The Duty of Man
Ecclesiastes 12:13-14
By Harold Dinsmore, M.Div.
© 2008 Harold Dinsmore

            Ecclesiastes is probably one of the least understood and read book of the Bible.  It is even more difficult to find let alone understand.  However, I want you to center your thoughts this morning on the very last 2 verses of this book.  If one could assign a theme to Ecclesiastes it would be “vanity.”  Over and over the writer talks of our days on earth as nothing more than a whisper, a mist or smoke.  He seems at times to be very pessimistic, yet, little rays of hope come darting through the gloom and doom—fatalism seems to be sweeping over his being.

            He sums up and then pens the verses now before us.  “Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter.  Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.  For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.”  Fear God and keep his commandments.  The crux of the problem with the human race is that we have in deed lost our fear of God.  Since the days of Deism in the 1700’s to Charles Darwin in the 1800’s we have been bombarded with the idea that man is no better than the beast of the field.  We are just another species in the evolutionary chain of events and even if there was a God he has sent us spinning off into space with no interest in our affairs or well being.