What does First B Jackson teach about ecclesiastes?
Drawn from the messages where it was actually addressed: the words said from the front, the passages taught, and where to hear the whole thing.
At First B Jackson, the teaching on Ecclesiastes begins with honesty about why the book is hard to sit with. Both Pastor Ray and Pastor Mark have noted that almost nobody picks it up and feels encouraged. The word 'vanity' appears 35 times across its 12 chapters, and the phrase 'under the sun' appears 29 times. That second phrase is the key to reading the whole book. It signals that Solomon is deliberately describing life from a purely earthly vantage point, leaving God out of the equation entirely and reporting only what can be observed through the natural senses without faith. From that vantage point, everything does come to nothing, and that is exactly the point Solomon is making.
The book only makes full sense when you hold Solomon's life in view. He asked God for wisdom rather than wealth or fame, received it immediately, built the temple, and prayed one of the most sincere prayers in all of Scripture at its dedication. Then God warned him, his father David had already warned him, and he walked straight into the problem anyway. Seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines pulled his heart toward foreign gods. The kingdom split exactly as God said it would. Ecclesiastes is what it sounds like when you read it knowing that backstory. It is an old man looking back over a life of misdirected wisdom and ignored warnings. Both Pastor Ray and Pastor Mark have made the point that this does not make Solomon a hypocrite. A hypocrite says 'do as I say, not as I do.' A teacher says 'do as I say, not as I did.' Solomon had traveled the wrong road himself, and he did not want anyone else to have to learn the same way.
The book is building the whole time toward its conclusion in Ecclesiastes 12:13-14. Fear God and keep His commandments. That is the answer Solomon lands on after working through every other thing a person might try. Pastor Ray has connected this directly to what the teaching means for Jackson right now, noting that a worldview that cuts God out of the picture only ever leads to two places: despair or hedonism. Both of those roads are visible in the valley. Ecclesiastes is not in the Bible to discourage. It is there because Solomon, having tried everything else, wanted to spare the rest of us the long way around.
Taught from Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 · Ecclesiastes 1:2 · Ecclesiastes 12:11 · 1 Kings 9:1-9 · 1 Kings 2:1-4
The passage taught · 1 Chronicles 28-29
28:1 David assembled all the princes of Israel, the princes of the tribes, the captains of the companies who served the king by division, the captains of thousands, the captains of hundreds, and the rulers over all the substance and possessions of the king and of his sons, with the officers and the mighty men, even all the mighty men of valor, to Jerusalem.
28:2 Then David the king stood up on his feet, and said, “Hear me, my brothers, and my people! As for me, it was in my heart to build a house of rest for the ark of Yahweh’s covenant, and for the footstool of our God; and I had prepared for the building.
28:3 But God said to me, ‘You shall not build a house for my name, because you are a man of war, and have shed blood.’
28:4 However Yahweh, the God of Israel, chose me out of all the house of my father to be king over Israel forever. For he has chosen Judah to be prince; and in the house of Judah, the house of my father; and among the sons of my father he took pleasure in me to make me king over all Israel.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- February 26, 2023 Fear God and Keep His Commandments Pastor Ray walks through the arc of Solomon's life and the book of Ecclesiastes to show why wisdom and wealth alone cannot satisfy, and where true answers are found.
- May 5, 2013 The Philippians of the Old Testament, Traditions (3) Solomon had wisdom, wealth, and warnings from God, yet still turned away. The pastor traces the arc of his life to show what Ecclesiastes is really about.
- May 5, 2013 The Philippians of the Old Testament, Morning Praise The pastor traces Solomon's arc from wisdom and wealth to regret, showing how Ecclesiastes was written by a man who knew better but wandered, and what that means for us.
- April 21, 2013 Introducing Ecclesiastes, Morning Praise (3) A Wyoming pastor opens a three-week series on Ecclesiastes, showing why life looks meaningless without God and why fearing God changes everything.
- April 21, 2013 Introducing Ecclesiastes, Traditions Solomon called everything "vanity," but his conclusion was not despair. Pastor explores Ecclesiastes and what it means to fear God and keep His commandments.