Sermon Notes Archive
A Third Floor Perspective: Ecclesiastes
A sermon exploring the wisdom literature of Scripture — and what the Book of Ecclesiastes reveals about life, meaning, and the God who gives good gifts.
How God Gets Our Attention
A Pattern of Providence
Sometimes God places a portion of His Word before us in a variety of ways — a friend speaks about it, a teacher references it, a brief mention in an otherwise unrelated sermon. Eventually, with enough significance, He gets through to us and makes us say: I should look into this.
For this sermon, that book is Ecclesiastes — part of Scripture's wisdom literature, alongside Job, Psalms, Proverbs, and Song of Solomon.
Wisdom Literature Described
Pastor and author Kyle Worley offers vivid images for each wisdom book:
  • Psalms & Proverbs — kaleidoscope wisdom: the same Scripture reveals new beauty with just a twist of perspective
  • Song of Solomon — a fuzzy heart-shaped pillow
  • Job & Ecclesiastes — sandpaper wisdom: abrasive, refining, producing a finer finish
Like a rock tumbler, the abrasion of Ecclesiastes produces something smoother and more beautiful in us.
Sandpaper Wisdom
Sandpaper in the hands of a craftsman removes material to smooth and refine. It introduces an abrasive which, in any one spot, would feel unwanted — but the whole results in a finer finish. By exposing us to the sandpaper wisdom of Job and Ecclesiastes, God does a work of refining us.
The Preacher
Qohelet — Hebrew for "preacher" or "teacher" — guides us through an examination of life under the sun.
The Quest
A relentless search to understand and experience everything life has to offer, from wisdom to pleasure to toil.
The Goal
To understand the arc of Qohelet's wise instruction and find its place in the full story of Scripture.
Who Wrote Ecclesiastes?
The Case for Solomon
Most arguments point to Solomon, drawn from chapters 1–2. The preacher is called "son of David, king in Jerusalem" (1:1), claims to have surpassed all predecessors in wisdom (1:16), and describes extraordinary wealth — houses, vineyards, gardens, pools, silver, gold, singers, and flocks (2:4–8). These details sound unmistakably Solomonic.
Questions Remain
Arguments against include the nature of the Hebrew used, which may indicate a later date. Some Solomonic descriptions are also imprecise — for example, calling himself "king over Israel" in a way that implies he may no longer be reigning, which doesn't align clearly with 1 Kings 11. The author leans toward Solomon, while acknowledging at least two voices: Qohelet who speaks throughout, and a narrator who frames the book at beginning and end (12:9–10).
What Does "Vanity" (Hevel) Really Mean?
The Hebrew word hevel is translated many ways: vanity, meaningless, futility, vapor, breath, absurd, incomprehensible. Nearly half of all Old Testament uses of hevel appear in Ecclesiastes alone. Context shapes its meaning each time:
Psalm 144:4
"Man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow." — hevel as transience
Proverbs 31:30
"Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain." — hevel as deceptive emptiness
Proverbs 21:6
"The getting of treasures by a lying tongue is a fleeting vapor and a snare of death." — hevel as dangerous illusion
Job 21:34
"How then will you comfort me with empty nothings?" — hevel as hollow falsehood
The best working definition for Ecclesiastes: life is erratic, fleeting, and at times absurd — illogical, not silly. Ecclesiastes is ultimately an optimistic book, not a pessimistic one.
The Three-Floor Framework
Author Bobby Jamieson in Everything Is Never Enough describes Qohelet's shifting perspective like viewing the same scene from different floors of a building.
First Floor
A limited, ground-level view. Life looks cyclical, unsatisfying, and without lasting meaning. The phrase "under the sun" (used 29 times) marks this perspective.
Second Floor
A broader view that begins to see the hand of God at work. Good gifts — food, drink, work, relationships — are recognized as coming from a good Giver.
Third Floor
The fullest perspective: God is not only the Giver of good gifts, but the Judge of how they are used. He can be trusted to make all things right.
The First Floor: Life Under the Sun
"Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher; vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?" — Ecclesiastes 1:2–3
From the first floor, everything appears cyclical. Generations come and go unremembered. The sun rises and sets and rushes back. Streams run to the sea but the sea is never full. Nothing is truly satisfied; nothing is truly new. This drives Qohelet to search for something more.
Pursuing Wisdom
Wisdom provides some advantage over foolishness — but the wise and the foolish both die. Chasing wisdom is chasing after the wind.
Pursuing Pleasure
Amassing everything imaginable — houses, vineyards, silver, gold, singers — left him concluding: "All was vanity and striving after the wind." (2:11)
Pursuing Toil
The cruelest hevel: a person works hard and succeeds, only to leave everything to someone who didn't work for it. "This also is vanity and a great evil." (2:21)

These are the same quests we find ourselves on when we try to make sense of the world without keeping our eyes on our Savior.
The Second Floor: Gifts from a Good Giver
At the end of chapter 2, Qohelet introduces a new perspective for the first of five times in the book:
"There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God." — Ecclesiastes 2:24
The preacher is not advocating fatalistic hedonism — closing his eyes to hevel and grabbing whatever pleasure he can. Instead, he reveals that the gifts of toil, pleasure, and wisdom are good gifts from a good Giver. Inasmuch as our enjoyment of the gifts reflects our understanding of the Giver, we have the right perspective.
This second-floor view recurs throughout the book — in the famous "time for everything" passage of chapter 3, and again in chapter 9: "Go, eat your bread with joy… for God has already approved what you do." (9:7)
The Third Floor: Fear God and Trust His Judgment
A Change in Perspective
In chapter 11, something shifts. Qohelet moves beyond enjoying gifts from the Giver to acknowledging that the Giver will judge how the gifts are used.
"Rejoice, O young man, in your youth… but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment." (11:9)
Chapter 8 reinforces this: though the wicked seem to prosper, "I know that it will be well with those who fear God." (8:12)
The Conclusion of the Matter
"Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil." — Ecclesiastes 12:13–14
After all his searching, Qohelet concludes: the best way to enjoy life to the fullest is with the understanding that God is over all and worthy of our fear and obedience.
As author Charles Bridges writes, fearing the Lord is "that affectionate reverence by which the child of God bends himself humbly and carefully to his Father's law." And as David Gibson notes in Living Life Backward: "Fearing the Lord makes us wise because it teaches us to live on our knees."
Three Realizations of Qohelet
These three realizations build on one another. The first floor shows us the hevel. The second floor reveals the Giver behind the gifts. The third floor calls us to trust and fear the God who stands above it all and will one day judge every deed — and make all things right.
Ecclesiastes Leaves Us Longing for Jesus
As confident as Qohelet is that God will one day make things right, he leaves us wanting more. When will things change? How will God accomplish it? The preacher leaves us longing for Jesus.
Abundant Life
Jesus invites us not to indulgent pleasure, but to abundant life — John 10:10
True Wisdom
In Jesus "are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" — Colossians 2:3
All Things New
Jesus will return and right every hevel — making all things new
Ecclesiastes is not a dreary, pessimistic book. It is a book of encouragement to enjoy the life God has given you while keeping your eyes on Him and waiting for Jesus to make all things new.
A Found Poem: The New Assembler
To close, a found poem by David Friedrich — composed from New Testament words, intentionally replacing Ecclesiastes 1:1–11 with a Christ-centered view. Friedrich uses "assembler" for Qohelet, as it speaks of bringing people together.
The words of the new assembler — Son of God, Son of David, King of the Jews, King of Kings, and the words of his witnesses.
Heaven and earth will pass away, the teacher says, but my words will not. Can worry add a single hour to your life? Don't toil for food that will perish. Work for the food that endures — the food that leads to eternal life which the Son of Adam will give you.
The old order will pass away. Creation once bound by vapor will know the freedom of the children of God. God's glory will displace the sun and his breath will renew the face of the earth, and fill it with knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea.
A new heaven and a new earth shall arise. God will remember. He will keep his promise. And all shall be made anew.
With that, we go to our Savior — who will make all things new. Father, we are grateful for Jesus. In the midst of a life that reeks of hevel, you are the good Giver of all things, and in Christ all things will be made new. Amen.