Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Is Life Meaningless? | The Writings | Ecclesiastes 1

Episode Date: July 24, 2024

"Everything is meaningless." The book of Ecclesiastes begins in such a way that you might question why it's in your Bible. Is life truly meaningless? In today's episode, Jensen shares how the context and genre of Ecclesiastes 1 helps us understand it's place in God's Word and points us to Jesus. Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Ecclesiastes 1

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. And the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jensen Holt McNair. I grew up in the church my whole life. But it wasn't until around middle school that I really started to understand and study the Bible on my own. And despite having grown up in the church, I can still vividly remember the night that I turned to a book in the Bible started reading and about how to panic attack. That book was Ecclesiastes. You see, having grown up in the church, I knew that.

the Bible was true, the infallible word of God. I knew that God had given his purpose. I knew that the way I lived my life mattered to God. And so you can imagine my shock when I cracked open Ecclesiastes one day and read meaningless, meaningless, meaningless, as the teacher, utterly meaningless. Everything is meaningless. And so began my first existential crisis. Kind of joking. Kind of not. You see, Ecclesiastes had, shockingly, never been the theme for VBS. I'm truly not. sure if I had ever read it before in my life. So when I read that verse with no context or understanding of wisdom literature, poetry, or literary perspective, I was scared. I thought that this might be proof of inconsistency in the Bible, proof that God was just messing with us, lying to us, when really

everything is meaningless? Now, lucky for me, I had a friend who had been studying the Bible a lot longer than me. I called him in a panic and he called me down, whoa, whoa, what verse are you reading? And the second I said Ecclesiastes, he laughed. Oh, yeah, that explains it. And then he helped me understand a fundamental part of studying the Bible that I didn't know about. Yes, all of scripture is true, inspired by God, infallible. But the word of God is also a book, written by real people with real objectives and they use different kinds of literary styles to convey truth to their reader. And so when you study scripture, when you dive in, you need to understand the context of what you're reading before you ever read a verse. You see, we cannot expect to understand the truth behind

scripture to correctly apply and exeat scripture if we just cherry pick verses and try to make meaning out of them. See, pulling verses out of context just might send you spiraling into existential crisis if you're not careful. I learned that lesson a long time ago. So, before we even begin reading Ecclesiastes 1, although I did already give away a headliner, I want to take time to tell you what my friend told me all those years ago. He told me I needed to learn about the book of Ecclesiastes before I was able to study the book of Ecclesiastes and actually understand it. And thankfully, he took the time to lay it all out for me. See, Ecclesiastes, is considered part of the ancient Hebrew wisdom literature. Like Proverbs, it explains things about

the world and the way that it works. Ecclesiastes is definitely different than Proverbs, though. I've heard it described as Proverbs giving us the rule and Ecclesiastes explaining the exceptions. I before E except after C. There are rules that we live our life by, rules to guide us, but there are also times in a complex world where we need nuance, where everything isn't black and white, where we have to consider life's complexities and say things like, yes, but. You see, Ecclesiastes does that for us. We can't pull out individual verses and say, this is good, this is right, and true. See, the author of Ecclesiastes is taking us on a journey. He's showing us his observations about the world around himself. He's giving us his perspective on

the world, weighing both sides and ultimately reminding his reader of important truths they'd be remiss to ignore about life. You see, he doesn't shy away from hard. The words he writes, the tone with which he writes, the bluntness of the words with which he writes, all of it together, is one big wake up call. Wake up. Ressle with the hard questions. Journey along with me to the deep uncertainties, to the reality of life. Don't shy away. And hopefully, at the end of it all, you'll see the hope that's hidden throughout. We can see an example of it even in that very first verse that we've already read. Verse one from the very beginning goes like this. The words of the teacher, son of David, King in Jerusalem. Meaningless, meaningless, says the teacher, utterly meaningless. Everything is meaningless.

So first, we learn that our author is going to be calling himself teacher. And as the son of David, king in Jerusalem, some believe that Solomon is our author. But, also believe that because of some of the content of the book, it isn't possible for Solomon to have truly been the author, but that someone else is writing Ecclesiastes from Solomon's perspective, as if they were King Solomon, the King of Israel, powerful, wealthy, and wise. Now, either way, it won't change the lessons that we can take from this book. So whether it was Solomon or someone writing from his perspective, we can come to the same understanding. Now second, we need to take a look at what the author means in verse two.

Meaningless, meaningless. Now, when we hear meaningless, we think pointless, without a goal, not worth our time, kind of hopeless. Other translations say, vanity, vanity. But that makes us think about being vain, conceded, self-focused. It's important that we understand this phrase correctly. See, the teacher will use it throughout the book, as is open, statement, it opens right up with one of his main themes for the book. And the word that we've

translated as meaningless or vanity is the Hebrew word Havel. And it is usually used to refer to something like smoke, vapor, breath, something that is here one second, then gone. It's real, it's tangible, but it's fleeting. Now with this in mind, we can better understand the point of these verses. See, it isn't to send us into an existential spiral telling us that life has no meaning. God isn't real and we should just give up. Now, these 11 verses that we're going to look at describe to us the fleeting nature of the world. Everything is fleeting. Everything is transient.

Everything is vapor. See, the next nine verses come into better context when we understand this. Verse three, what do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun? generations come and generations go but the earth remains forever he's saying you work and strive and succeed and what do you gain generations die off they lose what they sought after their whole life but the earth remains the sun rises and the sun sets and hurries back to where it rises the winds below to the south and turns to the north round and round it goes ever returning on its course all streams flow into the sea yet the sea is never full to the place the streams come from

from there they return again. See these three verses they describe the way that the natural world continues on day after day, the cyclical nature changing but never really producing something new. Verse 8, all things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear, it's fill of hearing. Nothing is never enough. We always think there's something more we could get, something more we could do, we could fix, we could explore, experience, and then we'd be satisfied, then we'd be content. But we never find our fill. We're always wanting more, needing something new, something different. But he goes on, what has been will be again, and what has been done will be done again. There's nothing new under the sun. Is there anything

of which one can say, look, this is something new. It was here already long ago, and it was here before our time. So nothing is new. Trends come and go and come back again. We keep trying the same things, because ultimately, verse 11, no one remembers the former generations. And even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them. We will all be forgotten. We will all die. And no matter what we accomplish or do for this world at most will be a mention in the history books, a name thrown around in classrooms, but not really remembered for who we are. Fleeting. vapors, here today, gone tomorrow. See, this fundamental truth that the teacher is getting at, that all of life is fleeting,

is found elsewhere in Scripture. Isaiah 40 tells us that the grass withers and the flowers fall. 2 Corinthians 4 tells us the things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. In the final parts of chapter 1, verses 12 through 18, the teacher tells us that he applied his mind to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under the heavens. And you know what he concludes? That all things done under the sun are Hevel, fleeting, vapor, a chasing after the wind, striving for what will never satisfy, what you can never catch.

As he begins to understand this, he concludes, for with much wisdom comes much sorrow. The more knowledge, the more grief. See, he's reminding us that with wisdom, when you learn and observe life, when you understand the fleeting nature of life, that wisdom can also open the door to sorrow, to grief. You're able to see the complexities of good and evil, life and death. You and I will die. It's the only certain thing in life. And people who grasp that, who really wrestle with that and contemplate that,

are oftentimes thrown into a state of existential crisis. If we're all going to die, then what's the point? Now, those verses I read earlier include more than just confirmation that life is flea. reading. Isaiah 40 also reminds us that the word of God remains forever. Second Corinthians four tells us that the things we cannot see, the things of God are eternal. So yes, with wisdom can come grief and sorrow. The teacher is pointing out the devastation of the fall. When Adam and Eve bit into the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they gained understanding about the world. Their knowledge grew, but with it came death, brokenness, an understanding of the devastation of sin.

Just this morning, as I drove my kids to their preschool, we passed fire trucks on the side of the road. And my son Jude, an avid fan of fire trucks, saw those lights and trucks and felt immediate joy. His eyes lit up as we passed his favorite truck. But as we passed, I knew that that many trucks, that many. cops, that many firemen, meant that something had gone terribly wrong. And the news of a man who had fallen from the roof to his death only confirmed the sadness and grief in my heart. See, the wisdom of my age kept me from just delighting in the lights of the fire truck. I'm too seasoned in tragedy, too seasoned in darkness of the world to ignore the reality of the situation. When we wake

up to the fleeting nature of life, we have to face the reality that we will all die. And we can be plunged into grief and sorrow spiraling down into hopelessness and apathy, or we can see the devastation, the brokenness, the fleeting nature of life, and cling to the promise of Scripture, that there is something far greater, far more valuable to be found in God. We have hope, not in the fleeting things of this world here today and gone tomorrow, but in the things of God, our awareness of our futility, our fleetingness, should cause us to stare and wonder at the one who is eternally good, the one who offers us

life in a kingdom that has no end, the one who offers our lives meaning and purpose as we devote our days and hours to building something of value, something that is bigger than me and my life. Apart from him, all we have is Hevel. So as we read the book of Ecclesiastes, as our hearts wrestle, with hard questions and realities of life, may we be pointed back to our eternal King Jesus. This world is fleeting, but our hope is eternally secure in our creator.