Ecclesiastes may be my favorite book in the Bible. It’s beautiful, raw, haunting, honest, depressing, and hopeful. Several years back I preached through Ecclesiastes, verse by verse, in a Wednesday night sermon series at Immanuel. You can find that sermon series here … What follows is a short list of resources that I found helpful in my preparation to preach through the book PLUS a quote from each book.

1. Recovering Eden: The Gospel According to Ecclesiastes, by Zach Eswine … “Ecclesiastes confronts us with our own ills in order that by knowing ourselves as we are we might come to know God as he is … The preacher ultimately wants us to believe that evil and good are real, that our sins in secret will be found out, and that along with those who’ve sinned against us we all will give an account of our lives to God.”
2. Living Life Backward: How Ecclesiastes Teaches Us to Live in Light of the End, by David Gibson … “One day you will be dead and gone, and the world will go on, probably without even remembering you. A hundred years after your death, the chances are, no one will ever know you lived. If this depresses you, then keep reading. There’s still a lot to learn. But if it cracks a wry smile on your face, you’re halfway to happiness.”
3. Why Everything Matters: The Gospel in Ecclesiastes, by Philip Ryken … “By being honest about life’s troubles, Ecclesiastes touches the hearts of people who struggle. Ecclesiastes also has a way of speaking to the issues of the day – any day … Ecclesiastes is not the kind of book that we keep reading until we reach the end and get the answer, like a mystery. Instead, it is a book in which we keep struggling with the problems of life and, as we struggle, we learn to trust God with the questions even when we do not have all the answers.”
4. The Message of Ecclesiastes, by Derek Kidner … “The voice of the Old Testament has many accents. There is almost everything there, from the impassioned preaching of the prophets to the cool, reflective comments of the wise – and a whole world of poetry, law, story-telling, psalmody and vision in between. But there is no-one quite like Qoheleth … no book in this whole great volume which speaks in quite his tone of voice.”
5. Preaching Christ from Ecclesiastes, by Sidney Griedanus … “Ecclesiastes may be the most difficult biblical book to interpret and preach … Ecclesiastes offers a unique perspective on human life – a perspective that is extremely relevant for the church today … Ecclesiastes is relevant especially for our culture because it tackles many of the temptations posed by secularism.”
6. Real Life in a Fallen World: Lessons from the Book of Ecclesiastes, by Tom Ascol … I haven’t read this book – but it looks great, and I have it on order!