Why Ecclesiastes?
By popular consent, Ecclesiastes is the most difficult book in the Bible.
For this series of evangelistic events, we are choosing to adopt the approach that Ecclesiastes is used best when used for preparing the way for the Gospel.
We actually want to go further than that — see our papers below — and claim that Ecclesiastes is effectively a set of Solomon's lecture notes when addressing the people from 'all the world' who came to hear his wisdom.
We accept that many people prefer to regard it as the work of 'a philosopher' rather than of Solomon. We don't accept that view — see our paper on authorship — but, in any case, we think that the book itself makes a sufficiently strong claim to be by Solomon that we can reasonably refer to the author as 'Solomon' throughout this series.
Papers on Ecclesiastes
These papers grew out of a series of small group Bible studies at Stechford Baptist. They are otherwise unpublished, and we welcome your thoughts. Please do acknowledge them if you want to use them elsewhere — we may want to use them as the basis of published papers later.
To make sense of Ecclesiastes, we are suggesting that it should be read as a series of 'evangelistic' addresses to people who knew nothing of the God of Israel, but had heard of Solomon's wisdom, his fame, his wealth, and his access to pleasure of every kind.
Solomon begins by making it clear that the meaningless which his audience experience is not relieved by wealth, wisdom, power, fame, and so on — rather, it is thrown into sharp relief.
We agree — this is why we've chosen people who epitomise these things in modern society.
At the same time, Ecclesiastes is a compassionate book, not gloating on misfortune, and recognising that people suffer in differing proportions, and this does not seem to relate in this life to their goodness or badness.
For the same reason, we are not suggesting that the celebrities of our titles should be used as straw men to be knocked down — we would rather see them as models to which many people aspire, who have themselves discovered that wealth, fame, power, respect, and other things the world runs after do not bring a sense of meaning and value.
Despite the depressing view of the human condition, Solomon returns again and again to the greatness of God, and our insignificance before Him.
We don't think that Solomon is trying to be pious or pietistic. We think that presenting the case for a compassionate and just creator — as opposed to pagan views on many, capricious gods, who are part of the same universe we live in — is the very heart of his message.
For this series, therefore, we want to emphasise the contrast between what happens when we look at the universe as if there was nothing beyond it, and when we see God the Creator as infinitely greater than the universe He created.
Our experience of evangelism over the years is that people need to have the bleakness of the human condition thrown into sharp (but accurate) relief before they are ready to hear the good news of the Gospel.
We do want each evening to include a presentation of how to become a Christian — but we want this underpinned by 'what life is like even for the rich and famous' first.
Stechford Baptist Church • Victoria Road • Stechford • Birmingham B33 8AH. Map. Stechford is in the Stechford and Yardley North Ward, and is close to Hodge Hill.
