After our
little foray into the New Testament, it is back to the Old Testament for a good
long while this time. We’re going to do
Ecclesiastes, then Song of Songs, and then Isaiah. So I think that’ll take us until …
February? Oh well. What better way to spend winter than curled
up with a really good book?
“Preacher”
I’m not
sure I like the opening verse. “The
words of the preacher.” The word
preacher there really means “collector of sentences.” I’d like to think that I do a little more
than just collect a few sentences. Okay,
those of you that have heard me preach know that I don’t ever collect just a
few sentences. But anyway, I’d like to
think that this word here (Quoheleth in the Hebrew) doesn’t really mean what we
think of today as a preacher. I think
the word really means something like an archivist. Someone who goes through life looking for
wisdom, collecting it, and then speaking it back into culture. Lord willing, preachers do this. But Lord willing, a preacher worth his or her
salt does more than this, too.
Vanity
Okay, I’m
going to lay my personal grudge against the translation aside. “Vanity, vanity, everything is vanity.” In order to take this book seriously, you
have to be willing to step back to a view the big picture. If we draw too close to life and lose sight
of the whole picture, then the book of Ecclesiastes becomes a fairly dangerous
book. After all, look again at how this
book opens.
Everything
is a vanity. What does anyone really
gain by working? Generations come and
go. Everyone dies and you can’t take
your stuff with you. So what’s the
point?
When we
are too close to life, those questions seem really depressing. What is the point, right? But when we step back, we understand what
Solomon is really getting at here. Yes,
we all need to eat and drink. We do need
to work to be able to sustain ourselves and our families. But we need to do it with a little
perspective. We may have to work in
order to live, but we shouldn’t live in order to work. There are things in life more important than
work.
This world
is full of an abundance of life and signs of life. This world is full of cycles and
routines. These life cycles come and go
and come again regardless of how much we do or don’t work. God has set these
patterns in motion. There is more to
life than our simple corner of the world in which we think we are king and
queen.
Wisdom
We then
turn to the second half of the chapter.
At first glance it seems like this part of scripture contradicts just
about everything we learned as we studied the book of Proverbs not so long
ago. After all, don’t most Bibles give
this section the heading of “The Vanity of Wisdom?” However, I’m not so sure that after reading
these words that such a section header is really appropriate for this part of
the Bible.
After all,
the author doesn’t have a problem with wisdom.
He’s Solomon – blessed with a double portion of wisdom from the
Lord! Rather, what Solomon has an issue
with is the application of wisdom to the world.
Trying to apply God’s wisdom to the things of this world makes one
unhappy. When we try to apply the wisdom
of God to the ways of the world we end up trying to avoid madness and
folly. Trying to apply wisdom to this
world is like trying to reach out and seize the wind. Being wise in this world inevitably brings
vexation and sorrow.
I know
this to be true. Trust me; the more I
grow closer to God’s Word the more perplexed I am by the world’s choices. The more my sight is shaped by God’s sight
the less things make sense in this world.
The more I desire to draw closer to God the more I see all the ways of
the world rising up to become obstacles in my pursuit of God’s ways.
Thus, we
can see that it is not actually wisdom that is vain. Rather, what is vain is trying to apply the
wisdom of God to the world. That process
won’t make you happy. That process will
make you feel disconnected from either God’s Word or the world.
However,
if we can let go of trying to understand the world and focus on understanding
God, then wisdom is a great and powerful tool.
God’s wisdom can make the difference in life. But trying to understand the world after
tasting God’s wisdom is simply a futile effort.
That’s what Solomon is getting at here.
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