Ecclesiastes - A Meaningful Life - Sermon

When we lived in Flagstaff, I was asked if I would like to preach a summer sermon to wrap up the series on Ecclesiastes. I said yes, not really knowing what I was getting into. :)

It turned out that grappling deeply with the bleak message of this book was a wonderful time! How could that be? It is because I found a connection between Ecclesiastes and 1 Corinthians 15. I noticed overlapping words and themes: vanity, death-as-the-end, and the hope of resurrection. I realized that Paul gives us the rest of the story, which Solomon either did not know or at least did not reveal to us. I try to make these connections in this sermon.

I realized as I kept re-reading Ecclesiastes that Solomon was writing without any reference to what comes after death. Whether he personally knew about the hope of resurrection, he makes no allusions to it at all. So, the book has a very bleak perspective. If each of our lives inevitably ends in death and there is nothing after it, then of course this life feels very empty.

But that is not actually the whole story!

Like most parts of Scripture, the more we refact this portion of the Bible through the lens of Christ, the more and more hope we actually see.

So, my prayer for you is that as you listen to this sermon, you will see how necessary it is that we find hope in Christ. The book of Ecclesiastes is certainly sobering by itself, but it is not the whole story by any means. We now have the full revelation of Scripture, and so we know that our labor is not in vain in the Lord.” We have the sure hope of resurrection with Christ!

Ecclesiastes: A Meaningful Life - Audio

October 18, 2024


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