Zack Eswine - Recovering Eden: The Gospel According to Ecclesiastes

In Recovering Eden , Zack Eswine has provided a pastorally poetic guide to the endlessly wild and strange wonder called Ecclesiastes. He reliably reminds the reader that a search for lifes significance begins with a trustworthy God who fills life with meaning throughout lifes seasons and ends with this One who makes all things new in Jesus Christ. Be sure to reflect on the weighty questions that Zack provides after each chapter. They offer the reader a timely opportunity to respond to the authors thoughtful observations of an ultimately hopeful text.

Donald C. Guthrie , Director of the Ph.D. (Educational Studies), Professor of Educational Ministries, The Jeanette L. Hsieh Chair of Educational Leadership, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

While very few of us are professional philosophers who deal with the abstract problems of meaning, all of us are daily dealing with the functional problems of meaning. We all want our lives to count for something. Every one of us craves meaningits human nature to yearn for it. The question is, where are we looking to find it: work, pleasure, our children, our spouse, beauty, sex, our possessions, our position, our reputation, our accomplishments? What are you depending on to make life worth living? What keeps you going?

Ecclesiastes wont allow for pat answers to these deeply existential questionsit forces us to look beneath the surface. C. S. Lewis once wrote, Human history... [is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy. This is, in short, the message of Ecclesiastes. The writer of Ecclesiastes is not interested in pious platitudes and theory. Hes not some ivory-tower pontificator. Rather, hes slogging his way through life on the ground, desperately looking for something to make him feel alive, something that will satisfy, something to give him the meaning he longs for. Ecclesiastes is an honest look at life without God. It explores the ways in which people try to save themselves apart from God, and in doing so, it blows our coverit removes our fig leaves. It leads us to the abyss and drives us to despair. It reveals the meaninglessness of life under the sun and causes us to cry out, Who will rescue me?

My friend Zack Eswine helps us to see that all the answers sought for by the writer of Ecclesiastes (and us) under the sun come to us from above the sun, in the person and work of Jesus. Reading Ecclesiastes in the light of Christs finished work tells us that ultimate meaning is found in God through Christ, who defeats death and brings meaning to life. Jesus subjected himself to the curse of a meaningless world in order to free us from it.

For those who see no end to their laborious search for meaning and satisfaction, Jesus promises rest: Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Apart from Jesus, we are left in despair, crushed by the words Everything is meaningless. Only in Christ are we freed from the bondage of vanity. Christ has completed our labors, hes secured our meaning, hes rescued us from futility. Thank you, Zack, for reminding me of this. I keep forgetting.

Tullian Tchividjian , Pastor, Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

chapter one

An Unexpected Voice

A long moan answers, rising in our talk.

W hen readers in the early 1960s first perused the book A Grief Observed , many found comfort but some felt troubled. The troubled ones were accustomed to hearing solid strength, strong faith, formidable apologetics, and credible worship from the pen of C. S. Lewis. Suddenly now, to read his doubts and questions so raw and transparent was unusual, strange, and befuddling. This widowers voice, like his aging head, his dripping nose, and his heaving shoulders, leaned heavy onto the chest of the page, and some who held him there as they read his grieving words became restless, frightened, and disconcerted. It doesnt really matter whether you grip the arms of the dentists chair or let your hands lie in your lap, Lewis wrote. The drill drills on.

Talk to me about the truth of religion and Ill listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and Ill listen submissively. But dont come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you dont understand.

Meanwhile, where is God?... Go to him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become.

Lewiss readers did not expect someone like that to talk like this. The book sat on their shelves next to Mere Christianity , The Great Divorce , The Problem of Pain , and The Weight of Glory , but some felt less certain about their desire to read it and how or if they were meant to use it.

Many people who cherish the Bible express a similar reaction to the book of Ecclesiastes. We do not expect the words we find there. What many of us have come to expect from the Bible in general and this messenger in particular, doesnt match. Yet, the same God who inspired the Psalms and the Gospels speaks here too. These inspired words which disturb us reveal aspects of God too often neglected by us. If one has only driven a car with automatic transmission, driving manually will take some getting used to. What do we need to know in order to get used to the way this book functions in its attempt to get us from one place to another?

Seeking Double Knowledge

The pastor and theologian John Calvin believed that we discover wisdom and life by means of double knowledge: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. Accordingly, if we want to know God, we must learn moment by moment to furnish our mind with the contemplation of God.

The books of the Bible invite us to this double knowledge. Some books, like Romans, put God center stage. We learn about him mostly by contemplating him directly and less by paying attention to ourselves.

But one of the ways that God leads us to know him is by making us pay attention to ourselves. He reveals himself by recovery of our humanity. He shows us what we were made for and then bids us to look at what has become of us. This is what you will want to admit about Ecclesiastes. In the same way as books such as Ruth or Esther, in Ecclesiastes God intends you to know him by requiring you to look plainly and without polish at yourself, your neighbors, and the world in which you and I live. God puts himself in the background, as it were, in order to place self-concern front and center.

We are prompted by our own ills, says Calvin, to contemplate the good things of God. In the Spirits hands, Ecclesiastes confronts us with our own ills in order that by knowing ourselves as we are we might come to know God as he is.

The Perspective of This Voice

The one whom God has designated to tell us about ourselves is the Preacher (Eccl. 1:1). The word translated Preacher refers to the gathering or assembly of a community of people, especially for the worship of God. Therefore, the king of Israel, the son of David, is like a pastor in a church, preaching. In that light, Ecclesiastes is a sermon with a text (vanity of vanities, 1:2; 12:8), an explanation of that text (Eccl. 110), and an application of what that text then means for our lives (Eccl. 11:112:7). But this sermon unsettles immediately, for what the Preacher does is step to his pulpit and shout at us, Vanity! Everything is vanity! (see Eccl. 1:2).

But this Preacher-king takes up the title son of David and identifies himself as the heir to the psalm-singing, sling-shot-hurling, shepherd-king, whom God said was a man after his own heart (1 Sam. 13:14). Even more, son of David signifies the mantle that Gods promise would in time place upon Jesus (Matt. 1:1). Such credentials promote our expectation of a powerful and uplifting biblical sermon. Yet, the Preacher-king steps up to his pulpit and tells us that what God gives us in this life amounts to little more than an unhappy business (Eccl. 1:13).