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Preaching Christ from Ecclesiastes: Foundations for Expository Sermons is unavailable, but you can change that!

As Sidney Greidanus points out, the biblical book of Ecclesiastes is especially relevant for our contemporary culture because it confronts such secular enticements as materialism, hedonism, cut-throat competition, and self-sufficiency. But how can preachers best convey the ancient Teacher’s message to congregations today? A respected expert in both hermeneutics and homiletics, Greidanus does...

the Teacher names God as the giver of this joy. Against the backdrop of the vanity of human endeavors “under the sun,” the Teacher’s message for Israel is to eat, drink, and find enjoyment in their toil. We can do justice to both of these themes by subordinating the theme of “vanity” to the theme of “enjoy.” The textual theme, then, can be formulated as follows, “Since all human endeavors ‘under the sun’ are vanity, find enjoyment in God’s daily gifts of food, drink, and toil.” For the sake of clarity,
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