Ecclesiastes is one of those books of the Bible that we don't always know what to do with.

So much of it can feel a bit foreign, and sometimes it can even seem to be at odds with what scripture teaches elsewhere.

Just listen to how the book opens.

Vanity of vanities, says the preacher. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

So how should we approach the Book of Ecclesiastes?

And what's its core message for Christians today?

In my conversation, I'm speaking with Lydia Brownback about these questions and more.

Lydia is the director of women's resources at Crossway and a regular speaker at conferences and events around the country.

She's also the author of the Flourish Bible Study series for women, including a new study on the book of Ecclesiastes.

Let's get started.

Well, Lydia, thanks for joining me again on the Crossway podcast.

Great to be back, Matt. It's been a long time.

So today we're going to talk about the book of Ecclesiastes, and I would dare to say that

it's maybe one of the least studied books in the Bible, or maybe it's one that we can feel a little

bit uncertain about. Do you resonate with that? Yes, I think a lot of people

will resonate with that. We get to it and we don't quite know what to make of it. It's perplexing.

Yeah. We know as part of the Bible's wisdom literature. So we take it and we approach it that way.

What are some of the other books that would be categorized as wisdom literature. Well, Proverbs is the one everyone thinks of right away.

Job is actually a wisdom book. And some of the Psalms are considered wisdom Psalms. It's a tradition of ancient writing that it wasn't just in ancient Israel. It was in a lot of cultures

in the ancient Near East. And they would gather sayings, proverbs, about how the world works and how to operate and live in it successfully. And it was just, there were schools of wisdom. So we see this cross outside of just what we have in the Bible to scriptures and other religions and other cultures. But there's a distinctive to the Bible's wisdom

literature, and it is all oriented under one primary feature, which is the fear of the Lord.

So biblical wisdom differs from wisdom in other cultures, and that it's under the fear of Yahweh, the fear of the Lord. So every bit of wisdom, that is wisdom. It's fear of the Lord. And that's awe, reverence, and centering one's life completely on Jesus, on the Lord. Any of us who have read any of Ecclesiastes will know that it's kind of got a different flavor to it.

...