The Ecclesiastes Interview | Brian Borgman

Well, we are back with another episode of the Room for Nuance podcast. I'm Sean DeMars and I'm here with Brian Borgman.

Brother, will you open us in prayer? Of course. Our Father, we thank you for another day of life.

We thank you for your mercies, which renew every morning. We pray for your blessing on our time together that it would be edifying for your people in Christ's name.

Amen. Amen. Thank you for coming on the show, brother. Now, people don't know this because they're only going to be able to see the top half of your body, but you're actually just wearing boxers on the bottom half.

Right. But that's because you told me I could. That's right. The news anchor outfit. No. Thank you for being here.

We're going to be talking about your new book, Don't Waste Your Breath on the book of Ecclesiastes, which was that a play on the

Don't Waste Your Life John Piper book thing? Yeah, sort of.

OK. But before we hop into that, brother, just tell us how you came to know the Lord three to five minutes.

All right. Well, I was raised in a Roman Catholic home and about 1977, my mom became a

Christian by reading the Bible. And my dad, who was raised more strictly

Catholic, didn't think he should read the Bible. But my dad really was coming to sort of a crisis of faith and he started listening to J.

Vernon McGee. My dad was a feeder driver for UPS, so he would drive eight, ten hours a day and he'd listen to J.

Vernon McGee. And then he'd listen to my mom and he went and talked to a priest who said,

Steve, read the Bible. So once he had that approval, he started reading and God saved him, too.

And so my mom and dad came to Christ and this is around 1978, 79 by this time.

And I was absolutely committed as a Catholic. I was a rotten, wretched sinner.

And God saved me through reading the Bible. I read

Matthew 5. Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and the

Pharisees, you'll not inherit the kingdom of heaven. And I thought I was pretty good.

I knew it was bad, but my Catholicism sort of gave me a sense of being religiously superior.

And God just devastated my conscience and brought me to faith at about age 13.

Wow, incredible. And then about 12, 10 to 12 years after that, you planted a church in Nevada.

You've been a pastor there for how long? Yeah, so we moved to Nevada when I was 26 years old.

That was in 1993. We planted the church. Grace Community Church. Grace Community Church.

And we had our first service March 6, 1994. So we just passed our 30th anniversary.

Praise God, brother. That's a lot of grace. You also have a fairly extensive writing ministry. What book number is this for you?

I think it's six or seven. I can't remember. So you've written on adoption.

You've written on a biblical theology of emotions to be a sort of resource for biblical counselors and pastors and laypeople alike.

But today we're talking about one of the least popular, least understood books in the

Old Testament, the book of Ecclesiastes. What makes a man say, I'm going to write a book about Ecclesiastes?

What led you to write the book? Well, it was sort of a long journey. I'll make it short.

So Ecclesiastes has always intrigued me. You know, you always hear people say, oh,

Ecclesiastes is my favorite book. I don't always. I mean, but you came to a small group meeting last night where one of our elders said that.

And it completely took me back. I'd never heard that before. Yeah. So you'll hear people say it. And this isn't a reflection on your elder.

But most people that say that think Ecclesiastes is saying one thing and it's really saying something else.

And so I had an interest in it, in Bible college and seminary, just because sort of the weird statements, right?

Like money's the answer to everything. You know, I mean, so I hated life.

You look at those kinds of statements and you're like, how did this get in the Bible? And so it just sort of started a journey for me wanting to understand it.

Because I really felt like I didn't, I didn't understand the forest or the trees, you know.

And I ended up having sort of a, I guess you could,

I call it a Havel moment from the Hebrew word for breath that we can talk about.

But in about 2002 or three or four, right in there, where I just realized how fast time was going by.

My kids are getting older. Can I actually read a section from your book where you talk about that? Because it really, it really struck me.

It was penetrating. You say, just as I have watched my dad bury his parents, so my kids are going to watch me bury my parents.

And it will happen before I know it. But then the kids will watch, but then their kids will watch them bury me.

And a wave of melancholy overtook me. Yeah, yeah, I think that that experience is fairly common when you just start to realize how fast life is going by.

And for whatever reason, I just, I felt compelled that I needed to jump in to Ecclesiastes.

And I honestly can't even tell you necessarily why, but I felt like there was a key there.

And so I took a study leave and just dove in. And this was around 2003 or four.

And it's basically been a passion of mine ever since.

And so just collecting, I mean, commentaries, articles, I would say that it's more than a hobby.

But if I have time to read extra stuff that's not germane to my preaching,

I'll be reading something on Ecclesiastes. I listened to an interview with Bobby Jameson recently where he said that his hobby was the

Trinity. It's funny, within the space of two days, I'm hearing people use that phrase.

It's a hobby of mine. Hey, why is Ecclesiastes called the black sheep of the

Bible? Well, it's called the black sheep of the Bible because it appears that it does not fit.

It seems out of place. You end up having sort of like this negative, pessimistic perspective on life.

That's the appearance. And so I think a lot of people look at it as a cynical book or the skeptics book, something like that.

And so that's why it ends up kind of being pegged. You know, my Hebrew prof called it the stepchild of Scripture, you know.

And so I think that that's why it gets the reputation, the name that it does.

And you would probably say that that is because the book of Ecclesiastes is largely misunderstood, which leads me to I think maybe the most significant thing about this interview in our discussion is you have a different interpretation than basically the mainstream,

I would say, interpretation. So, yeah, talk to us about that. What's different about your interpretation of Ecclesiastes as compared to what most people will probably find in their commentaries or in the books that they buy?

Yeah, so I would say that there's one massive difference.

And that is my understanding of the Hebrew word chavel.

So most of our English translations will open up in Ecclesiastes 1 -2 with vanity of vanities, vanity of vanities, all is vanity, says the preacher, or futility or meaninglessness.

And so once and to me, this is sort of simple.

Once you take such a thematic statement, right, if you say, so the minute you go chavel of chavels, all right, or vanity of vanities, whatever you're used to, that's like saying king of kings or song of songs, right?

So you're taking whatever this word means to a superlative degree, but then you repeat it.

So it's repeated. And of course, you know, in Hebrew Bible, repetition is for emphasis.

And then you have this absolutely comprehensive statement. Everything is vanity or chavel.

So if you take the word to mean emptiness, vanity, futility, then you have, in a sense, right from the get -go, you have a lens that you're looking at the whole book through.

But the word chavel, choose 38 times in Ecclesiastes, and it means breath or vapor or mist.

And so like when James says, your life is a mist. Yes. Right. Same, same idea. Same idea.

So if that's the case, if it's vapor or breath as opposed to vanity, right, then that actually shapes the way you view the book.

And so I would argue that the book ends up being not pessimistic, but far more optimistic, not negative, but actually very positive as Solomon wrestles with life in its brevity, right, not life in its meaninglessness, because I don't think the

Bible actually teaches us that any life is meaningless. Right. So when you look at it as a struggle with brevity or transience as opposed to vanity, then

I think that the book changes actually the whole book. So Paul Washer and his video that he made promoting this book says that Don't Waste Your Breath completely changed his view on the book of Ecclesiastes.

So take note. Here's a summary statement from you about the book of Ecclesiastes.

Do not waste your breath and in parentheses vapor. Enjoy it while you have it. So not only is it not vanity, it's short, but it's not vanity.

It's actually a call to enjoy, says you, the book of Ecclesiastes is a call to enjoy the life that you have while you have it.

I've never heard that before. Yeah, so I honestly think that as so Solomon or Kohelet, right, that's the

Hebrew title of the book. Can we can we call him the preacher? Is that appropriate or no? What should we call him? Well, I prefer sticking with Kohelet simply because there's not a really good

English translation that doesn't have some kind of baggage. Right. So preacher has an ecclesiastical bent teacher, has the academy, right, professor, whatever, pundit.

And so I just kind of prefer to stick with with Kohelet because that's the one who calls an assembly.

So he's he's teaching, but it's not a classroom. Right. He's he's preaching, but it's not a pulpit.

OK. And so, you know, in a sense, I take him to be taking us on a ride,

OK, on a journey. He he he wants us to actually come to the conviction like he's come to the conviction that life is short, but it's a gift as opposed to like an achievement.

Right. And so he takes us along on his journey and and in a sense sort of instill so that there are these corner pieces in Ecclesiastes where where Solomon will say, you know, basically, so so what are we going to do?

Well, you're going to you're going to eat your food with gladness, you know, drink your wine, enjoy your wife, enjoy your work.

Right. These are gifts. They're short, but they're gifts. And the way that we glorify

God is by enjoying these these gifts that he gives us, even though we know that that one of these days are going to pass away.

One of the things that makes reading a difficult book easier is understanding the structure.

So just let's take some New Testament examples, Ephesians, you can roughly cut it in half. First few chapters, this is the gospel.

Last few chapters, this is how you apply it. Or something like Hebrews, a little more complicated. People get lost in Hebrews.

You have these five cycles of teaching and then exhortation. And then there's kind of the closing.

Ecclesiastes is really hard to wrap your mind around to to understand the design and the flow of the book.

Can you help us figure that out? Yeah. So Ecclesiastes is not as neatly structured.

But what you do end up having is, I would say, basically, you have some kind of inquiry, some kind of investigation and then

Solomon's conclusions. So in a sense, what he's doing is he's making observations about things.

When he gets to his conclusions, his conclusions are almost always the same. So you see, for instance, in Chapter 2, 24 to 26, you see in Chapter 3, around 13, 14, you see then in Chapter 5, 18 to 20, and you get these corner pieces.

And he's, in a sense, repeating the same refrain each time.

But applying it to a different question. Yes. Exactly. What are the main...

If you say like, this is the main two, three, four, five themes in Ecclesiastes. I mean,

I know we have breath, not vanity, mist, life is short, enjoy it.

But how does he get at that? He gets there through what? Work, family, food?

Yeah, that's a great question. So I think that what happens is in those first two chapters, you see

Solomon in terms of his own angst in trying to deal with two things.

One is life is really short. But then the other is you spend the majority of your life working, toiling.

So Ecclesiastes actually has a view of labor that both holds together, in a sense, the dignity of work, but then also the frustration of it since the fall.

So if you have this life, and it's just a breath, and you spend the vast majority of it toiling, what's left over?

What's the benefit, is the way that he might say it. And so this,

I mean, obviously it's Solomon, right? So he's got the resources to like,

OK, let's dig in. And so in chapter one, you end up having this poem on nature, right?

Sunrises, sunsets, the wind blows. I mean, you get this very cyclical view of nature.

And in a sense, it drives Solomon kind of crazy because on the one hand, he's like, well, that's kind of like what life is like.

There's sort of a monotony to it. It's so short. And yet there's this monotony. So I'll use the illustration of life's like doing laundry, right?

You know, your poor wife washes the kids' clothes in the morning and folds them and only to do the same thing the next day and the next day.

So there's this monotony. But nature then sort of mocks us because there's a permanence to it that our lives don't have, right?

So you've got the monotony, but the impermanence of this life. So this causes

Solomon to go on this quest. And so then you get the chapter two where he's, you know, doing his scientific pleasure experiments.

And I think that what he's doing there is he's trying to figure out how can you mitigate the pain of Havel?

How can you mitigate the pain that life is a breath? Because it does. It causes us a sense of pain, right?

Almost an angst. Yeah. Maybe not almost. Yeah, right. And so he goes for achievement.

Greg Beal actually argues that what you see with Solomon is Solomon is sort of like the new

Adam who's building the Garden of Eden, right? He's trying at least.

And so you've got. That's such a Greg Beal thing to say. Yeah, exactly. So you have him with, he's trying to make these uber achievements, right?

He wants to do something that's going to last. And actually, he looks after all of his accomplishments and he's satisfied.

But just for a second, because then he realizes, oh, I'm still going to die.

And then I'm going to leave it to somebody and they're not going to appreciate it. And so that's when he goes,

I hated life, right? So he's got this journey and his conclusion after that first, in a sense, that first leg of the journey, that that conclusion is,

OK, life is a gift. Eat your food.

Drink your wine, be glad, trust God. And there's a sense where what

Solomon's conclusion is, is that there's stuff that we don't get, there's stuff that we don't understand.

And these gifts are a vapor.

Enjoy them while you have them. Don't ruin them, right? Don't ruin them by loving money, for instance, right?

Don't ruin them by looking at everything as an achievement. Maximize the joy in it by receiving it as a gift, as long as you have it.

Wow. What does the book of Ecclesiastes say to our desire to want to know the future?

Well, we all want to know what's going to happen in the future, and we also want to know what's going to happen once we're gone.

And Solomon is absolutely emphatic that there is no way for us to know.

In fact, not only is there no way for us to know, but if we could know, right, it would in a sense ruin the present chapter that you're in.

Yeah, you say this, you say, the more you know, the more you hurt. I think that that's true.

Solomon says as much at the end of chapter one. But I think that the idea is that the more understanding you have, the more insight you have, in a sense, the more wisdom that you have, you actually see the pain.

So this is relevant to the discussion because Solomon at the end of chapter three has three, four, last half of chapter five and into chapter six.

And those are somewhat the depressing chapters. But each one of those sections, he's basically dealing with what are the things in life that are threats to God making all things beautiful?

And what are the threats of, in a sense, robbing me of the joy of the gifts?

And so sometimes it's oppression, it's injustice, sometimes it's loving money, sometimes it's hoarding for the future, right?

And so one of the things that all of this has in common is you don't know what's coming, you don't know what's going to come in the future.

And the fact is, is that God knows. And in fact, God doesn't even forget the past, right?

And so there's a sense where Ecclesiastes is a great book on having us trust

God, not only with every chapter, but with the ones that haven't even come yet.

And so Solomon is a realist in the sense that he says, nobody knows what's going to happen.

It could be love or hate, right? And a lot of that's in chapter nine. A lot of commentaries think that what he's referring to there is like either favorable circumstances or calamity, right?

You don't know what awaits you, but you don't determine God's love for you based on what the next chapter holds.

You just don't know what it's going to hold, right? So you trust God. He's already approved your work, right?

You're already accepted with him. And so you can't determine God's disposition towards you by circumstances.

Man, there's a lot more we can unpack there, but I have so many more questions. One of the things that I couldn't help but thinking about as I read your optimistic book about the book of Ecclesiastes was

Christian hedonism, you know, Piper's whole spiel on how the

Christian faith should be a joyful faith. One of the things that Piper says is that, you know, he didn't get it just from Lewis or from Edwards.

It's on every page of the Bible. And he says it's even in the places you wouldn't expect. And I have to tell you, you would not expect it from the book of Ecclesiastes.

How much does the Christian hedonism stuff flow through your veins?

Does it make sense to you? Does it click? Yeah, it does.

And I understand there are people that have incredible reservations about it, but I think that if we understand really what

Piper's overarching principle is, right, is that God's glory is uppermost in his own affections.

And he created us, you know, to to actually rejoice in that glory.

Then our happiness is found ultimately in God. Right now,

I think Ecclesiastes actually, in a sense, holds out a vision like that.

Now, it's not exactly like Piper would put it, because for Solomon, he uses the word joy and enjoyment a lot in Ecclesiastes.

But he also uses, you know, you see this word that's translated better in Ecclesiastes, right?

So you have one of the chapters is your better life now, right?

There's no way to have your best life now. You have your better life now. That is being the

Hebrew phrase, the good, right? So you can think of it like the good life, right?

Well, what is the good life for Solomon? Well, it is this intrinsically good life in that I'm looking to God as the one who holds every event in my life in his hands.

I look to God who is the one who is sovereign over my good days and my bad days, right?

And as I get anchored into that, it actually empowers me not only to enjoy

God, but to enjoy God through these temporary gifts. So let's talk about that,

God being sovereign over the good days and the bad days. What does the book of Ecclesiastes have to say about prosperity and calamity?

God's in control of both. So the book of Ecclesiastes would have to be just devastating to the prosperity gospel.

I think Solomon, if Solomon would have heard about the prosperity gospel, and maybe he did in some form,

I think he would just scoff at it. Because one thing that is absolutely clear is, so if God bends something, you're not strong enough to straighten it out.

And probably the key text, I think, would be Ecclesiastes 7, 13 and 14, where Solomon actually says, so in the good day, so our translations will say something different, but I'll just give you a more literal rendering.

So in the good day, be in the good, right? In other words, when

God brings those good things into your life, the blessings, it's like Solomon saying, enjoy those days, enjoy those days.

And whether that's, hey, when your kids are little, when they're running around, just enjoy that, right?

When you're walking on the beach with your wife in the sunset, just enjoy that. In the good day, be in the good.

But then he turns around and he says, basically, but in the evil day, right, or in the day of calamity, right, he doesn't say wine or pout, right, pine for the good old days, he turns around and he says, consider, right?

So you go from a good day, which our good days don't last our whole life, right?

They're sprinkled throughout. So in the evil day, in the day of calamity, consider, right?

So think, and then this is what Solomon says, God made one just as the other, right?

And it's like, okay, I need to ponder the fact that for whatever reason, in his appointed time, okay, he's brought this calamity into my life.

That, in a sense, gives us a realism of encountering the good days and the bad days, just say, you know what,

God's over both. God is sovereign over the days when

I didn't have two nickels to rub together. God is sovereign over the days when I can afford to go on a vacation.

God is sovereign over the days when I'm walking hand in hand with my wife on the beach.

God is sovereign over the day when she's sitting next to my hospital bed wondering if I'm going to live.

So let's press into that more. If we know that the good days are not guaranteed,

I mean, in a sense, if you step back and I guess and view all of life, they are guaranteed to be sprinkled in, but you know that the bad days are coming.

How do you enjoy the good when, especially if you're theologically attuned, you know it's a guarantee the bad days are coming.

Let me add to that question just a little bit more. Matthew McCullough in his excellent book on Remember Death uses this thought experiment from some

French philosopher who says, you know, imagine that you are on your way to be sentenced to death, but you get to enjoy all these hedonistic pleasures along the way, but you know you're going to die, you know, right around the corner.

How can you possibly enjoy any of these pleasures if you know death is right there?

It robs you of all that joy. So that's kind of the vein that I'm thinking in. How can you enjoy the good when you know that the other shoe is going to drop perhaps any minute?

Okay, I love that question because it's really a great question because if there's anything that's absolutely clear in Ecclesiastes, it's this, you're going to die.

Soon. Right. So, I mean, that's why it's a vapor, right? Because it's a breath and then it ends.

How does it end? In death. And so death is not actually viewed romantically in Ecclesiastes at all.

It is a terrible reality, right? But here's the thing.

I think Solomon would say, and David Gibson in his book on Ecclesiastes, Living Life Backwards, yes,

I think actually has captured this truth. And that is, you're really, as a

Christian, you really are not equipped to live until you are, in fact, ready to die.

And so his image is living life backwards. That is, you live life from the perspective of the grave.

Now, that sounds absolutely morbid for most people, like the thought experiment, right?

That's what they think of. And I would say that for Solomon, that's not the case at all.

Okay. Death is just an inevitability, right? It's going to happen. And so you can't rob it, you can't cheat it, you can't prolong it.

But you can actually enjoy the gifts while you have them, knowing that they will, in fact, end.

So if I could just use an illustration, all right, so your kids are little. How do you actually enjoy them being little?

Well, you realize that one of these days, they're going to grow up. Right? And now that's going to be a different chapter.

And that chapter will have enjoyment as well. But those days are going to be gone. So it's like you live them to their full while you have them, knowing that they're going to pass.

And one thing that should be obvious to us is that Solomon doesn't have a full -blown view of the afterlife.

He does have a view of the afterlife. He's not a pessimist in the sense of, well, who knows what's going to happen?

He does ask that question, but I think that question is understood differently. Relatively early in salvation history, the fullness of revelation hasn't been made clear.

Right. So for us, living this side of the cross and the resurrection, what we can understand is that, yeah, death is an inevitability for all of us.

But thanks be to God, Jesus took the sting out of death for us. He conquered death for us.

And so even death, so to go back to the French philosopher's thought experiment,

I think that what you could say is that for us, we live life to the full, knowing that we're going to die, but then also knowing that all of the wonderful gifts that we've tasted and experienced in this life, one of these days, are going to give way to eternity, where the goodness of God's gifts, as they come to us in Christ, will never, ever pass away.

So I think it's powerful. Yeah. When you take the book of Ecclesiastes and cast it in the light of the cross, you get a level up, even from what

Solomon is saying. Does the author of Ecclesiastes, does he say that man and beast are the same?

Yes, he does. Okay. And what are we to make of that? Can I eat your insides like a hamburger?

I think that there are two things that Solomon is getting at when he says that.

He introduces that idea at the end of chapter three, and I think there's two things that he's making a comparison of.

One is, if we actually live lives of wickedness, we live lives of depravity, we live lives of having our own agenda that tramples people, we're no better than the beasts.

In fact, we've become beasts, beast -like. But then the other thing is,

Solomon is very emphatic, is just like a dog dies, you're going to die too.

And so, just like the beasts, their life comes to an end, yours does too.

So, in some ways, what Solomon does with death is he is continually reminding us that there are certain things that you might think give you an advantage in death that don't.

So, being a human being, that does not give you any advantage over beasts. Both alike die.

Wisdom, better to live with wisdom, all right? But wisdom doesn't help you cheat death either. Right?

So, Much to the contrary of this guy, this billionaire guy that I've been watching on YouTube.

He's like, listen, I don't want to die. And I think I can stop it. And he's taking all these supplements and he's doing all these things.

And he has all, so again, he thinks he has a cheat code. He's got all the money and all the free time in the world and access to the best technology and information.

And he's going to die just like everybody else. Yeah. Wow. How can we grow old without becoming grumpy and cynical?

Well, one of the things about Ecclesiastes is that it deals with old age and the process of drawing near to death in pictures that are not overly appealing.

Okay. He's honest. He is totally honest. He's not putting a filter on anything. Yeah. And so,

I think that the picture of old age is pretty depressing in Ecclesiastes.

But here's, I think, the key for Solomon is those days, if God gives you a long life and you reach old age, there's no guarantee that that happens.

But if it does happen and you find yourself in old age, in a state of decrepitude, the eyesight's going, the hearing's going, even natural desires are going, you know, and life is just followed by one doctor's appointment after another, after another, right?

And my dad might watch this podcast. He might not. But I'll say, hey, dad, so what'd you do this week?

Well, I went to the doctor on Monday. I went to the doctor on Tuesday. And so, that's the inevitability of old age.

Solomon, I think Solomon would approve of old age is not for sissies, right? Because it is a hard season.

But I think that when you look at that text in chapter 12, the key actually ends up being in verse one, when he says, remember your creator in the days of your youth before the evil days come.

In the evil days or the hard old days. Yeah, yeah. Or the days of being aged. Yeah, yeah.

And so, I think the old Puritan William Bridge has a great treatise called

The Word for the Aged. And he deals with, in a sense, some of the liabilities of old age, some of the dangers of old age.

And I think that from Solomon's perspective, that that's kind of right on track.

There are some dangers. Because what's happening in old age is that all those good gifts that you had, they're starting to slip away.

Right. Relatives begin to pass away. Friends are gone. You can't enjoy a lot of the stuff that you used to enjoy.

So, it's so easy to slip into that. Yeah. That's really good, brother.

What does the book of Ecclesiastes have to say to us about wise stewardship?

Well, it has a lot to say about work and money. All right.

And the work ethic in Ecclesiastes is interesting, because on the one hand, you work hard.

But on the other hand, you make sure that you take time to rest. Okay. So, I think that that ends up being just sort of a vital thing for us to remember, because we want to work hard.

We want to teach our kids to work hard. But the fact is, is that we'll never enjoy the good gifts of God, including our labor, unless we take time to rest.

Right. So, that's one counsel I think Solomon gives us that is really helpful.

I mentioned in the book that I wish I would have had this perspective in seminary, because I just poured myself in.

I mean, I wanted to ace everything. I wanted to do my best. And what it did is it led me to neglect my wife.

We only had one kid at that time, my daughter Ashley, because I was always, you know,

I got to study. I got to study. I got to study. And I say, I think Solomon would have pulled me aside and said, listen, it's okay to get a

B. Go spend time with your family. One of the guys that I worked for told me that his seminary professor pulled him aside after he got another

A on an exam. And he goes, hey, you're doing great, but don't you have a wife and kids? He was like, yeah.

He was like, okay, you shouldn't be getting A's in my class if you have a wife and kids. Yeah. That's a wise seminary professor.

But Solomon also talks a lot about money. And the idea is that, first of all, money is a gift from God, but it can't become

God, right? Because the minute that money becomes an idol and you're living for it, you're looking to money to give you more than what

God intended it to give, right? So Solomon's pretty honest. Would you rather be dirt poor or have a little bit of money, right?

Well, yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, it's nice to have a little bit of money. It's nice to be able to go and do things.

It's nice to be, right, all of that. But Solomon has such a dogged determination to make sure that none of the good gifts of God become idols, right?

Because then they end up, you talk about ruining the gift, right? And so being generous with your money, actually being a good steward of your money is the way that you show that it's not your

God. Yeah. Yeah, that's really good, brother. I always say the preacher, because I'm afraid

I'm going to mess up the Hebrew. I didn't go to seminary, so bear with me. The Kohelet. How do you say it?

Yeah, Kohelet. There you go. Does the Kohelet employ sarcasm? Oh, yeah.

Talk to us a little bit about that. Yeah. And whether or not we should as well. Yeah. Well, that's a hard one for me because I was born into a family where sarcastic humor was just par for the course.

Yeah. So Solomon does, in fact, use sarcasm. I don't see massively heavy doses of it.

But he'll say things, and this is maybe not technically sarcasm, but he'll say things to evoke a response, right?

I'm naturally, my humor is probably a little more sarcastic than some people would like.

But I think that as Christians, we probably should know when we've used too much, right?

It's like salt or pepper. I think when you just think through the peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self -control, there is no law against these things.

You can't overuse them. You can't be, I mean, I guess someone could distort what gentleness is and then say that they've used too much of this.

But true gentleness, you can't overuse it, right? Biblical gentleness, gospel gentleness, but you can really easily overdo sarcasm.

Yeah. Okay. In chapter seven, you highlight the systemic nature of injustice in a fallen world.

But I thought you did something interesting, which, first of all, you're a conservative. I'm a conservative. Sometimes conservatives are allergic to the word systemic, partially because the environment that we are in now politically and socially, the idea has been abused, stretched to the point where it doesn't really mean anything.

But you make the argument for systemic injustice actually from a libertarian standpoint.

You say this, the mere existence of many levels of government administered by many officials makes at least some corruption inevitable.

And then you talk a little bit about how Solomon deals with corruption at that level.

Anything you want to say about that? I mean, just dive right in. Yeah. So Solomon has a pretty pessimistic view of human nature.

All right. And so the minute that you start talking about politics, the minute you start talking about government, the minute you start talking about people being in control of other people,

Solomon's view is that they're going to abuse that power.

And in doing so, they're going to abuse the people under them. And so I think that Solomon's critique for us, he does two things that I think sort of help us.

One is he reminds us at the end of chapter five that politics is never a savior.

Now, would we rather have a good president than a bad president? And the answer is, of course.

Nobody's arguing for immunitize the eschaton by voting for the worst person possible.

Maybe somebody is, but we're not. But there's a sense where Solomon says, you know what?

So this is a vapor too, right? So you get the guy that everybody loves, right? You get the guy that everybody loves.

People are going to get tired of him too. And then, you know, so today's hero is tomorrow's zero, something like that.

And Solomon's just realistic about that. So what that means is I can't look at human government, politics, candidates, kings, prime ministers, presidents, whatever, as if that's going to, in a sense, fix everything.

It's not. His view of bureaucracy, in a sense, is that every level, it's like you have the parasite at this level has to protect the parasite under him because his parasitical tendencies...

He's feeding him. He's feeding them. Yeah. And Solomon views, in a sense, government that way, right?

So even, you know, okay, well, okay, a bad king is better than anarchy, but guess what?

You know, it's the people that basically suffer. There's a lot to unpack there.

There's a lot to unpack. Buy the book, read it. How does the book of Ecclesiastes relate to other books of wisdom literature in the

Bible, like Proverbs or Job? Yeah, so that's a wonderful question because obviously

Ecclesiastes fits into wisdom literature. And now,

I wouldn't want to overdo this part because I think some have.

So basically, there's a typical juxtaposition between conventional wisdom, i .e.

the Proverbs, and then unconventional wisdom like Job or Ecclesiastes.

And I think that that's probably an oversimplification. In a sense,

Proverbs does kind of tell us the way things ought to go, right?

When you take the paths of wisdom and righteousness, there are certain things that should happen, right?

Psalm 73 tells us that that doesn't always come to pass, right?

Sometimes, not just sometimes, the wicked do prosper, the righteous do suffer.

You get to Ecclesiastes, and Ecclesiastes is, pardon the expression,

Ecclesiastes is sort of the wisdom shock jock of wisdom literature.

But that's because Solomon's trying to jolt us into wrestling with these things.

Job, in a sense, does the same thing because Job is a righteous man, and yet he suffers, right?

So in a sense, that's sort of an unconventional approach. What Job's friends give is the standard prosperity party line, right?

If you're good... The reciprocity principle. Yes, yeah. And so I think that Ecclesiastes, in a sense,

Ecclesiastes fits into what we would call unconventional wisdom, right? Because it's not, you know, trust in the

Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding, all your ways acknowledge Him, and He'll make your paths straight, you know?

Ecclesiastes is like, yeah, trust in the Lord with all your heart, whether your paths ever get straight or not, right?

And so I think that it holds, in a sense, a unique place, but it's not so different that you can't find other portions of wisdom literature that actually are doing the same thing, not just in a shocking way.

Yeah, that's right. Do you ever reread books? Yes. Yeah. Have you ever read a book and found it to be not that effective or not that moving, not that challenging, not that wise or insightful, but then you've gone back and reread it after there's been growth and development in you, and all of a sudden you've come to see, wow, actually, this was amazing.

Have you ever had that experience before? Yes, I have. I feel that way about the Book of Ecclesiastes.

I remember trying to read it as a new Christian, and there's just no wisdom in me, you know?

There's just no structure for any of this to stick to. I don't even have the tools to be able to begin to understand what's happening here.

And then I've read it probably all the way through once every few years, and what I find is that the older I get, and hopefully even a little bit, the wiser

I get, the more the Book of Ecclesiastes resonates with me. Can you speak to how...

And this is a pretty loaded question. Sorry. Obviously, maybe you should be interviewing me on this one.

But can you speak to how the Book of Ecclesiastes grows on us as wisdom grows in us?

Yeah. I think if we assume, and I think we should, that Solomon writes

Ecclesiastes in his old age, and he's writing it from more of a reflective perspective, hopefully from a posture of repentance, then what we have is a matured perspective.

We're not always ready for mature perspectives in life, and...

Wisdom is wasted on the young. So, you look at the way, for instance, that young people, younger people, may be really idealistic about things, right?

You read Ecclesiastes, it kind of smashes idealism. And so, to me, there are certain books in the

Bible that are more meaningful to me as I've gotten older, and more meaningful to me since...

So, I had brain surgery in 2016, and had a couple of near -death experiences, okay?

So, when I read Ecclesiastes, okay? I'm not just reading it from, you know, being a 56 -year -old guy that's a father, and a grandfather, and a pastor.

I read it like that, but I also read it from the perspective of, I know what it is to actually think

I'm going to die, 100%. And so, does that wisdom actually grow on me?

And the answer is, absolutely. I can't even tell you how many times

I've read through Ecclesiastes. There was a period where I would read it through in one sitting every morning.

But, you know, just like God's Word, alive and active.

And man, the older I get, the more I look at that, and in a sense, it nourishes me in a way that it couldn't have at 30 years old, okay?

Yeah. Do you find yourself actively thinking about Solomon during the day?

Like, you're on a walk, and you see a beautiful flower. Do you think to yourself, this is a gift.

I need to enjoy this in the moment? I actually do. Yeah. I actually do.

Ecclesiastes has been such a huge part of my life now for quite a long time.

My daughter sent me a text last night, and my oldest grandson is Calvin. He's 10 years old, and he's sort of the little intellectual.

And so, they're sitting down for family worship, and Calvin says to his twin brothers who are two years younger, so boys, do you know who wrote

Ecclesiastes? And my youngest grandson, Sean, the youngest of the twins -

I like this guy. Says - I like Sean. Sean says, well, Papa wrote Ecclesiastes.

No, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, totally wrong. But his perception is, well, he talks about it all the time.

He must have wrote it, right? And it really has, I can say this, Sean, it really has woven itself into my worldview.

It really has. And you would recommend that others do the same. I think so, yeah.

You say that attempting to be excessively righteous or overly wise is neither righteous nor wise.

What do you mean by that? Well, this, of course, comes from one of those infamous passages in Ecclesiastes chapter 7, and Solomon says, don't be overly righteous.

Why ruin yourself, right? And I think a lot of people have misunderstood this as some sort of moral mediocrity or something, but I think that really what

Solomon's getting at there is, in our terminology, we would say something like, listen, perfectionism is impossible.

If you're striving for it, you are never going to attain it, and you're going to ruin yourself in the process.

So the key is the overly part. Of course, he advocates being a righteous person, being an upright person, but the person who's seeking to be overly righteous is the person that has scruples where God hasn't laid down the

Pharisees. Yeah, yeah. And I think that that ends up being an absolute recipe for disaster for people.

Well, I think about Jesus saying, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees, which is an incredible thing to say.

In a sense, it seems like what he's saying is, you have to think about righteousness from a different angle, right?

Yeah, for sure. But I'll tell you what, people in our circles,

Christians, conservatives, reformed, evangelical, I think that this is an incredible danger that we really do face.

So I think that the message needs, even though it's put in terms that are striking at first,

I think that it's a message that we need to preach. So I mentioned in the book, a guy comes up to me after a

Sunday service, and he is absolutely frustrated. And he comes up to me and he says,

I don't understand it. I don't understand it. We have our family, we have our kids, and we do everything right.

But we don't let him do this. We don't let him do that. We make sure we do this.

We even make him take vitamins. I mean, we bake our own bread. He's got the list. He had the list.

And he says this, and we're not half as happy as people that let their kids go to the movies.

Watch TV and eat processed food. Right, right. And to me, that's the perfect illustration of what

Solomon's talking about is, and you think that by crossing every T, dotting every

I, checking every box, right, that that's the way, you can't do it. And that is not righteous, right?

And that is not wisdom. What does the book of Ecclesiastes have to say to those in the prime of their lives?

Well, it says a lot. First of all, Solomon would commend you on your dark hair.

Nice. Yeah. Although not as dark as it once was. Yeah, the light's hitting it. I can see a little silver on the sides.

But I think that Solomon's point is, okay, so prime of life is a vapor, right?

That's the overarching thing. It's all a vapor. It's a vapor. And it's really short.

So you enjoy it. And then Solomon says some stuff that makes people a little nervous, right?

You know, hey, follow the desire of your eyes, right? Follow the pursuits. I take

Solomon to mean something like this. The prime of life offers opportunities that you're not going to have later in life.

So seize those opportunities, make the most of the prime of your life while you have it.

And then of course, he gives us the great caveat, but know this, God will bring every act into judgment, right?

Yeah. So it's not like a license to, hey, go to Palm Beach for spring break and hang out, you know, with those people and live it up.

It's not that. It's, listen, this is a unique time of life. It's a gift from God.

Maximize the opportunities while you have them. Because everybody knows, you know, once you start having kids, once you're involved in a career, all those things, some of those opportunities are never again going to present themselves.

And so it's a gift. Enjoy it responsibly. Yeah. That's a good summary, brother.

One of the, this is going to sound like we're going in a weird direction with this and maybe we are, but let's get weird.

Okay. There's plenty of room for nuance here. Dave Ramsey's whole,

I love Dave Ramsey. He just gives good, simple advice that the vast majority of people can profit from. Don't go in debt, yada, yada, yada.

But his whole thing is live like no one else now so that you can live like no one else later. Basically scrimp, save, live a pretty, pretty frugal lifestyle now so that you can be exceedingly generous later.

And in many ways, that sounds great. I agree with that. And I'm actually trying to do that.

On the other hand, tomorrow's not promised. And the money is in a sense, obviously it's not just for us.

We use it to glorify God and to serve others. But it is a gift given to us to enjoy now.

And there are things with money that I would like to do now with my family and with my wife that when

I'm 60, Lord willing, if I make it there, I probably won't be able to do with it. And I may not want to do with it.

And so I feel like there's a tension there. How do I prepare for tomorrow?

All of this was a long lead up to this question. How do I prepare for tomorrow, exercising that element of wisdom while also enjoying the prime of my life today?

It seems like they're incongruous. Yeah, I think that there is a tension that we feel.

And I would, for me, I think that when you're really, really young and your family's really, really young, most of us,

I mean, I know we had no money. I mean, we couldn't do anything.

If money is a gift and we are committed to good stewardship, right?

So that means we're not committed to hoarding it. We're not committed to wasting it, right?

And those are opposite extremes, but we're not committed to those kinds of paths.

Then I think that, in a sense, we can responsibly enjoy gifts now that may end up costing us.

So for instance, and this is just an anecdote, there's,

I don't have a verse, but I've got from my daughter and her husband,

I have three grandsons. Ariel and I have spent money in ways that we would not normally have spent for the sake of enjoying our grandsons and giving them memories.

We're going to do that in June. We got a place in Napa Valley in California.

We're going to go watch a Giants game. Okay, taking eight people to a

Giants game is very expensive. Basketball, not cheap, right? And so to me,

I'm like, do I actually want to spend that money? And the answer is not in one sense, but in another sense,

I know that what we're going to do is we're going to make memories. We are actually going to enjoy.

And so I think Solomon actually gives us, in a sense, the approval to do it wisely, right?

You're not going to go into debt, so you can have five great days. But I think

Solomon gives us the approval that money's a gift because it actually not only enables you to be generous with other people, it actually enables you to enjoy certain things in life that are completely legitimate to enjoy.

Good answer. You say that Solomon had to spend a long time being a student before he could be a teacher.

How does that apply to us as we pursue wisdom? Yeah, I think that in some ways, you know,

Dirty Harry Callahan, you know, Dirty Harry? Like from a

Western? Clint Eastwood, yeah. You guys need to catch up on your pop culture.

I'm just telling you. Oh, you know what I was talking about? Okay. If it's not Tombstone, it doesn't matter to me. Oh, yeah.

Well, I could probably find a good line from Tombstone too. I love it. But here's, you know, what

Clint Eastwood says in the movie, a man's got to know his limitations, right? And I think that the same thing would apply to us in terms of, especially those of us that actually do teach, those of us who do preach, we kind of have to know where we're at at any given stage of life.

And in a sense, not to try to go beyond where we're at.

So, I can say things, I can address things now at 56 with one congregation of 30 years that I couldn't when

I was 30 years old, for instance. And so, I think that there's just simply sort of a humble recognition that what

I have to give out is going to have some limitations.

I want to be careful. I especially want to be careful if I'm giving people counsel, right?

That could bind their conscience. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I think that we need to be, this is why for me, pastors have to be constantly learning, constantly growing, right?

Because that's in a sense what you're doing is you're making that reservoir deeper and deeper and deeper as time goes on.

And it's only so deep at any certain stage of life, and you kind of got to know your depth, right?

And so, I think that Solomon kind of gives us a good model in that, right?

There's things that he says in hindsight at the end of life that would have made no sense if he'd have said it when he was 45, you know?

Yeah, and he probably wouldn't have said it when he was 45, yeah. So, when it's all said and done, what is the end of the matter?

Fear God and keep his commandments. All right, signing off. Can you unpack that?

Because for a lot of people, they've had this confusing journey through the book of Ecclesiastes, and they get there and they say, okay,

I know that that's the right answer, but I don't really know why, and I don't really know how.

So, unpack that for us. Don't know how. Like, okay, you've just led me through this, you know, this maze of how am

I supposed to live my life in this fallen world? And okay, fear God, but what does that look like?

Okay. And to be fair, and this may not be a very good question, sorry to end on a low note, but that's what he's been doing all throughout the book.

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, well, I think that anybody that's ever read,

I use this illustration a lot with our congregation. So, you read a novel, okay, and let's say it's a mystery novel.

You get to the end, and then you go, oh, you know, you get that one summary chapter at the end that like brings it all into perspective.

Well, then you go back, and you start over from the beginning, but you start over from the beginning in view of the end, right?

I think that Ecclesiastes is really helpful that way. If you read the end, if you read the epilogue, right, these are delightful words given by one shepherd.

That's good, right? And then Solomon sums it up that this, and there's a little debate as to how that should be translated, but we'll just stick with, you know, this applies to every person, right?

Fear God, keep his commandments, knowing God's going to bring everything into judgment. So, to fear

God is to live, first of all, in light of his holiness, who he is, and keeping myself in perspective, right?

So, to live a life of the fear of the Lord means that I walk in his presence, and I know, and this is going to be a comfort or a terror, he sees everything, right?

And so, living life, enjoying these gifts, he sees how I enjoy them, right?

Or he sees how I dismiss them, right? So, the fear of the Lord is to, in a sense, embrace not only who

God is, but what he's doing for you, and to do it in a way that honors him, right?

So, I want to enjoy all these gifts. I don't want to turn my grandkids into an idol. That would be actually, in a sense, blaspheming

God, right? I want to actually fear the Lord in the way that I love my grandkids, in the way that I love my wife.

So, that ends up being, I believe, a pervasive theme through Ecclesiastes.

And so, I have an acknowledgement of who he is in his holiness, an acknowledgement of who I am and how dependent

I am on him, and I seek to live a life of obedience at the end of the day, which also then, in turn, governs how

I enjoy those good gifts. That is a very robust, colorful, detailed answer.

I feel like what I'm about to say is pretty sophomoric, but it's a tiny epiphany that I had as I made my way towards the end of your book.

The end of the book is, you know, fear the Lord, and the rest of the book is your life is a vapor, which is, like, recognize that you're going to meet him soon, right?

Like, live in light of this reality that the God that's there, who you love, who, you know, who you're serving, who you should fear, is not somebody that is off in a distant land that maybe someday you'll make it into his presence.

You're going to be before him, and you're going to be there, like, sooner than you know. Okay, brother, let's do some rapid -fire questions, and no thinking.

You just got to be quick. You got to answer. You got to go. So, like, tea or coffee? Coffee. All -meal, post -meal, or pre -meal?

Optimistic all -meal. Optimistic all -meal. That's right. Don't you hate how post -meal are like, we're the optimist ones. Come on.

Right. Theonomy, yay or nay? Nay. If you could only have the sermons of these men on an island for the rest of your life, who do you choose?

Paul Washer, Mark Dever, John Piper, Tim Keller, R .C. Sproul, or John McArthur?

This has got to be rapid -fire. No thinking, visceral reaction. Oh my goodness, you're terrible.

I don't know. I thought you were going to say Spurgeon or Edwards. I'm sorry. Okay, well, let's do that one then, since I've taken you aback.

I'd take Jonathan Edwards. I love Spurgeon, but... Yeah. Okay, well, what if you could only have the books of all those men, and we'll add

Spurgeon to Edwards? Not the preaching, but the books. Wait, did I just say books? No?

He said yes, you said no. Oh, so I thought the first sermon was... The first one was preaching. Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then books. Well, that's hard too.

This is not even fair. I don't even know why you'd do this to somebody. Yeah, it's fun.

Yeah. It's fun for me. Yeah, it's fun for you. Exactly. I really, I think that to me,

Piper's writings have been very influential. Of course, he's written voluminously.

So I guess I'd have to say Piper, because he's written on so much. Even his last book on Providence is just like mammoth.

You can only be on a desert island with the corpus of Lewis or Tolkien. Which one do you choose?

People in our congregation are going to laugh because they know that I'm not really... We have fans on both sides.

Yeah, right. I guess I'd have to say Tolkien, because I've never read him. Ah, that's a really unique answer.

Okay. I struggle with Tolkien. I finally got into The Hobbit. Lord of the Rings has been brutal.

Favorite work of fiction? Lonesome Dove.

Lonesome Dove. I finally read it last year. So good. It's awesome. Could not believe how good it was.

Could not believe how good it was. Have you read the original True Grit by Charles Portis? No, I have not.

Sorry. You should. It's rife with Calvinism. Okay.

Yeah. And it's right up there with Lonesome Dove when it comes to Western novels. Wow. So good.

Yeah. Do you do audiobooks? Yes, I do. Okay. The audiobook is narrated fantastically.

Yeah. True Grit, right? True Grit. That's right. Mountains or beach? Well, my wife was raised on an island, so I better say beach, but mountains.

Island Alcatraz? Yeah, my wife was raised on Alcatraz. Yeah, yeah. She was raised in the

Caribbean, but yeah. Oh, really? Okay. Interesting. We should have explored that conversation over breakfast.

Champagne or wine? I don't really drink, but I'd have to say that if we were having a special occasion,

I might try to go with champagne because I had like about three or four swallows of wine one time on vacation and I fell asleep right away.

So there was nothing romantic about it. Most favorite and least favorite candy?

Most favorite Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Let's go. Yeah, that's a no brainer. Let's see if we can go two for two.

Anybody that's righteous and wise would pick this. Hey man, now do we do freezer or do we want it normal or a little melty?

Oh, well, either normal or freezer. There you go. Yeah. Little melty is... No. No. Least favorite,

I would have to say like Charleston Chew or something like that. Those are pretty bad. They're nasty. Wouldn't you agree that black licorice is equally bad?

I think that there is... No, that's just yes or no. Yeah. I thought there was room for nuance.

Not at this point. I'm a legalist. Yeah. Black licorice is obviously the favorite of demons everywhere.

Exactly. Great. Good answer. Android or iPhone? iPhone because that's all

I know. Okay. Macaroni salad or potato salad? Oh, potato salad. German potato salad.

Okay. Fancy French food. Are you going foie gras or escargot? Well, the only thing

I know about what you just said is that escargot is snails and so neither one. Okay. All right. Night in or night out?

Night out. What is your least favorite race?

The Boston Marathon. There you go. Did I tell you that I signed up... Oh, he got it. Did I tell you that I signed up for my company's 401k?

I didn't end up doing it. I thought that's just too far to run. I just can't go that far.

Okay. Concert or football game? I would probably say a concert.

Morning person or night owl? Morning person. Burger King or McDonald's? Is there a middle position?

There is not. I guess chicken McNuggets at McDonald's.

Wow. Mexican or Italian? These are really hard.

I'd rather talk about Ecclesiastes. Mexican. There you go.

Chinese takeout and not the good stuff. Like bat, like 2 a .m. It's the only place that's open.

Chinese takeout or sushi? Chinese takeout. It's like 99%.

Cold or hot? Hot. Rock or rap?

Rock. Classical or jazz? Classical. Trapped on an island with only one systematic theology for the rest of your life?

Bovink. There you go. What hymn do you want to be sung at your funeral?

It is well with my soul. Yeah. I don't know how that's not everyone's answer, but I mean it has to,

I think from now on everyone should just say it is well and then can I choose one more? And then finally, this is the most important question that we ask everyone.

Does a straw have one hole or two? And just think what's the most obvious common sense answer here?

The most common sense would be one. Yeah. Okay. Just checking. Alrighty. Well, brother, this has been a fantastic interview.

I hope and pray that many thousands of people are encouraged to not just pick up your book, and I think you would agree with me, but to pick up the book of Ecclesiastes.

Yeah. Amen. To read it, to dive in, to be ministered to, and to consider the hope of Ecclesiastes, especially in light of the fullness of the revelation of the gospel.

Amen. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we love you. We thank you so much that we get the opportunity to do this, to sit around and talk about you and all of the wisdom that you have for us in your word.

Thank you so much for the book of Ecclesiastes. Help us to wrestle with it. Help us to remember that if the word of God really is your word, we're going to have to grapple with it sometimes, and it's not going to be pretty, and you're going to challenge us, and it's going to be confusing, but if we dig in by the help of your

Holy Spirit and with gifted teachers in the church that you've given to us, that we can actually understand and profit from and grow in the knowledge of the truth found therein.

So Lord Jesus, we pray that you'll bless this interview for the good of your church and for the glory of your name.