Why Ecclesiastes Needs Easter

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

Mercy it ought to be the theme of our song And father is appropriate for us to sing of your love To know how deep it is and remember it is our sin that held you on the cross Not literally, but it is for that reason that you Hung there bearing the sins the penalty that we could not pay and all that be fine But what’s more is you rose. You conquered death. You rose from the dead and you made complete payment for our sins. Help us never to cease singing your praises to demonstrate our appreciation, our gratitude, our unspeakable joy and love for you. And Father we need you. May that be evident in all ways and may you be pleased with how we approach even the study of your word this morning. In your son’s name we pray. Amen.

On Wednesday night at staff prayer I did something that I potentially have never done before and potentially will never do again in my life. I asked the staff what they thought I should preach on this morning. In particular whether they thought I should continue on the next section in Ecclesiastes. Can we also get the other bank of lights? I asked the staff I should continue on the next section in and Ecclesiastes, or if I should do an Easter message. And the response was, do an Easter message. And I said, even though Pastor Z will probably do an Easter message, and the response was, we want a second Easter message.

And then someone said, maybe you could combine Ecclesiastes with an Easter message, which really, it would have been a lot less work to do something completely else. It would have been less work to just do an Easter message or to just go on in the next section of Ecclesiastes, not necessarily to see how Easter and Ecclesiastes could fit together. Although, you may remember on December 23rd, I took like the last 15 or 20 minutes and talked about the Christmas story as it related to Ecclesiastes. You may remember that I said at that point that the Christmas story is actually the story of God identifying with the vanity of life under the sun.

Tried to describe how Christ as God endured the vanity, the meaninglessness, the fatigue, the labor, seeing the oppression, the pain and the hurt of life. God identified with all of that. And if Christmas is the story then of God identifying with the vanity of life under the sun, Easter is the story of God conquering the vanity of life under the sun. It is the story of God overcoming and defeating the curse of vanity that we all live under because of sin. We celebrate on Easter Resurrection Sunday, we celebrate God in Christ, not only identifying with us in the vanity, but overcoming it on our behalf, so that we could have his joy now as well as joy for eternity. In that sense, Ecclesiastes needs Easter.

Now, I’ve also thought since Wednesday, and in light of the last 36 hours or so, that it would be much easier to have extended our prayer time, or to have sang some more songs, to have done something other than preach this message. The problem is that once you’ve taken the bite and started chewing it, you gotta finish. I was also thinking it’s kinda like jumping out on the end of the diving board and then trying to catch yourself and stop instead of just finishing and diving in. Maybe you can sense what that’s like in your legs to try to stop that when you’ve already got it in motion. And so I’m going to give you why Ecclesiastes needs Easter in an abridged and potentially no less passionate form.

So why Ecclesiastes needs Easter. There is no doubt if you have been to any one of the messages in Ecclesiastes you know that it is by far probably the most dark, dismal, discouraging, depressing book in all of the Bible. Solomon’s wisdom, far out towers, his optimism. He’s got a huge tower of wisdom, like just falling and crushing any optimism that may want to be escaping. It’s like his optimism fell down a hole in the backyard and it’s crying to get out while the big tower of wisdom is right there, but just casting a shadow down over the whole of any kind of positivity or optimism. His message is certainly a negative one, and as a preacher, he presents some of the most miserable truths you can imagine.

I think that that’s valuable. Part of the reason I keep taking so long to go through Ecclesiastes, because I keep thinking that his message and the negativity is valuable. We have talked numerous times about the fact at least by the end of Ecclesiastes, we realize he’s writing it for young people so that they would get wisdom and stop trying to find life in all of the uncertain and unsatisfying things under the sun and instead to look to him. And he does that not necessarily by pointing out how fantastic things are beyond the sun. His approach is to point out how miserable and tasteless and bitter is this life so that we would look elsewhere.

He wants you, he wants us to learn what is truly enjoyable, what genuinely matters, what actually lasts, and what is really important. And his goal, like I said, is so that we would learn those things and to learn that they’re not here because all we get here is vanity of vanities. What is vanity? The whole thing. All is vanity here. In the book of Ecclesiastes he gives us some of the most miserable truths under the Sun. Like for example, work is hard, forgettable, and vain. You can see the cheery part of the message is this part right here. In In his opening poem Solomon asked the rhetorical question, what does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?

And the answer is zero. He gets no gain from all of his work, all of his toil, all of his labor that he does under the sun. You work and work and work. The work doesn’t stop. Like the sun rises and the sun sets. Like water flows into the ocean, Life and work is constant and unceasing and never done.

Look, even the best dish detergent you ever buy is not gonna keep you from needing to use your fingernails sometimes to pick off the stuff that’s really stuck on. And even if you find a dish detergent that overcomes that, you’re still gonna have more dishes to do at the next meal. So you can buy products making your life easier. You’re not gonna get out of work. You’re not gonna get out of the hard parts of work. You’re not going to get out of endless work ever while you’re on this planet. If that weren’t bad enough, everything you do is forgettable. Nobody really cares. They don’t really care today. And nobody’s really going to care tomorrow.

There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after, chapter 1, verse 11. All your work is vain. Nobody remembers it. It can’t satisfy you. It’s empty. In and of itself, it’s meaningless. After building the temple, after building a palace, after being responsible for the majority of what was taking place in the country of Israel, Solomon concluded in chapter two verse 11, I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it. And behold, all was vanity and striving after wind and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.

I think that qualifies as a miserable truth. Chapter two, 22 and 23, what has man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? For all his days are full of sorrow and his work is a vexation. Even in the night, his heart does not rest. Solomon studied the business that is done on earth, how neither day nor night do ones I sleep, Chapter 8, Verse 16, and they just keep working and getting tired and nobody remembers their work and their work really isn’t even satisfying. It’s vain. It’s hard. It’s forgettable. It’s vain. The second miserable truth that we’ve talked about much is that everyone dies.

That is a miserable truth. most, chapter 2 verse 3 says you have a few days. You have a few days, that’s it, that’s the best that you’re going to get. Life is hard and then it’s over. And that happens to everybody. You remember in chapter 9 verses 2 and 3? It is the same for all since the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice, as is the good, so is the sinner, and he who swears is as he who shuns an oath. This is an evil that in all that is done unto the sun the same event happens to all. Chapter 3 verse 20, all go to one place, all are from dust, and to dust all return. Everyone dies, and you have no ability to stop that, predict that, do anything to make your life last longer.

In chapter 9 verse 12, man does not know his time. Chapter 8 verse 8, no man has power to retain the spirit or power over the day of death. Instead chapter 6 verse 12, man lives the few days of his vain life which he passes like a shadow and you die. The third miserable truth is that work is hard, or I’m sorry, the best it gets is to enjoy the process.

you work hard and then you die, the best you can get is to enjoy the process. And in saying Ecclesiastes needs Easter, I don’t mean to undermine or undervalue those five or so passages in Ecclesiastes that talk about enjoying the process. I think those are legitimate and he is describing true joy that God gives to people in the process in the midst of all the vanity. If God gives it, we can eat and drink and toil with enjoyment. Chapter 2 verse 24, chapter 3 verse 12. In fact, there’s nothing better under the sun, at least there’s nothing better from one perspective than everyone else at whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil. This is the gift of God, chapter 5 verse 19. But honestly, there are a lot of people who get all of those things, who get wisdom, who get wealth, who get honor, who get stuff, and they don’t get power to enjoy them, and yet they just throw their lives into trying to enjoy the process and instead their life ends up miserable. So they work hard, and they’re going to die,

and they don’t know when, and they can’t do anything about it, and they’re pursuing perhaps even enjoying the process and it doesn’t even work. They may be totally eating their bread with joy and drinking their wine with a merry heart and dressing up and getting married and working hard, but all that for the wrong reason. So you can do all of those things in enjoying the process for the wrong reason and miss out on the joy. Or you can do all those things and still not actually have God give you the power to enjoy them. really bad when the best it gets is to enjoy the process and you can’t even be certain to enjoy the process or that you’re trying to enjoy the process for the right reason.

And that’s the best that it gets. Which also leads to then something else making it difficult to enjoy the process is that mostly we suffer and submit. Mostly that’s what we see.

Not only does the hard work and the certainty of death suffocate joy out of the process. We haven’t even mentioned oppression and the unfair treatment of the poor or the helpless or the fact that sometimes we just have to submit to authority who is unkind and perhaps even unjust. Chapter 3 verse 16 Solomon saw unto the sun and in the place of justice even there was wickedness and in the place of righteousness even there was wickedness. He saw all the oppressions that are done unto the sun and behold the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them. On the side of their oppressors there was power, and there was no one to comfort them.” Chapter 4, verse 1. He admitted, if you see in a province the oppression of the poor and the violation of justice and righteousness, do not be amazed at the matter. Chapter 5, verse 8. Because when a man has power over man to his hurt, Chapter 8, verse 9, when a man has power to hurt someone else, He will.

That’s what we see. The wicked don’t get it when they die. It doesn’t seem like, in fact, some of the wicked, when they’re buried, seems like they’ve just totally gotten away with it. Chapter 8, verse 10. Solomon saw the wicked buried. They used to go in and out of the holy place and were praised in the city where they had done such things. They had committed their wickedness on those people. They had played the part of the hypocrite by going to the temple and acting like they were worshiping. And yet then they get the street named after them after they die. That doesn’t seem right. Some of those wicked people are our rulers, to whom we have to submit.

Can look at the beginning of chapter 8. And not only are we supposed to submit, we’re not even supposed to complain about them in our own minds, let alone in our rooms at our house. We looked at that last time in chapter 10, verse 20. Mostly we’re oppressed or we see oppression. We see people being hurt or we’re getting hurt. We’re still responsible to obey foolish, sometimes immature, sometimes unjust leaders, which means life is heavy and unhappy. I mean, how many more ways could Solomon make that point? And yet, he describes it in ways that are almost unbelievable. when he saw the oppression of those who were unable to do anything about it, when he saw that oppression, he said, I thought the dead who are already dead, more fortunate than the living who are still alive, better than both is he who has not yet been born and has not seen the evil deeds that are done on the sun.

It’s better to not even be born than to have to be born and see that, and experience the oppression and the misery. That’s chapter four verses two through three. And when it came to having all of the temporal blessings a man could ask for, but not the power to enjoy them, in chapter six verses four and five, he said, I say that a still-born child is better off than he. For it comes in vanity and goes in darkness, and its name is covered. Moreover, it has not seen the sun or known anything, yet it finds rest rather than he. That’s bad.

a miserable description that a stillborn child is better than someone who has everything and still doesn’t get what is really important. And just to finish off all of the miserable things, lastly, we’re all headed for judgment. It’s disturbing to remember that God has put eternity into our hearts, chapter 3 verse 11, that He does what He does so that we we will fear him. Chapter three verse fourteen chapter seven verse fourteen and in the middle of all that we have eternity in our hearts. We see that we can’t be in control. He does that so that we’d be forced to look at him and yet we still don’t. And for that we will be held accountable. For all these things chapter eleven verse nine God will bring you into judgment. In fact chapter twelve verse fourteen God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil.

That’s the end of the matter, is that there is a all-knowing, totally righteous, sovereign God waiting at the end to judge. And that’s where Solomon leaves us. Like, wait a second, Solomon. What if I haven’t obeyed all of those commands that I was supposed to? Is there some kind of forgiveness that I can get for that? Or am I just in trouble? He leaves us with judgment. He leaves us with misery and death and heaviness and judgment. Ecclesiastes needs Easter. Because what I think Solomon hints at in Ecclesiastes, there are hints of it. Paul screams. The whole New Testament screams. But Paul screams it. What is a small leak that starts to come through the crack in Ecclesiastes is like a full-on deluge in 1 Corinthians chapter 15. If Ecclesiastes is a soft opening, the New Testament is a grand opening. And if Solomon presented some of the most miserable truths under the sun, the apostle Paul in particular gives us some of the most glorious truths because of the sun, God’s sun. And Look, I get it.

I understand what I’m about ready to do is not the exegetical outline of the passage. I get that. I’m doing ice position. I’m reading my outline onto the passage. I’m not reading my interpretation into the passage. I’m reading my outline onto the passage. If you don’t know what ice position is, that’s because I just made it up like Wednesday or Thursday. So that’s totally all right. And if you don’t care, that’s cool too. because what I want to show you is that Paul, and I’ll be quick, in 1 Corinthians 15, you can turn there, answers all of these problems and miserable truths. He answers all of them and more. And it’s because of the resurrection.

What answers these problems is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. He starts out 1 Corinthians 15 with that discussion. I would remind you, brothers of the gospel I preach to you, which you received in which you stand and by which you are being saved. If you hold fast to the word I preached to you unless you believed in vain. That’s a kind of vain you don’t want. More than the vanity of life on the sun, you don’t want faith that is vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.

That is the gospel, that’s the good news, That is what we’re doing here today. That’s why we have a church. That’s why we have a ministry. Because Jesus was God. He came. He died. He took the penalty that we deserved for our vain life and sin and then rose from the dead to conquer that and overcome that. And that is what we celebrate on Easter. And it answers these things.

In particular, it answers the fact that we’re headed for judgment because that’s exactly what Christ took care of was our sin. For the ones that move back up, you can put the resurrection in front of them. The resurrection is what keeps us from dying in our sins. Judgment is coming at the end of Ecclesiastes. The resurrection says, that’s okay because it’s been paid for. And so in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 17, if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. The opposite of that is true then as well. That if Christ has been raised and you believe in Him, you’re not in your sins. It’s been paid for. Your failure to keep God’s commands deserved punishment. Christ took it. The resurrection answers the judgment that we’re all headed to and keeps us from dying in our sins. Not only that, the resurrection keeps us from being pitied as heavy and unhappy, sorry, it should be keeps us from being pitied, not pities, pities party. Life is heavy, miserable, sorrowful, unpleasant in pretty much every way and you realize that as Christians, if

Because if Christ doesn’t actually come back from the dead, we’re even more to be pitied because we think there’s an answer for it. So add on to how heavy and miserable it is. Oh, and by the way, you’re just totally foolish and self-deceived. You’re worse off. You’re more to be pitied if Christ hasn’t actually resurrected from the dead. The good news is that he has. And he has given you new life with him. 19 in if in this life only we have hoped in Christ we are of all people most to be pitied and that means because he has risen we’re not most to be pitied we don’t need to be pitied we have life now and life that’s coming eternal life which also then answers the part about suffering and submitting, the resurrection makes suffering even unjustly worthwhile.

In chapter 15 verses 30 and 32, Paul describes how he underwent pain and suffering and battle and fighting, and it was all worthwhile because of the resurrection. If you have to submit to people who aren’t going to get punished. That is really miserable. The resurrection demonstrates a few things. Number one, the resurrection, if you are in Christ, gives you power to submit. That’s really good. Not only that, the resurrection demonstrates that God is really serious about dealing with sin, so much so that his son died to pay for sin. And so either those people you are submitting to and suffering from, either those people’s sins were paid for by Christ, or they will pay for those sins later on in judgment themselves.

But the people who are sinning against you have not escaped God. He knows about it, and he either paid their penalty on his son, or they will pay their penalty for eternity. That enables you to be free to submit no matter how bad they treat you, because you don’t have to make it right. Trust God to make it right. The resurrection is what demonstrates that God is serious about doing that.

Not to mention the actual immediate impact we have of receiving his power, God’s life, Christ’s life, in us to submit, as well as seeing his example of submitting to unjust authority when out of all the people he didn’t deserve that. So his is the power. The resurrected life is the power in us to live that way, and he’s the example of it. It also next makes enjoying the process, keeps enjoying the process from being condemnable. Look at verse 32. What do I gain if humanly speaking I fight with the beast at Ephesus? That’s a description of the false teachers and the spiritual fight that he was in. He says, if the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die.

I don’t know how much more ecclesiastical that could be. What’s it doing in this chapter on the resurrection? It’s not a quote from Ecclesiastes. It’s a quote from a passage in Isaiah. But it certainly fits with the idea of Ecclesiastes of enjoying the process. If there is no resurrection from the dead, this life is all that we have. We should eat and drink for tomorrow we die. And that is condemnable without the resurrection. But Christ, having taken care of our sins, enables us to enjoy his gifts in a way that we couldn’t otherwise, in a way that pagans, unbelievers, those who have no relationship with Christ, they can’t even fathom that kind of ability to enjoy that new life that they get, where eating and drinking now is done in a whole different way.

And instead of eating and drinking for tomorrow, die becoming something that we’re judged for, it becomes something that we can truly enjoy in the process only because of our connection with Christ and his being raised from the dead. In addition, it takes the sting out of death. We still die unless he comes back soon and we’re raptured. People still die, but it totally takes the sting and the bite out of death. You’re familiar with these verses, 1 Corinthians 15, 54 through 56, when the perishable puts on imperishable and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory, O death, where is your victory, O death?

Where is your sting? The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is law, but thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. You’ll die and it doesn’t have to have the sting and the pain that it would if this life was all that there was. The resurrection demonstrates that Christ defeated death and killed sin so that it no longer is the dominant power. We can even rejoice. It’s a sober rejoicing but we can even rejoice in the death of a Christian because we know it’s better for them anyway and we get to do that ourselves someday and that’s not defeat, that’s victory. You know what’s really good? The last thing that the resurrection does for us, it makes our work, if our work is in the Lord and for the Lord, it makes it not in vain. Haven’t you been waiting kind of to hear that for maybe two and a half or three years. That vanity of any of all is vanity is different after the resurrection for those of us who have that new life in Christ. It’s a little bit different when our work is done in the Lord and for

the Lord. Look at the end of chapter 15. Therefore my beloved brothers be steadfast and movable always abounding in the work of the Lord knowing that in the Lord your Your labor, your work, your toil is not in vain, is not futile, is not meaningless. When it is on His behalf, always bounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord, that’s the power of the Lord for Him and through Him, when that is the work and the labor and the toil that’s in your life, it’s not in vain. It has eternal consequences. And so we can be busy about our work and joyful in our work because it’s not actually empty. That only happens because of the resurrection.

The resurrection conquers every part of the curse of vanity because vanity comes from sin and the resurrection defeated sin and death.

And so, if Christmas is the story of God identifying with vanity, Easter is the story of God blowing vanity out of the water, conquering it, defeating it, enabling us to have real joy in the process that will lead into eternal joy in him, knowing that what we do is not in vain, that even death there’s no sting there because it just moves us closer and to another degree of intimacy with him and for as miserable as the truths of Ecclesiastes are even more glorious are the truths of the resurrection. What Solomon hints at and again I think he hints little leaks of those good parts coming out in Ecclesiastes certainly passages like 1st Corinthians 15 just break the the dam and the water flows and floods our hearts with hope and thankfulness and peace and rejoicing and celebration. And if you’re not in Jesus, then all you have is the judgment that’s coming after a miserable, hard, painful life. If you don’t have Christ and are united with him and his death and resurrection, then Ecclesiastes is all you have and the

best you can do is to try to eat good and drink nice and wear fancy clothes and go to parties. That’s the best you will ever get and then comes judgment. For those of us who are believers, life is totally different. And while we can learn from the dissatisfaction that Solomon presents with stuff of this world. We can still learn from that. We have something so much better in his son. It is the the cure for vanity. And that all happens at the cross and the resurrection. Father, thank you for the light of truth and for the light of your son and for the light that you have He was shown abroad in our hearts to get to see Him and know Him and have His joy.

We know that He prays that our joy would be complete. And that’s what we pray as well. In the midst of great sorrow and heaviness and vanity and oppression that we see all around us, You bully us Christians back up to the surface. May we sing and talk like we live lives that are not in vain because they’re in your son. We pray this in His name. Amen. You know, I’m not really sorry that I went over. I’ll say that I kind of am. But we always do what we most want to do. So I’m kind of sorry that it’s late, but I needed to jump off the end of the board. So thanks for letting me do that. We’ll ask the guys, if you would, to stick around and help us set the room back up for class tomorrow.

Ladies, happy Resurrection Sunday. Please come back for the baptisms and communion tonight and pray for the Weinbergs. You guys are dismissed. Thursday