I have been part of a small-group bible study with men at my church called, "Men in Training." The Bible study is two semesters long with the first semester being a study of a book in the bible and the second semester being a more topical study. I was introduced to Warren Wiersbe last year when we did our study on Proverbs. It was intense, but I learned a lot. Near the end of the second semester, after our topical study, I started asking myself what I wanted to accomplish in my spiritual walk. Also, how do I get there? I knew I needed to study the Bible & be more effective at it. Overall, I knew I wasn't happy with myself or my walk. I wanted to be where Paul was at in Philippians 4:11 when he mentioned being content in whatever circumstance. I went to Lifeway looking for Bible Studies dealing with that topic, and I came across this book. It intrigued me because it was a topic I wanted to address and I have never seriously studied Ecclesiastes.
Even though I read and heard that Solomon was one of the "wisest people that ever lived," there was a big part of me that didn't believe it. I know there were stories in the bible that displayed his wisdom. Obviously you can't deny Proverbs! But in the back of my head I was like, "If he was so wise, why did he have so many wives, bring in their false Gods, and ruin what was probably the greatest kingdom on earth?!?" Now I'll admit that no one is perfect and that God uses imperfect people (because frankly if he didn't, he wouldn't have a lot of people from which he could choose). That still didn't stop my bias before digging into this book. However after reading and studying Ecclesiastes, I could see the wisdom and intelligence in this writing. Any Christian or even non-Christian that enjoys a little Philosophical discussion would enjoy this book.
There are so many intricate topics in Ecclesiastes that I could not do it justice in trying to sum it up on this blog. I thought that's what I was going to do when I started writing this post, but perhaps not. The funny thing is that Ecclesiastes ends where Proverbs begins. After his long argument, Solomon ends up by saying, "Fear God and keep his commandments" (12:13). In Proverbs he starts off by saying, "The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge" (1:7) and then he goes from there. Both books display the power of God and the importance of living for him verses living for anything else. You see that all through Ecclesiastes. Your job won't satisfy you, money won't satisfy you, people will disappoint, there's nothing new under the sun, you live and you die and without God it's meaningless! If you want to be truly satisfied, there's only one who can truly satisfy you.
So, does God want us to just do whatever he wants and we can never have fun? God wants us to enjoy life. However no where does he say that to enjoy life means to enjoy sin. We tend to think that since we got away with it once, we can get away with it all the time. As Wiersbe points out, "God is indeed long-suffering toward sinners and doesn't always judge sin immediately, however, God's mercy must not be used as an excuse for man's rebellion." Those who are my age or even a little younger are in danger because we think we have time to correct the sin in which we engage. Yet even Charles Spurgeon said, "Youthful sins lay a foundation for aged sorrows." Being in God's will helps us to enjoy life even more! Think about it in terms of children. If you ask most children if rules are good, most may say that they should be able to do whatever they want. They would say a lot of rules are stupid. However they haven't lived as long as we have and know what we know. They don't see why they can't go to sleep whenever they want, but we know what happens when you don't get enough sleep. They don't understand why they can't cross the road by themselves because they don't know the power and unpredictability of traffic. They don't know why they can't get in cars with strangers, but we know the evil that is in some people's hearts. Do you see what I'm getting at right now? Just because there are rules and we don't understand them, doesn't mean that God put them in place for no reason. He knows something that we don't know.
I believe Wiersbe puts it best near the end of the book. "Life is worth living if you are truly alive through faith in Jesus Christ." So the question is, are we satisfied? Do we feel that Life is worth living?
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