Day 332: Ecclesiastes 1-3 | Read The Bible In A Year | Bible Study & Commentary by Dr. Manny Arango

Welcome to the Bible department podcast powered by Arma. We are walking through the entire Bible in a year. You can go to the description or thebaldapartment.com to download a reading plan and join the journey. (upbeat music) - Family, welcome to day 332 here on the Bible department. I'm super excited. We're jumping into a brand new book of the Bible. One of my favorite books of the Bible. Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiastes. I'm super, super excited today. We've got Ecclesiastes chapters one, two and three on the docket. If you've done the reading, then everything I'm gonna talk about is gonna make perfect sense. If you haven't done the reading, then you're probably gonna be a little lost while I'm teaching through the context clues, nerdy nuggets and our timeless truth. For the day, my job in this first episode is to kind of wrap our minds around not just the context of chapters one, two and three, but the context of the book of Ecclesiastes. We've got Ecclesiastes for the next four days, okay? Today, the next day, the next day, the next day, 12 chapters total, four days in the book of Ecclesiastes. And so, let's dive in. There's some big, big, big piece of context

that are really, really important. Two contextual ideas, maybe even three. Three contextual ideas that I think are gonna really, really help us. So, I want us to think about three wisdom books as holding each other in tension. And those three wisdom books are Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes, okay? Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes. So, Proverbs is essentially saying, hey, if you are a righteous person, you'll be blessed. And if you are a foolish person or a wicked person, you're gonna experience the consequences of your foolishness, okay? And then Job is insanely righteous. I would say Job, you know, the Bible is gonna describe Job as blameless, as upright, as a righteous person. And like, I mean, the crappiest situation is gonna happen to him, okay? So, Job's life, we get to see through like actual life activity that he is battling through his theology. He's trying to reconcile the life that he's living with a very Proverbs-based worldview. And then we have Ecclesiastes. And we have a leader in the person of Solomon who almost is experiencing the opposite reality as Job. Solomon is wealthy enough and powerful enough to essentially experiment with the most pleasurable things in life. And so, he's at the height of heights,

probably living a pretty debauched lifestyle, experimenting with pleasure and with alcohol and with a harem of women and all that. And coming to the conclusion that, "Hey, this stuff doesn't bring joy or fulfillment." And despairing of life because success doesn't bring value. And then Job is despairing of life because he lived upright and his life kind of came to calamity. So, these three books of wisdom literature are actually designed to function as a whole, okay? And Ecclesiastes is holding Job and Proverbs intention. So that's just the first big picture, 30,000 foot idea that we need. The second idea is that Ecclesiastes has two voices. And if you can't delineate between those two voices or you don't even know that there are two people talking, then you're not gonna be able to really understand just like what's going on. So, there's an author or a narrator, if you will, okay, there's an author and then there's a teacher, okay? And the author is sometimes gonna respond to what the teacher has taught. So, I could give you an example, but if you read Ecclesiastes one, two, and three, then you 100% know what I'm talking about. So, literally the book starts chapter one, verse one, with the words of the teacher, son of David, king, and Jerusalem, okay? So, those words right there are the words of the author,

not the teacher. So, the author is like using the teacher as a voice, but then there are gonna be spots in the book where this author is gonna respond. And it's gonna be really important to know there are two voices. If you don't know there are two voices that could lead to something fusion. And here's the third piece of context that I actually think is the most helpful. This was the most helpful piece of context for me. And honestly, shout out to Tim and John over at the Bible Project. People end up calling the Bible department the Bible Project to me by mistake a lot, which is a fantastic compliment. But their explanation, Tim Mackie's explanation on this, honestly unlocked Ecclesiastes for me in a way that it had just never been open for me or clear to me. Okay, the next is the word meaningless. Okay, so verse two is gonna chapter one, verse two. Meaningless, meaningless says the teacher. Utterly meaningless, everything is meaningless. And other translations are gonna use other words, right? Like vanity, vanity, vanity says the teacher. You know, everything is vanity. And then the Hebrew word here is "hevel", okay? So we have to actually ask ourselves the question,

what does "hevel" mean? Because if "hevel" doesn't actually mean meaningless, then that could lead to tons of misinterpretations of the book of Ecclesiastes. And probably the biggest interpretive or exegetical key that I've gotten as it relates to Ecclesiastes, like in the past like three, four years, has been Tim Mackie really challenging the thought that like meaningless is a bad translation of the word "hevel". So what does the word "hevel" mean in Hebrew? Hevel means fog, vapor, smoke, fog, vapor, or smoke. That's what the word "hevel" means. So instead of meaningless, meaningless says the teacher. Utterly meaningless, everything is meaningless. Which is like a sad thing to be saying, like other than sound like it should be in the Bible. Really what it's saying is vapor, vapor says the teacher. Utterly vapor, everything's vapor, okay? Everything's smoke, everything's vapor, everything's fog. Oh man, that's life. You wanna understand life, understand fog. You wanna understand life, understand smoke. You wanna understand life, man, understand vapor, okay? So then we have to ask ourselves a question. What is it about vapor that seems to describe life, okay? Is all the teacher's gonna give three things? Gonna say, yeah, I hear all the stuff that, you know, Proverbs has to say.

However, nobody can beat time, no one can beat death, and life has this thing called chance. I'm sorry, but there is an element of chance to life. There's an element of coincidence, chance, like you could just be unlucky. Like crap happens, and like good stuff happens. Whether for the good or the bad, hey, time. Look man, look at this mountain. You're gonna live, you're gonna die, that mountain's still gonna be there. Time is, you're never gonna beat time. And then number two, you're never gonna beat death. You could live, you could play by the rules, you could do everything that Proverbs is telling you to do. And then you die, and your son's a freaking idiot, and he takes all your money and blows it. So you lived your whole life to save up a fortune only for your son or your daughter to get an inheritance and totally ruin your work, your life's work. Death, everybody dies, and guess what? Foolish people die, wise people die, rich people die, poor people die, everybody dies. So it's vapor, and then chance. So time, death, and chance. You cannot factor out chance, chance. There's an element to life that is just random. You can just put stuff in the randomizer that is life, and you're gonna get stuff out. So this is heavy, heavy.

What is it about time, death, and chance that's heavy? Well, it's that hevel looks solid, but when you go to grasp it, it's gone. It can't be grasped. It can't be held onto. It can't be, here's a key word, controlled. So what is the solution? The actual wise solution that the book of Ecclesiastes is offering is don't try to grasp Hevel, you cannot try to control or manipulate. Hevel, life's Hevel, life is cruel. Life's unfair, all kinds of things happen in life. in life. other people, or control anything, you're going to be living in a sad reality. You are constantly going to be depressed, because what you're going to realize is life can't be controlled, life's, it's heavy, and you know what? For some of us right now, if you're unhealthy, that freaks you out, that life can't be controlled. But there's some of us, if you actually, like, unlock the wisdom that this book has to offer, you'll rest and go, "I can't control outcomes. I can't control whether I'm rich or poor. I can't control anything. I can't control whether or not my kids love God or don't. I can't control other people. I can't control whether or not my spouse walks out on me. I can't control anything. I can influence things. I can be responsible for my part, but I can't control any outcomes. I can't control whether or not our church is 500 people, or 1,000 people, or 200 people. I can't control whether or not people tied. I can't control whether or not people complain.

I can't control whether or not the stock market crashes. I can't control whether or not there's a pandemic. I can't control whether or not I like my job or have a job that I'm prone to. I can't control it. I can't control the season. I can't control my age. I can't control anything. There's a lot of us. We think we're upset because of whatever's happening in life. There's a couple of guys on our launch team, and I have told them, "I used to deal with anger a lot." There used to be a very angry person, and my anger was rooted in a dissatisfaction with life and a fear of failure. There's always felt like I was failing. Why did I feel like I was failing? This is going to sound odd, but the reason I always felt like I was failing is because the enemy was using my faith against me. I had so much faith for what the future was going to be that I was constantly disappointed. So I had so much faith for where I was going to be by 30. That 30 was a disappointment to me when I finally got there. I had so much faith for what life was going to be like at 35. That when I finally got to 35, 35 disappointed me. I had so much faith for what my life was going to be like at whatever age, that then when I experienced it, it was nothing like the fantasy that I had in my head, and then I had to begin to realize that God gave me faith as a gift, not a curse, and the reason that I was constantly angry and constantly feeling like a failure is because I should be happy that there's a hundred people that showed up to a launch party. But I expected a thousand people, and you know how hard it is to be excited about a hundred people when you're expecting a thousand? And then you get to a book like Ecclesiastes and I got here a couple of years ago where

I began to realize life's heavy. Why would I allow my mood or my feelings or my emotions to be based on how much money is in a bank account, or how many people showed up to this event, or to whether or not I got a book deal, or to how many speaking engagements I could get. Man, life's heavy, life's heavy in the way that Job, so the goal of the book of Job is to get you to realize God is a freaking untamed lion. You can't control God. Guess what? Ecclesiastes is here to do, get you to realize you can't control life. Not only can you not control God, you can't control life, because you mean you can only control what you actually have control under over. And guess what? You can control your feelings, your mindset, and your response to whatever's happening in life. And I decided a long time ago, maybe like two or three years ago, I'm tired of being angry. I'm tired of being frustrated. I'm tired of being dissatisfied. I'm tired of being disappointed, wait a second. My joy is my decision. So you know what? I'm going to wake up every day, and I'm going to be happy. I'm happy whether there's 50 people, 100 people, 500 people on this long stream. I'm happy. Whether I'm broke, or whether I'm wealthy, I'm happy. Whether like Job, all my kids die, or whether they live, I'm happy. And what does the author of Ecclesiastes get to? He says the only thing you have is to enjoy this moment right now. So go ahead. You could waste your life being so upset that you're not where you want to be, that you

could just, or you could rejoice in the fact that you're exactly where God wants you to be. because they're not the lives we want. That, if you could grasp that, that's not heavy. That's a solid foundation about your life on. That no one controls me and nothing controls me. Seriously, I've been trying to get this into this one guy's head on our launch team. I won't say his name. I love him to death. I've been trying to tell him, your job is not the reason you're upset. Your marriage is not the reason you're upset. The money in your bank house is not the reason you're upset. None of those things have anything to do with whether or not you're upset. Your feelings about your own self is why you're upset. You're upset because you're upset. And it took me years to realize, I thought to myself, man, if there was more kids in this youth group, I'd be happy. Man, if my wife would fill in the blank, I'd be happy. Man, if we had a kid, I'd be happy. And I kept just being like, I'd be happy if, I'd be happy if, I'd be happy here if. And then you read the Ecclesiastes and you realize, I am trying to grasp vapor. Hevel, I'm chasing after the wind. This is silly. Or I could wake up today and make a decision. I'm happy.

I am going to be a happy person. And you know what is what the author of Ecclesi is saying? The sun shining on your face should make you happy. Taking a deep breath should make you happy that you should find contentment, contentment, not in trying to build your life on things that you can't control. But by building your life on the stuff that you actually can't control. You know what you can't control? You can control how happy you are right now. You can control your mood right now. You control your mindset right now. You control you 'cause the best control is self-control. And that's the mindset that I want us to have as we move into the rest of Ecclesiastes. All right, family, the weight is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos, is out now and available everywhere books are sold. Literally today, I walked into a Barnes & Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes & Noble or you can go to a books a million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective

can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is gonna be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode. All my nerdy nuggets were mixed in there, I'm sorry. Time, death, chance. That's what I wrote down as my nerdy nuggets. So, "hevel" is our big context. And then the author's gonna use time, death, and chance, just as examples of how vapor, how smoke, how foggy, the nature of life is. So here's my Thomas truth. I remember the day that my pastor really genuinely asked me a question I'm changing my life. My pastor asked me, "Why don't you and your dad "have a good relationship?" And I was like, "Cuz he took me to a crack house "and I was five, duh. "Cuz he's on crack. "What are you talking about? "Eat the man's on drugs. "That's why we don't have a good relationship." And my pastor went, "Dad ate the reason "you don't have a good relationship." He said, "The reason that you don't have a good relationship "is because you are trying to get him to be someone he's not." Do you enjoy the dad that you actually have? You spent so much time using faith to believe

that he would be someone that he's not that you have not operated in wisdom, which is to accept the person that he is. Stop living in faith. I want you to live in reality. Have you ever asked your dad about any of his crazy drugbenches? Have you ever asked your dad about any of his wild stories? And I was like, "No." And I was all defensive like, "No." And he was like, "Yeah, that's your loss. "That's your loss. "I mean, freaking crazy stories your dad probably has." He just locked up for 18 years. He took you to a crack house and you were five. That dude's nuts, bro. If you sat down with him and just stopped being so freaking uptight and just relaxed and just like let him tell you some crazy stories, you'd laugh. If you actually accepted the dad you have instead of trying to use faith to control him and manipulate him into being someone he's not. See, this is faith working against me. I can be honest, I have a gift of faith, but if I'm not careful that gift of faith will make me such an unhappy, dissatisfied person. And I'll use faith to try to manipulate somebody into being someone that honestly, they are not gonna be.

of themselves, but it's not based on control. It's based on me just telling them who I think they can be and then letting it be up to them. With my dad, I was so close to the situation. I cared so much that I couldn't just speak life and then just let him, you know, hey, I'm responsible for speaking the truth. And the truth is, I believe you can be healed. I think you could be sober. I think you could be free. Trying to control an outcome is going beyond just telling you what the Lord told me to say, but then trying to make you become that person. You want to know that conversation with Pastor Matt changed my life. I stopped trying to get my dad to become someone. I just started asking him questions and man, talk about let the good times roll. My dad was like, oh, I can be myself around you. Oh, you're safe. Oh, let me tell you some crazy stories. And guess what? I finally started to laugh, joke, have a guitar with my dad because it went from a pressure to conform to freedom to just be. And I went from chasing after the wind, trying to control hevel to just going, let the smoke be what it is, man. You can't control smoke, let the fog be what it is, man. You can't manipulate fog shoot, man, you better just let the vapor be what it be. Just let it do what it do. You cannot build your life on vapor. Life's vapor. It's hevel. It's smoke. People who are obsessed with what their life is going to be, they're going to hate Ecclesiastes. People who are just like, no, my life has to turn out this way.

All right. And I don't like this book because this book is going to require you to die to all the dreams you have for the future. This book is going to require you to stop living based on some vision you have for your future and to actually free fall and accept not the life that you want, but the life that you have actually accept what you have. And when you realize what you got, guess what happens? You get happy. A lot of people are dissatisfied because instead of being married to reality, they're married to some vision that they have for the future. And not to say that a vision for the future is bad, but if a vision for the future is making you angry and dissatisfied today, then that means that that vision for the future is actually not serving you, you're serving it and that is toxic. And that's not just time, that's not just true for Solomon and Ecclesiastes and the context that he's in in like 900 950 BC, that's true for you and that's true for me. So let's, hevel, let's not try to control the fog, the wind and the vapor. How about you just let the game happen? Don't try to control the game. Let the game come score when the balls in your hands. Don't try to manipulate life or control life. Because if Job taught us anything, it's that God cannot be controlled. And if Ecclesiastes has anything to teach us, it's that life cannot be controlled. All right. Tomorrow, we're going to be in Ecclesiastes chapters four, five and six. We're going to knock out day three, thirty three. I cannot believe that it's about to be day three, sixty five. This is nuts. I'm so proud of you, especially if you're on a streak. I see you right here tomorrow. Same time, same place.

Love you. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. If this episode was helpful, how about you leave a comment, share with a friend and subscribe so that you never miss an episode. To learn more about the show, head to thebobledepartment.com. We'll see you right back here tomorrow.