The Key: What Ecclesiastes Says Makes Life Worth Living
On Sunday (October 18) we reached the end of our series through Ecclesiastes. Before I tell you what the key is, let me tell you about keys.
Last week (October 15-17), our church served over a thousand people at a clothing giveaway. I came in at the end on Saturday to help with cleanup, and since it was chilly, I had a coat with me for the first time in months. I tucked it at the back of the stage. An hour and a half later, I was ready to leave and couldn’t find it. Someone had bagged it with the giveaway clothes, and my car keys were in the pocket. We ended up ripping open bags until Rebecca found it.
Keys are important.
Nine Keys, One Lock
Think about how many keys you carry with you on a daily basis. Most of us carry four or five. Marie had nine. I asked her whether she could say what each one was for, and then I held up a brand-new padlock from Ace Hardware and asked if any of her nine keys would open it.
None of them did. In the whole room, with hundreds of keys, not one fit.
Why? Because the key to that lock came in the box. The manufacturer provides the key.
That is the whole point of Ecclesiastes. The Teacher has spent twelve chapters searching for the key that unlocks a meaningful life, something that isn’t hevel, the Hebrew word for vapor, vanity, or meaningless. He tries wisdom, religion, pleasure, relationships, wealth, work, and legacy. Each one goes into the lock, but none of them turns.
He keeps trying his own keys. Only the Maker of the lock has the one that fits. That’s why the book tells us to “remember your Creator in the days of your youth.” He’s the one who provides it. As Peter writes, his divine power has already given us everything we need for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3). It’s already given to us, and yet we dig through drawers and couch cushions looking for something else.
Rejoice and Remember
The Teacher’s closing chapters give us the key in two words: rejoice and remember.
Ecclesiastes has a reputation as a bummer, and I’ll admit it has its moments. But did you know that joy, enjoy, and rejoice appear about twenty times in these twelve chapters in my translation? In any other book, we’d call that a joyful book. Chapter 11 says to rejoice in the time God has given you. Chapter 12 says to remember your Creator before it’s too late.
Joy and sorrow can coexist. Paul wrote “Rejoice in the Lord always” from a prison cell. You can find a reason to rejoice even on the hard days. Even if you wake up in pain, at least you woke up. Even if you’ve lost someone, in Christ we can rejoice knowing we’ll see them again.
And remember is one of the great words of the Old Testament. In Deuteronomy, Moses is giving his farewell address, and he keeps coming back to it. He tells Israel that they’re about to enter a land of plenty, and they must not forget their God, or they’ll turn around and say, “My strength did this.”
Commentator Craig Bartholomew says that remembering God in Ecclesiastes 12:1 is far more than mental agreement that God exists. It represents the difference between a worldview with humanity at the center and one with God at the center. When we forget God, we get main character syndrome. We push him to the edges and put ourselves in the middle.
That’s the rich fool in Jesus’ parable (Luke 12:13-21). His harvest wasn’t the problem. The problem was that he never acknowledged who gave it to him. And every time the Teacher hits a brick wall in this book, it’s because he has made himself the center instead of God.
An Epitaph and a Eulogy
The last words of the Teacher himself are these: “Absolute futility. Everything is futile.” I like to imagine that as his epitaph, the words carved in granite to sum up a life.
Then a narrator picks up, and I picture him as a son or a student, someone close to the Teacher, giving the eulogy. This grand, kingly, wise man is gone, and he’s carrying stories and insight to the grave that no one could fully capture. The narrator says you could write books forever and only scratch the surface. So how do you sum it all up?
“The conclusion of the matter is this: Fear God, and keep his commands. This is the whole duty of mankind.”
That’s the key, and it’s just another way of saying rejoice and remember. Remember God and fear him. Rejoice and keep his commands.
His commands aren’t burdensome. They’re for our good (Deuteronomy 10:13). If you want to know the key to a good life, live it the way the Author intended. No other key will turn that lock.
Christopher Wright points out that Ecclesiastes is a search for what it really means to be human, and this is the Teacher’s final answer. It isn’t just our duty but our very identity. The essence of human life is found in a relationship with God.
And “fear” doesn’t mean being afraid of him (mostly). It means putting God in his proper place, with awe and reverence, remembering that his ways are higher than ours as the sky is higher than the ground (Isaiah 55:8-9). It’s a faith that transforms you from the inside out and makes you come fully alive.
The Same Key All Through Scripture
Ecclesiastes joins a long list of bibilca authors and teachers in boiling down a life worth living to its essence. For instance,
Micah 6:8: Act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.
Jesus: Love the Lord your God with everything you have, and love your neighbor as yourself.
Paul: What matters is “faith working through love.”
Take your pick. They all say the same thing. And one of my favorites comes from Irenaeus, a second-century church father: “The glory of God is man fully alive.”
Remember that you will die, but don’t forget to live. While there’s breath in your lungs, live the life God gave you. Before your feet hit the floor in the morning, resolve that today belongs to him. Not every day can be the best day of your life, but you’ve already survived the worst ones to get here. You can face what’s coming through God, by fearing him and keeping his commands, by rejoicing and remembering.
Three Questions to Sit With
As we closed the series, I think Ecclesiastes challenges us to ask three big questions of ourselves:
Is my life oriented around a healthy fear of God? Where have I put myself at the center and pushed him to the edges? My relationships? My finances? My job? My health? Even my service to others?
Have I been ignoring certain commands of God? Which teachings of Christ or nudges of the Spirit have I brushed aside? None of us is perfect, and Jesus only asked us to be perfect in one thing, which is love. What have I been putting off?
What have I kept hidden that needs to come into the light? Ecclesiastes ends by saying God will bring every hidden thing into judgment. What am I covering up that I’d rather bring out now than later?
What if the Teacher Had Seen the Other Side?
I close this series with a question that I kept asking all throughout. What if the Teacher could have seen what we see? What if he’d read the Gospels, or Paul’s letters, or known about the empty tomb?
Ecclesiastes ends with a warning about judgment. But Paul tells us in Romans 8 that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. There’s a difference between judgment and condemnation. Yes, judgment awaits us all, but the Judge on the throne is the one who died for us and now speaks on our behalf. If Christ doesn’t condemn you, no one can.
So much of the Teacher’s search felt like a wedge between him and God. Paul answers that fear at the end of Romans 8:
“I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor any power, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Fear God and keep his commands. Nothing can separate you from him, and you can always come home. We live on this side of the resurrection, so let’s start living like it.
Think About It
The Teacher tried wisdom, pleasure, wealth, work, and legacy, and none of them fit the lock. Which “key” have you been most tempted to rely on, and what has it actually delivered? (Ecclesiastes 12:1, 2 Peter 1:3)
Joy is a major theme of Ecclesiastes, and Paul wrote “Rejoice in the Lord always” from prison. What does it look like to hold joy and sorrow together in real life, and where have you seen someone do it well?(Ecclesiastes 11:7-9, Philippians 4:4)
Craig Bartholomew says forgetting God leads to “main character syndrome.” Where are you most likely to put yourself at the center, such as relationships, finances, work, health, or even serving others? What might it look like to move God back to the middle? (Deuteronomy 8, Luke 12:16-21)
The sermon described “fear God and keep his commands” as awe and reverence rather than being afraid. How would you explain the fear of the Lord to someone who hears it as scary? How does it change the way you think about obedience? (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14, Deuteronomy 10:12-13)
Ecclesiastes ends with a warning about judgment, while Romans 8 says there is no condemnation in Christ. How does living on “this side of the resurrection” change the way we read the end of Ecclesiastes and the way we live today? (Romans 8:1, 8:31-39)
WATCH or LISTEN TO the full sermon at tulipstreet.com/sermons
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