the vantage point of Jerusalem, that is the heavenly city in which God’s law is revealed in order for it to be declared.

Would it have been enough for Solomon merely to stand up and recite the law? That would have been very easy to do. But he knew that more was required. He realised that he had to provide application. And in a sense that is what preaching is. Application is not merely someone saying that a verse has certain things to say. Those details can come under the classification of information just as much as can any other part of a sermon. Instead application occurs when the listeners realise that everything is being said to them personally. When a preacher talks about the beauty of Jesus, he does not need to tell his listeners that they should admire the Saviour, that is, if the preacher is describing him with feeling and longing. Similarly, a preacher, when describing the world, should do it in such a way that the audience feels, as well as understand, that it is a terrible and a sad place. And that is what Solomon the preacher does in the Book of Ecclesiastes.

Solomon begins with a very strong, surprising and challenging assertion – ‘Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity’ – and that is one way to begin a sermon. We can almost hear his audience saying, ‘Prove it!’, but at least that is a response. The word translated ‘vanity’ means confusion, meaninglessness, pointlessness, frustration, emptiness. What is surprising and challenging is his claim that vanity covers everything. His position in society makes his claim surprising because he as king could have anything that he wanted.

Futility, frustration and forgotten

Solomon asks a probing question in verse 3: What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?’ In this question, Solomon reveals to those that know that he is speaking as someone who is aware of the judgement pronounced by God in the Garden of Eden (note what he says in verse 13: ‘It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with’). Away back then, the Lord said to Adam that because of his sin against God he would have to toil for his daily bread. Yet Solomon does not quote the verse from Genesis 3. Instead he asks a pertinent question based on it, and asks it in such a way that he gets his readers/listeners to agree that the biblical description is accurate. Every week we can read in the papers about married women who wished they could have more time with their children, of working couples who wished they could have more time with one another, of others who instead of working for a living are living for their work, of people who only want to retire, and when they retire they want to go back to work.

But it is not just the time taken that is the problem, there is also the task itself. It does not matter who it is or what they are doing. There was an article in the paper this week about a retiring MP who is going to get a job on a boardroom with a big company. His verdict on his years as an MP was that it did not match up to his expectations. He may not wish to be told it, but neither will his job in the boardroom. In a few years, he will change it to bored-room.

Connected to this question is the fact that all his work is only taking him towards the end. If the worker were a farmer in Israel, he would have known that the land on which he was working had been worked on by his forefathers and would be worked on by his descendants. Life was not only a toil; it was temporary, unlike the earth, as he notes in verse 4: ‘A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.’ The one thing he could say about it was that he was going to hand it on to someone else.

Moreover, everything in life is tedious, with nothing that is different taking place in the permanent features of life. This is true of what he can see of the earth (v. 4), the sun (v. 5), of the wind (v. 6) and of the rivers (v. 7) – these were what the Greeks regarded as the four basic elements of the universe, but others may have thought that as well. This is what he means when he says later on that nothing new happens (v. 10). Of course, Solomon knows why these aspects of life are repetitive – God is in control. But if you do not believe that God is in control, what do you do? Solomon tells us that if we cannot see the hand of God our response to the regularity of life will be dissatisfaction (v. 8) and fatalism (v. 9).

How many of us can say the name of the person who invented the wheel? Or who decided that we should have paper money? Who invented the computer? Who lived on your street before you moved there? What were the names of your great, great grandparents? Don’t worry if you do not know. Your great, great grandchildren will not know your names either. It is the story of life: ‘There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after’ (v. 11).

Futility, frustration and forgotten, says Solomon, is the meaning of life.

What difference does Jesus make?

We will have noticed that Solomon’s description of life as futile, frustrating and forgotten marks our society as much as it did his. If that were all that one had to say, the message would not be very helpful. But we know that the gospel addresses those aspects of life and says that Jesus can do something about each of them that will transform them into areas of potential and of opportunity so that we will no longer have such a negative perspective. What can looking at things from Jerusalem say about those three areas of life?

Is life futile, frustrating and forgotten when Jesus is in charge of a person’s life? Think about this verse from Colossians (3:23): ‘And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ.’ It answers each of these aspects. Jesus deals with futility because he blesses ‘whatsoever we do’, which means that nothing is pointless. While some things are very important, in the Christian life nothing is unimportant. Jesus deals with frustration because ‘whatever we do’, we can do it ‘heartily’ for him. A frustrated person does nothing heartily, whereas a person whose heart is involved will not be frustrated and give up. Jesus deals with the problem of being forgotten by promising a great reward. When the moment comes to receive it, we will discover that he has overlooked or forgotten nothing about us.

We noticed earlier that verse 13 Solomon acknowledged that God allows these aspects to happen. The question was ‘Why?’, and the answer was so that people would seek him. We know that Jesus is in control of everything. Why does he allow such things to happen? So that we will seek him!