Podcast: What Does It Mean When the Bible Says Life Is Meaningless? (Lydia Brownback)

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

How to Live Wisely in Light of a Hard Life

Ecclesiastes is one of those books of the Bible that we don't always know what to do with. So much of it can feel a bit foreign, and sometimes it can even seem to be at odds with what Scripture teaches elsewhere.

Just listen to how the book opens. Vanity of vanities, says the preacher. Vanity of vanities. All is vanity. So how should we approach the book of Ecclesiastes? And what's its core message for Christians today? In this episode Lydia Brownback talks through these questions and more.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

• Distinctives of Biblical Wisdom Literature
• “All Is Vanity”
• “The Wise Dies Just like the Fool”
• Eat, Drink, and Be Merry?
• A Time for Everything
• “Be Not overly Righteous”
• “The Evil Days of Old Age”
• The Meaning of Life
• United to the One Who Is Wisdom

00:52 - Distinctives of Biblical Wisdom Literature

Matt Tully
Well, Lydia, thanks for joining me again on the Crossway Podcast.

Lydia Brownback
Great to be back, Matt. It’s been a long time.

Matt Tully
Today we’re going to talk about the book of Ecclesiastes, and I would dare to say that it’s maybe one of the least studied books in the Bible. Or maybe it’s one that we can feel a little bit uncertain about. Would you resonate with that?

Lydia Brownback
Yes. I think a lot of people will resonate with that. We get to it, and we don’t quite know what to make of it. It’s perplexing. We know it’s part of the Bible’s wisdom literature, so we take it and we approach it that way.

Matt Tully
What are some of the other books that would be categorized as wisdom literature?

Lydia Brownback
Proverbs is the one that everyone thinks of right away. Job is actually a wisdom book, and some of the psalms are considered wisdom psalms. It’s a tradition of ancient writing that wasn’t just in ancient Israel; it was in a lot of cultures in the ancient Near East. They would gather sayings, proverbs about how the world works and how to operate and live in it successfully. Tere were schools of wisdom. So we see this cross outside of just what we have in the Bible to scriptures in other religions and other cultures. But there’s a distinctive to the Bible’s wisdom literature, and it is all oriented under one primary feature, which is the fear of the Lord. So Biblical wisdom differs from wisdom in other cultures in that it’s under the fear of Yahweh, the fear of the Lord. So that is wisdom—the fear of the Lord—and that’s awe, reverence, and centering one’s life completely on Jesus, on the Lord.

Matt Tully
Any of us who have read any of Ecclesiastes will know that it’s got a different flavor to it. So I wonder if you could just help orient us before we start talking about specifics. How would you summarize the main point of Ecclesiastes?

Lydia Brownback
That’s a great question. I would say the main point is life is hard. There’s a reason for that, which is sin. There’s a way to live wisely in light of a hard life, and here is how. That’s the theme of the book.

Matt Tully
It feels like in some ways it’s such a realistic book. It meets us in the messiness of life in a very real way.

Lydia Brownback
It does and it makes us focus on things we don’t want to think about too much, like death. That’s a big theme. And we have to stand back and consider a lot of people avoid this book because they find it depressing. There are even commentaries out there that will say the preacher, or the narrator who is telling the story, is just doom and gloom and it’s really depressing. Actually, if you really start studying, it’s meant to be hope filled. There’s a lot of hope here. It’s realistic about life’s difficulties, but within that realism and because of that realism, where do we go for hope? Life is hard. That’s real. That’s a fact. If we want to avoid that and if we’re coming to Scripture to find just a bit of encouragement for the morning, this is not your go-to book unless you understand how to read it. Obviously, we never just want to go to Scripture for encouragement in the morning; we want to go to know our God better. And so how do we find him uniquely in this book? We do it by facing the reality of life.

Matt Tully
Speak a little bit more to that dynamic that we all feel sometimes. We sometimes can approach our Bible reading almost for a daily dose of encouragement. That can make books like Ecclesiastes—and there are probably other books that are like this—make them a little less appealing to us.

Lydia Brownback
People have ten minutes in the morning, and so what are their go-to verses? Something joyful from Philippians or a psalm about how God is protecting and caring and shepherding us. And so then they read that, and they go on their way with a prayer. But what they miss from doing that is the whole counsel of God, which is from Genesis to Revelation. We go to Scripture not just to have a happy encouragement in the morning, but it’s to know and to anchor our souls in the One who upholds our life. And that is where the encouragement comes, whether we find it in a quick ten-minute reading or not. So understanding who God is takes reading all of the Bible, including books like Ecclesiastes.

Matt Tully
And one thing that I love about a book like Ecclesiastes is that it does, in a certain sense and from a certain perspective, it meets us in the hardness, the reality of the trials of life that we all face. And sometimes that’s really important, to know that God knows about this struggle that we feel like we’re facing day to day.

Lydia Brownback
Well, yeah. He not only knows it, but the thing is so distinctive about Ecclesiastes is it forces us to look at it. This book takes us back to Genesis 3 at the fall, and it’s showing us that everything that was mentioned there—what the Lord said there about “cursed is the ground” and “by the sweat of your brow you’ll have to work”—

Matt Tully
“And you shall surely die.”

Lydia Brownback
Yes. All the things in the so-called curse there in Genesis 3 we’re seeing played out in the realities that are given to us in Ecclesiastes. So there’s a lot of talk about death in Ecclesiastes. And so we think, Why do people avoid this? Well, in the same way today, we don’t want to have funerals anymore. We want to have celebrations of life. And so there’s a big thing built around that. Let’s celebrate the wonderful life that person had. And sometimes that’s a wonderful thing, but is it a way also to avoid facing the difficulty of the reality of death? And so this book makes us have to face these hard things.

Matt Tully
In the introduction to this new study that you’ve written, you call the book of Ecclesiastes “a purpose journey.” Why do you call it that?

Lydia Brownback
Kohelet is setting out on a purpose journey to find the meaning of life. And we see in the opening chapters that he tests everything he can get his hands on, whether it’s food and drink and sex and riches and acquiring as much material gain as he can, having great success in his industries that he sets out to do. And so is there happiness in that? Is there meaning in that? Is there purpose in that? And along the way, each thing he tests and each thing he tries, no, it’s not the answer. And then he actually, as he’s looking and testing all these things, he notices all these injustices in the world. Well, people who work really hard sometimes can pour their life out into earning and just saving enough for their family to pass on to their kids. Well, they die a tragic death, they lose all their money, someone steals it, and their kids get it. As he’s looking at the world, he sees injustices like that. He sees oppression, where the good guy often gets smashed down by the evil guy, and what do you do with that? And he’s trying to ask, How do we live in a world like this? How do we understand a world like this?

Matt Tully
You mentioned a little bit before that the book of Ecclesiastes is wisdom literature. It’s a certain genre of Scripture that actually goes beyond just the Christian Scriptures. But what would be some of the key things we should know about how wisdom literature works? And how might that impact how we actually start reading this book? Because we shouldn’t read it exactly like we might read one of the Gospels or even one of the historical books. So what would be some of the ground rules for reading and understanding wisdom literature?

Lydia Brownback
That’s really great to talk about. I think a lot of the approaches really were helped by how we look at the book of Proverbs. There are actual proverbs in Ecclesiastes. We’re not to take everything there as promises, as concrete. “If you do this, you’re going to get this.”

Matt Tully
It’s not a math equation.

Lydia Brownback
No. These are observations. For so much of the wisdom literature, what we see in it are observations about how God has wired the world to work and how it’s affected by the fall, by man’s sin, and how God intervenes in that. We’re supposed to see it as observations. That’s where wisdom is. And then from that to draw conclusions about how to live constructively. That’s really what it is.

09:14 - “All Is Vanity”

Matt Tully
Let’s start talking about a few specific passages. I’m sure some of these are going to be pretty familiar. These are the ones that we often might come across in our Bible reading and just think, What am I supposed to do with this little bit of information? Or we may even feel a little bit disconcerted. They don’t always seem to fit with even other parts of Scripture. So let’s start with essentially the first line in the book, and that’s perhaps the most famous line of the book. “Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” I have to think that maybe of all the biblical books, this has got to be one of the darkest sounding openings. Sometimes we understand this to mean pointless or worthless or fleeting. Everything is pointless. What is going on here? How would you help us to understand this opening verse?

Lydia Brownback
Let’s interpret vanity first of all. It doesn’t mean pride, looking in the mirror and saying, “I think a lot of myself.” It’s not that kind of vanity. It’s not a woman who’s being vain. It means meaningless or empty here. So it’s saying, “Everything is meaningless. Everything is meaningless.” So if you just observe the world around you and how the injustices and other things that we see every day, you could come to that conclusion. So he’s saying, “This is how the world is. Let’s face it.” But he’s setting the stage to tell us, “Yes, apart from God everything is vanity.” He wants us to see that there is no point to life apart from God. And it is all meaningless apart from God. So he’s stripping out the one thing that makes it meaningful in order to drive us there.

Matt Tully
One of the things that I noticed, though, is that this sentiment, this idea that all is vanity, it actually comes back near the end of the book in Ecclesiastes 12:8, where he says the same thing again. Why do you think he does that? Why does he start out with that statement and then almost end with it? There’s another section after that, but he ends with that similar sentiment.

Lydia Brownback
He’s bookending. So if we see it twice there, that’s telling us something. It’s beginning his tale, and then he’s wrapping it up. And then we have this sort of appendix afterward. So he’s starting with that and saying the same thing to emphasize the point he’s just made. So when he starts out with saying, “Meaningless, meaningless, vanity of vanities, everything is vanity,” he’s saying, “Okay, take note. This is what I’m about to tell you.” And then at the end he’s saying, “This is what I just told you.”

Matt Tully
That’s helpful. That’s a good thing for us to keep in mind when we read our Bibles is that oftentimes we see these pairings or we see the biblical writers start somewhere and then eventually come back to a similar sentiment. And that can really clue us into what the main point of that passage was.

Lydia Brownback
Yeah. Exactly.

12:02 - “The Wise Dies Just like the Fool”

Matt Tully
So let’s turn then to Ecclesiastes 2:16. I wonder if you could read that verse for us, and then help us understand what he’s getting at with this passage.

Lydia Brownback
Verse 16 says, “For of the wise as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How the wise dies just like the fool!”

Matt Tully
We hear that verse, and it can, at least on a first reading, seem to suggest that there’s really no point in being wise. What’s the point of being wise versus being a fool, because they’re both going to die just the same? And so it almost sounds like that verse is saying wisdom isn’t actually that important.

Lydia Brownback
The observation he’s making in this verse is that whether you’re wise or foolish, everyone’s going to end up dead. So it depends on why you’re going after it. That’s what he wants us to think about. Why are you pursuing wisdom? Do you think it’s going to accomplish a lot for you in an earthly realm? Do you think it’s going to buy you control over your life or your death? No. So why are you going after it? I think he wants his reader to process why they do things. And that’s part of wisdom too. It makes us think about our motives. If you want to be wise, is it for selfish gain, or is it because you want to live under the authority of God, which is where real wisdom is? So are we pursuing wisdom because we think it’s going to get us something in this life, or are we pursuing it because we want to be close to our God?

Matt Tully
That’s such a helpful thing because as we think about our own lives, there can be so many “good habits” or good ways of thinking or doing things. Maybe we’re very self-controlled or very disciplined or we work really hard, but it seems like this is a good reminder that we can pursue all those wise things for the wrong reasons sometimes.

Lydia Brownback
Yeah. Exactly. And recognizing that in ourselves is wisdom.

13:59 - Eat, Drink, and Be Merry?

Matt Tully
Another passage just a few verses later in chapter 2, verse 24. I wonder if you could read that for us.

Lydia Brownback
It says, “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God . . . .”

Matt Tully
That’s another one where we almost hear in that verse this classic phrase that I think almost stands as the anti-Christian sentiment. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. It almost sounds like that’s what he is saying. How do we understand that?

Lydia Brownback
He’s saying here that let’s not despise the day of small things in some ways. He’s telling us something about God here, which is that the rhythm of a simple life is a gift. There’s a humility and a gratitude in just being able to say, Am I able to work hard? Am I able to then sit down with my family at the end of the day and enjoy a simple dinner? Can I take joy in the things I have in my life? Or is there this inner striving that always wants more, the next thing, the better thing? What’s over here? What’s next? Maybe it was Howard Hughes who on his deathbed someone said to him, “How much money is enough?” and he said, “Just a little bit more.” I’m mixing up my wealthy person stories here, but it’s the same idea. We can get in our hearts, once we’ve achieved something, that there has to be something else. And we’re always looking for that next thing. People who go through life living for what they can get out of this life miss every bit of joy that they can find in it. That’s what he’s trying to say. And he’s pointing us to God, who gives us things, and everything we have is a gift. And that’s the wisdom that comes out of this verse—recognizing that whatever we have, however little it may be in comparison to others, is a gift. Therefore, when we recognize that, we can enjoy it.

Matt Tully
It makes me think of some story I heard—it could be apocryphal, as some of these can tend to be—but Tom Brady did some interview after winning what number Super Bowl he had. And they asked him, “How does that make you feel? Do you feel like you have more you want to accomplish as arguably one of the greatest football players of all time?” And he said something like, “It doesn’t really satisfy.” There’s always more that we can want. That’s our natural bent as humans is we’re always dissatisfied with what we have.

Lydia Brownback
Yes. And the wisdom is satisfied because it recognizes there’s something beyond this life. And so it’s almost like once we recognize God is God, that is our destiny, he’s controlling everything, we might as well just be at peace and rest in his care and enjoy. That enables us and equips us to enjoy our life.

Matt Tully
It is so ironic too that in our effort and in our pursuit of enjoying the next great, the next bigger thing that we might be pursuing, whether that’s a certain kind of job or a certain kind of salary or a certain kind of spouse, whatever it might be, it actually causes us to miss out on the joy that is all around us and available to us already.

Lydia Brownback
Yes. And biblical wisdom recognizes this. Notice how everything we’re saying points us to the source of wisdom—the One who is wisdom—and recognizing that any wisdom we get is rooted in that wisdom.

Matt Tully
And it’s also marred by the fall, by our sinful nature that drives us to, just like Adam and Eve, to pursue a wisdom and a joy apart from God.

Lydia Brownback
Yeah. This book, Ecclesiastes, is almost a sermon on the fall, and then redemption at the end.

17:45 - A Time for Everything

Matt Tully
Let’s turn to another passage just a few verses later at the beginning of chapter 3. This is this famous list of contrasts—I’m not sure what we would call these—contrasts that we all experience in our lives. He talks about a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck, a time to kill and a time to heal, to weep and laugh, to stay silent and to speak. What’s going on with all these contrasts? What’s the main point as he walks through these different things that we experience in our lives?

Lydia Brownback
I think we’re not meant to look at each little thing and try to find meaning in what he’s saying in each verse. We’re supposed to look at it as a whole and say he’s describing here the course of a life—what life looks like. There are ups and downs, peaks and valleys. And this is just going to be life for every human being, not just God’s people, but this is the way of life. And don’t live in the great times and think that’s indefinite, because if you’re at a peak, there’s going to be a valley. And don’t let the valleys make you despair, because there’s going to be a mountain again. He’s describing, again, an observation of how God has made the world to work.

Matt Tully
And what does it mean that he’s put eternity into our hearts? How does that connect with what he has just talked about?

Lydia Brownback
It’s basically saying, and we see that in the New Testament too where Paul said God can be known from the things that are made, and it’s saying there’s an awareness of God in every human being. There’s an awareness of God. People can avoid it, they can ignore it, but any human that God has created in his image is aware, at some depth, that there is God. And so are they going to acknowledge that? That’s wisdom. Or are they going to keep rejecting it, turning their back on it, and filling their lives chasing things that are meaningless?

Matt Tully
I’ve also wondered if that phrase relates to how he’s just walked through all of the, at times, chaotic nature of our lives. There are ups and downs, like you said, and peaks and valleys. And that all drives all humans, to some extent, to long for this eternal rest and eternal stability that we’re designed for, ultimately.

Lydia Brownback
Yes. And that’s the beautiful redemption that the preacher wants to bring out in this book. Good or bad, whatever’s going on, God is using it for his purposes, for his glory, to draw people to himself, to draw them to salvation, to reveal himself. It’s revelation of who God is. And his heart would incline to say, “Come to me.” Of course. Absolutely.

20:31 - “Be Not overly Righteous”

Matt Tully
Let’s jump ahead just a couple more passages. In chapter 7, verses 15 to 16 it seems like the author suggests that we shouldn’t pursue righteousness wholeheartedly because it won’t really save us from trouble, and it’s kind of pointless to pursue righteousness. Can you read those two verses and help us understand?

Lydia Brownback
Sure. It says, “In my vain life I have seen everything. There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evildoing. Be not overly righteous, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself?”

Matt Tully
Again, that one probably for me is the most difficult. “Be not overly righteous.” It just sounds like he’s saying, “Don’t be so intense about pursuing righteousness because ultimately, it might not actually save your life. It might not prolong your life. Your life could still be very hard.” How does that fit with what we see in the rest of the Bible?

Lydia Brownback
He’s not saying that. What he’s saying here is that if you do that, it’s basically legalism. If you think that you’re going to earn God’s favor, earn his rewards, earn all the good things you want out of life by making yourself righteous, it’s works righteousness. That’s what he’s rejecting here. So it’s this attitude that thinks, If I just do this, of course I’m going to get that. So he’s saying, no, that’s the wrong way to go about it.

Matt Tully
So it seems like it’s coming back to that motives issue. It’s looking at why are you pursuing righteousness in your life, not just that it’s pointless to do it in general.

Lydia Brownback
Well, of course, because if Scripture interprets Scripture, we know we’re called to pursue righteousness. We were told that all through the Bible, so we know that that’s not what he’s counseling here. So how do we understand it in light of the rest of Scripture? It’s that we don’t think that our righteousness earns us God’s favor.

Matt Tully
So then how do we understand a passage like this that is sort of warning us against legalism, warning us against a transactional view of righteousness, where we do this good thing and God rewards us, how do we fit that with even the fifth commandment in the Ten Commandments, which talks about honor your father and mother that you might enjoy a long life? And there are lots of Proverbs like that too that speak to do this good thing, act justly in this right way, and there will be a reward for that. Other parts of the Bible almost seem to hold out that idea of do the right thing, and you’re going to receive this blessing.

Lydia Brownback
I think we have two things here. One, in the wisdom literature and these observations, it’s telling us how God designed the world to work. Under ordinary circumstances, if you plug in A and live a certain way, this is how the results are going to be. If you work hard and put money in the bank, you’re going to grow your bank account. That’s plugging in A to get B. That’s an observation, and God’s made the world work that way. So in that sense, good things do result in blessing. So we look at the wisdom literature and say yes, he’s observing this is how the world works. But when we go to the fifth commandment there, when it talks about honor your father and mother that it may go well with you, we’re told in the New Testament about that commandment: that’s the first commandment with a promise, and so we can take that one as a promise, differently from an observation. So it’s understanding where it’s used in Scripture and saying how are we to understand it here? Which just goes to show it’s really good to know the different types of literature used, in terms of understanding how we apply it and understand it. But generally, you don’t have to have all that in your head just to go read the Bible. So we can look at this and say God is in control of everything, and if we live a certain way, he’s set it up such that we are going to be blessed. But again, let’s go back to motive. Are we being obedient to God because we say, “If I do this, I’m going to get this”? Our motive is off anyway. So it’s almost that you get to the point where it’s asking the wrong question. Are we living for the Lord? Because if we are, we’re going to be blessed spiritually and in tangible, earthly ways. We’re going to be blessed in every way, both in this life and the life to come. And it doesn’t mean there aren’t just as many hardships and difficulties worked in, but it does mean that the Lord has designed the world to work that if we live for him, we’re blessed. That’s what it is.

25:02 - “The Evil Days of Old Age”

Matt Tully
Let’s talk about the end of the book. In that final chapter, chapter 12, in the first few verses there, we get this picture of aging and even old age. And he opens that section, though, by saying, “Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth before the evil days come”—I think context would suggest, “the evil days of old age come.” So just the first question: Why does he direct this final section to young people rather than older people? You’d think he’d say, “Let me talk to the old people here who are experiencing the breakdown of their bodies and let me remind you of something or encourage you of something.” But he actually addresses young people explicitly. Why is that?

Lydia Brownback
He does. I think there are a couple of reasons. One, and I just observed this spending a couple of years with my elderly mom and watching her faculties decline. I had to be up close to it for a long time to see that when you get to a certain point of life, you’re not capable anymore. My mom couldn’t even read her Bible at the end of her life because her brain couldn’t absorb what she was reading. So I think it’s saying you still may be living, but are your faculties still in tune to be able to respond to the Lord? Also, I’ve seen there are elderly people who have been in Scripture all their lives a they’ve walked the Christian life so that when those declines do happen, it’s so deeply ingrained in their soul that it still comes out, even when they’re not mentally sharp anymore, even when their bodies are falling apart, because it’s so deep in them. It’s not like they have to then suddenly say, “Oh, I’m getting old. I better go find that that now.”

Matt Tully
I better try to memorize some Scripture.

Lydia Brownback
Yes. So that’s one. And the other is, to the young people, don’t waste your life. Don’t spend it on these meaningless things. It’s so timely that we’re talking about this today. I got a call and a friend of our family died in a plane crash on Saturday. He loved flying. He would rebuild World War I planes and just reconstruct them in his own hangar in his own backyard. And he would fly in airshows. It was the joy and delight of his life, and he just had so much fun doing this hobby. And it was more than a hobby, he was just immersed in it for many organizations. But the plane he was in that he built himself had a malfunction and crashed on Saturday afternoon shortly after takeoff, and he didn’t survive. So he has left a grieving family stunned. We just don’t know when death is going to come. That’s the other thing. It can come like that. He set out to have this happy day. Healthy guy, happy guy. H set out to have this happy, great experience. And we just don’t know. And that’s another reason you say to the young, “You don’t know. You might never get to be old. What if your days are over tomorrow?” And I just think today is always the right day to embrace what the Preacher’s telling us.

Matt Tully
It’s also so hard, I think, as young people to really think about what it means to get older and the reality of that, if the Lord allows us to live even that long. You mentioned earlier that one of the main points of this book is to make us look at some of these hard things about life that we often would prefer not to think about, to not look at straight on. But aging is one of those things that for young people especially, and maybe our culture also contributes to this today, we don’t often live or see older people as much anymore. We don’t live in multigenerational families as much, and we have nursing homes where older people will tend to go and live sometimes. So we’re not even aware of what that was like. Were there some things that you even learned as you were walking alongside your mom that surprised you about that process?

Lydia Brownback
That’s a great point. Today, the elderly are often shunted off to facilities to all live together. And I think some of that is there’s a lot of practical reasons for that.

Matt Tully
There’s a way to provide maybe better care or more care in those contexts.

Lydia Brownback
Yes. At the same time, there are some fear in that too. It’s hard to get that close. It’s scary. And we do see this is where life is going. From dust we’re born, to dust we will return. And you’re seeing it happening in front of your eyes. And it’s not just the mind that isn’t as sharp. Every part of your body falls apart, and we don’t see it as up close unless we have an elderly person in our life that we watch go through the process. And then also when we’re young, we think that’s so far away, that’s so far off. And I thought that up through my forties. And now I’m in my sixties, and I realize how fast it goes. It is right here. You know that old saying, Oh, life goes so fast. We see that more and more every year.

Matt Tully
It’s a cliche. We say it all the time.

Lydia Brownback
It’s true. Cliches are true. They’re cliches for a reason, because they’re true. But still there’s an exponential racing forward that happens when you cross that fifty line. And especially when you get near sixty, you’re in the downward phase. And suddenly, how is it here already? So the preacher wants people to recognize that when they’re twenty. Wisdom will say, “I may not feel that way today. I’m not anywhere near it, but let me listen and observe and open my heart and mind to face the fact that I am going to see that someday. It is going to be me—if I even get that far.” So it’s meant to open our eyes. This book is meant to open our eyes to face reality so that we will be drawn and driven to Christ our Savior.

Matt Tully
It makes me think back to one of the things that I look back on my childhood and appreciate the most is my mom would take my sister and I occasionally to visit shut ins—people who are members of our church who couldn’t get out to get to church because of their old age or their infirmities. And I just remember going to these visits maybe once a month with different people and just getting that time with people who were significantly older and were physically were impaired because of their age in different ways. And it’s always stuck with me. It was such a helpful experience. It strikes me as maybe that’s an application, even from this passage, to spend time with people who are significantly older than you just to not allow yourself to be blind to the reality of this.

Lydia Brownback
That’s a great application, Matt, for any age. And if you have a grandmother in your life, if you have just whoever, or if you don’t have an elderly relative, you can seek it out that way. And how encouraging it is for old people to have young people come see them.

32:03 - The Meaning of Life

Matt Tully
Yeah, absolutely. Well, let’s go to the very, very end of chapter 12. As you said before, there’s this little almost like an appendix to the book that reads very differently. It has a different tone. I want to understand that. In chapter 12, verses 9 to 14, we just see a little bit of a shift here. What’s going on there? How should we understand what this little section at the very end is all about?

Lydia Brownback
Everything that’s come before is his reflection and the conclusion he’s come to. And now he’s wrapping up the book. It’s going on to talk about, besides being wise, “the Preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care. The preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth.” So what we see here at the end is sort of the credentials for everything that’s gone before it. The Preacher: here are his credentials. Here’s why he could say what he did. He’s a wise person. He spent a lot of time gathering his data, and here it is. And then we get the conclusion at the very end. It’s in verses 13 and 14. This is the conclusion to the whole book right here, where he says, “The end of the matter. All has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.” So it brings us back just where the book of Proverbs brings us. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. That’s what we’re told in Proverbs. It’s what we’re told here. Live your life in such a way that it’s not meaningless and purposeless. And if you are on this quest, like the preacher was at the beginning of the book—What is the purpose? What is meaning? What is it all about? Is it going to be in my money? Is it the pursuit of money? Is it the pursuit of pleasure? Is it the pursuit of all the things the world says this is where you find it? Don’t waste your life testing it. “I’ve done that for you,” the Preacher says. “This is what I’ve concluded. So just please listen to me, and listen to the Lord,” is what he’s saying.

Matt Tully
Yeah, that’s such a helpful summary. And I love that. He’s done so much of that testing for us. We don’t need to learn by experience always. Sometimes we can learn by example. We can learn by a wiser person saying, “Hey, this is the path of joy. This is the path of freedom.”

Lydia Brownback
Well, yeah. And if this was Solomon who wrote it, and I think the biblical evidence is that it is, he knew the Lord, but he also had more of this world’s goods than just about anybody. He had 700 wives, he had so much wealth, and he was known for his wisdom. So we see someone who literally had it all. And if he had it all—the best of what this world gives—and he had so much wisdom as a gift from God, what does he conclude? Which is better? He’s been able to have both. And he then can tell us, “I’ve had both. This is better.”

35:12 - United to the One Who Is Wisdom

Matt Tully
So Lydia, as you think about this study that you’ve written and think about the women who might start doing this, what would be your encouragement to them as they think about embarking on this journey through the book of Ecclesiastes? Again, perhaps it’s a book they’ve never studied before and this feels a little bit intimidating. What would you leave them with?

Lydia Brownback
I would say come to this book to just hear what the Preacher says and what he’s saying about God. Don’t be scared of it. It can be confusing at times. What is he saying in some of his little proverbs and his little poems, and what am I supposed to take from this? It’s the big picture that you want to come away with. And that’s why a Bible study can be really helpful. You can discuss with each other. We had testers of my Bible study on Ecclesiastes answer the questions. And they came up, some of them, with different answers to the same question. Neither answer was wrong; they were just different. You twist a piece of glass in the sun (a prism), and you see different angles of getting to the same thing, and different light shines on and different colors come out. So it’s that kind of book. So don’t feel like you have to have a right answer to some of these. Go at it and realize it’s poetry. What is he saying? What do I see? What do I observe here? So don’t be scared of it. Just know that the end is where you’re going. And this points us to Christ. And also that’s a great thing to keep in mind, because if you think—can I read 1 Corinthians?

Matt Tully
Yeah.

Lydia Brownback
The Preacher ends and he says, “Fear God and keep his commandments. This is the whole duty of man.” If you know that going into the study, then you can take back up from there and read it saying, “Ah! I see how he’s trying to get there.” So take the last two verses of Ecclesiastes. Read those first, and then read the whole book. Then it makes sense. If you then see where he was pointing in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, starting in verse 26: “For consider your calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards. Not many were powerful. Not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.” And we see many contrasts set up for us in Ecclesiastes too. Then Paul goes on here in Corinthians: “God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” So that’s the whole point. All of the Old Testament wisdom points us to the one who is wisdom, which is Jesus. He became for us wisdom from God. So the wisdom we get in the Old Testament—the fear of the Lord, living centered on him in awe and reverence, shaping life around God—that’s wisdom. That’s Old Testament biblical wisdom. It all points to the person of wisdom. And when we are united to him by faith, that means we have his wisdom. And it doesn’t mean we live it perfectly, but we’re united to the one who is wisdom, so we have everything.

Matt Tully
Lydia, thanks so much for walking us through this really amazing book. Perplexing at times, but as you’ve said, as we dig into it, as we seek to understand it by faith, we’ll see the message of this book come through loud and clear.

Lydia Brownback
Yes! If we approach it prayerfully, all the perplexing things, the poetry and the Proverbs, it will really come alive for us. And it’s one of the most beautiful pieces of literature in the Bible. And so it’s just, again, it’s so worth doing to start with the last two verses of the book and then go back and read the whole thing. Then you understand Ecclesiastes.

Matt Tully
Sounds good. Thanks so much, Lydia.

Lydia Brownback
Thanks for having me, Matt.

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