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Matthew 5-7 – The Sermon on the Mount and Ecclesiastes
What do the Sermon on the Mount and Ecclesiastes have in common? Both are about the answer to true happiness. Ecclesiastes closes with the secret revealed, and the Sermon on the Mount opens with the answer. While there are different ways to translate and interpret Ecclesiastes 12:13, I prefer the one which is the most literal – “Fear God and keep His commands, for this is the whole of man.” The CEV says, “This is what life is all about.” Man becomes fulfilled by becoming what God created us to be and do. And that is the Sermon on the Mount, the righteousness that surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus’ exposition on life is not a philosophy book; it is the greatest how-to book. Everyone wants to be happy and beatitude means, happy, joyful or as I prefer, fulfilled. Some in the world look everywhere for happiness: friends, fame, and fortune. The book of Ecclesiastes is about one man’s futile search for the greatest good, the summum bonum. Why futile? Most of his search is without God’s greatest good – God Himself. Even the scribes and the Pharisees didn’t find it, so the answer is greater than their form of righteousness. The world looks for what it cannot find, because it looks in the wrong place because it does not know for what it should be looking. The vain search leads to worry and anxiety (6:25-34) “under the sun.” Unfulfilled, and filled with futility, people stop looking and give up on life; or accept imitations and incomplete lives. They are deluded by the devil. Ecclesiastes is the life story of a sad old man. The Sermon on the Mount is the greatest how-to book, new convert workbook, marriage manual, ever spoken.
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