Last week’s sermon passage opens the second half of the book of Ecclesiastes (Ecc 6:10ff).  After outlining the meaningless places people look for fulfilment in the first half of the book, Qohelet now wishes to tell his readers what is good in life.  He starts by...

One of the most misquoted verses in the Bible is ‘money is the root of all evil’.  To begin with, 1 Tim 6:10 does not say the root of all evil, for there are plenty of other forms of evil.  Furthermore, Paul is speaking about ‘the love of money’.  Much evil comes from...

We’ve been working our way through the book of Ecclesiastes, in which ‘the teacher’, or Qohelet in the Hebrew, has been deconstructing all the different places people look for meaning in life, IF there is no God.  Yet even though this book was written close to 3,000...

One of the most common questions asked of Christianity today is ‘if there really is a God, why is there so much suffering in the world?’  Ecclesiastes 3:16-4:6 tells us atheists have been using suffering to argue against the existence of God for millennia.  Qohelet...

Ecclesiastes 3:1-15 is a strange passage.  For a brief moment Qohelet leaves behind the notion of meaninglessness to recite a very famous poem about time.  What becomes apparent very quickly however is that God sets the times.  For example, no human has control over...

This term we’re looking at the book of Ecclesiastes, which describes life on this planet is meaningless; i.e. a puff of mist.  Yet the author’s (Qohelet’s) purpose is to get us thinking about life, rather than just mindlessly living on instinct, like the animals.  So...