All is Vanity: Ecclesiastes 12
Chapter eleven ended with a challenging charge, remove vexation from your heart, and put away pain from your body, for youth and the dawn of life are vanity (11:10). Both youth and the dawn of life are vanity. A mere…
All is Vanity: Ecclesiastes 11
The Preacher is nearing the end of his sermon, and chapter eleven is no less satisfying for those who’ve come to recognize the vanity of our lives, rightly tuning our ears to wisdom as we walk by faith not by…
All is Vanity: Ecclesiastes 10
“Dead flies make the perfumer’s ointment give off a stench; so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor.” How’s that for an opening line in this chapter of the Preacher’s sermon! It reminds me of Jesus’s warning regarding the leaven…
All is Vanity: Ecclesiastes 9
But all this I laid to heart says the Preacher at the start of chapter nine. All this is a fancy way of saying, “let’s pause and go back a few steps before bounding ahead”—back to the end of chapter…
All is Vanity: Ecclesiastes 8
The Preacher starts out this chapter with two questions:“Who is like the wise?” and“Who knows the interpretation of a thing?” After the concluding thought in chapter seven, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes (7:29),…
All is Vanity: Ecclesiastes 7, Pt 2
Chapter Seven was simply too rich to pack into one post (you can read Part One by clicking HERE). In this second half, the Preacher continues to lay out astounding wisdom for us today. Astounding, because I literally had to…
All is Vanity: Ecclesiastes 7, Pt 1
The wisest man to walk the earth penned the Proverbs, a book of wisdom, and Ecclesiastes, this sermon-style book. The Preacher, he called himself, spends much of Chapter 7 contrasting wisdom and folly, and inevitably pointing us to the One…
All is Vanity: Ecclesiastes 6
There is a grievous evil (6:2) witnessed by the Preacher, and it lies heavy on mankind (6:1). Heavy, like a weight. Like a burden. And the evil? The Hebrew root word actually transliterates to be a sickness, a disease. The…
All is Vanity: Ecclesiastes 5
The Preacher’s sermon is getting serious. Seriously. Guard your steps when you go to the house of God (5:1a). That’s some fear-talk, the fear of the Lord. Like a lens exposing our sin and our filth—we’d much rather talk of…
All is Vanity: Ecclesiastes 4
The tears of the oppressed were seen by the wise Preacher, and there was none to comfort them (4:1). Chapter four of Ecclesiastes is quite the hard pill to swallow. Beholding the evil of our world we are quick to…
