Hey, everybody. I'm Tim Mackie, and this is my podcast, exploring my strange Bible. I am a card-carrying

Bible history and language nerd who thinks that Jesus of Nazareth is utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you

have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 20 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've

been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission

of Jesus and the journey of faith.

And I hope this can all be helpful for you too.

I also help start this thing called the Bible Project.

We make animated videos and podcasts and classes about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology.

You can find all those resources at Bibleproject.com.

With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week.

All right, this is the first of a new three-part series on the Book of Ecclesiastes.

It's one of the more odd and unique books of the Old Testament contains all kinds of fascinating

and even scandalous ideas that you won't find elsewhere in the Old Testament.

These were three teachings that I did when I was a teaching pastor at Door of Hope Church.

And this first message is just going to unpack one of the most important metaphors and

words in the book itself. The Hebrew word is Hevel, which means vapor or smoke, and you'll

discover what that means and the teaching that follows. But just for one visual thing that happens

in the message that you won't see, because

you're listening on the podcast, is that at one point I pull out my new employee gift that I received

when I came on the pastoral staff at Door of Hope, which was a hand-carved old Danish pipe and a bag of

really high-end English smoking tobacco.

And that is what I light and smoke on stage during the message while I was giving the

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