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