Ecclesiastes 5:18-6.12

The book of Ecclesiastes chapter 5, verse 18, we’ll be reading through chapter 6 and verse 12 for our text and study this evening. Behold that which I have seen, it is good and comely for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labor that he taketh under the sun all the days of his life, which God giveth him, for it is his portion. Every man also to whom God hath given riches and wealth, and hath given him power to eat thereof, and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his labor, this is the gift of God, for he shall not much remember the days of his life, because God answereth him in the joy of his heart. There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, and it is common among men, a man to whom God hath given riches, wealth, and honor, so that he wanted nothing for his soul of all that he desireth. Yet God giveth him not the power to eat thereof, but a stranger eateth it. This is vanity. and it is an evil disease. If a man beget a hundred children and live many years so that the days of his life be many, and his soul be not filled with good, and also that he have no burial, I say that an untimely birth is better than he. For he cometh in with vanity and departeth in, darkness and his name shall be covered with darkness. Moreover, he hath not seen the sun, nor known anything. This hath more rest than the other. Yea, though he live a thousand years twice told, yet hath he seen no good. Do not all go to one place? All the least, labor of man is for his mouth, and yet his appetite is not filled. But what hath the wise man more than a fool? What hath the poor, that knoweth to walk before the living? Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the czar. This is also vanity and vexation of spirit. That which hath been is named already. and it is known that it is man. Neither may he contend with him that is mighter than he. Seeing there be many things that increase vanity, what is man the better? For who knoweth what is good for man in this life? All the days of his vain life which he spendeth as a shadow. For who can tell a man what shall be after him? unto the sun. May God bless to us his sacred and holy word this evening. What is the happiest nation? There was a survey taken by Time magazine that was interviewing people from various European nations trying to see which one was the happiest nation. They didn’t come up with a definitive answer to that question. question. They were not successful. Despite the claims of the contrary, Gallup survey pronounced France the most unhappy of the nations on the continent. A survey in Germany found that less than one-third admitted that they were very happy. Still another poll disclosed that among the inhabitants of Great Britain. Fifty-four percent their country felt that they were very happy. their country is a snobbish class-ridden society. When asked if they would leave their country, 47% said that they would pack their bags before teetan. It seems that no matter what country is surveyed, the people were basically unhappy. Genuine happiness, we have a mood of contentment, joy, and hope doesn’t depend on the country in which you live. That should be obvious. It depends on the right relationship with God. As David observed in Psalm 144, verse 15, Happy is that people whose God is the Lord. They’re the happy ones. Solomon has been dealing with the topic of the problem, wealth. We might think, what’s the problem? We don’t want to be wealthy. Well, there’s never enough wealth for you. You’re never satisfied with what you possess. Wealth can’t make life meaningful, no matter how much you have. Wealth can be harmful to you if it draws away your heart from the Lord, which it has a habit of doing. Wealth can be lost. It has wings, flies away, as the writer of Burverbs tells us, and wealth may make you a miserable miser. We’ve looked at all these things. At this point, in this last part of the chapter 5, Solomon wants to focus on how you can enjoy life, how you can legitimately enjoy earthly wealth. And so we want to talk about enjoying life from this passage in verses 18 to 20. Now, as a believer, you can enjoy life. You should enjoy the benefits of life. I think some Christians are under a misconception that somehow or other, we have to have a very sober, sorrowful life drained of all earthly joy. I don’t think that’s what the Bible presents before us. Some believers feel guilty, but enjoying the good gifts of God, giving heartfelt expression of it, and thanks to God, perhaps in their ties and their offerings. Solomon insists, though, if you read it as careful, that the true servant of God is really the happiest person, because God gives him richly all things to enjoy, as 1 Timothy 6.17 indicates. Now, we’re not to indulge our lust of the flesh, we’re not to find delight in worldly pleasures, but you may moderately use what God’s providence has provided for you in this life. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying, as we said, a good meal, or taking a delight in what your labor has accomplished. As verse 18, seems to indicate to us that you can enjoy the good of all your labor. God, that’s God’s portion that’s been allotted to you. Look at it this way. Do you do your work as unto the Lord? Are you God’s servant and what you’re doing? Then you can enjoy the fruit of your labor. He’s given it to you. Just keep in mind that it’s God who grants you all these things. so you have to keep them in the right perspective. Never forget who your benefactor is. God is the one who can cause all the sorrowful things of life to be forgotten, cheering your heart with his good gifts as verse 20 indicates to us. Now this is important because it sort of counterbalances the troubles you have in this life. You’re going to have troubles in this life. this life. But if you know God, you can have spiritual joy even in the midst of all the troubles that you have in this life. The only appropriate response to the good things with God to provide you is to rejoice and to praise him. So enjoy the benefits of life. God’s fellowship makes life’s benefits a source of joy. He word in this passage here is God. He makes all the difference between that and just life under the sun without God. God is the one who has given you all the days of your life, verse 18. He’s giving you the length of life that you have. And he’s the one that gives you wealth in the ability to enjoy. Verse 19. And God is the one who sustains his people by providing joy. Verse 20. So it is your relationship with God which makes all that you possess then a source of joy. Take God away and the happiness disappears. No matter how much you may have. The godless attempt to enjoy the good gifts of God without a relationship with God and this is why they never are satisfied. But here you are, You can even have less than they do. It doesn’t matter. As long as you have the relationship with God, he can give you joy in what you do possess. It is God who gives you bodily health, joy of spirit, contentment, and peace, times of possessing and enjoying, and many other factors. Without God, all the material and all the physical resources of life are useless. As a believer, you can say this is my father’s world. Jesus Christ is my Savior. He has provided for me everything by his goodness. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. So as a Christian, you truly can enjoy life. That’s what he takes up here in verses 18 to 20. He touches on something he’s already touched on, but we’re sort of summarizing things here at this set at this point, and he’s laying this out for us. Now, secondly tonight, in verses 1 to 6 of of chapter 6, he says here that you cannot truly enjoy life by following the way of the world. He sees this terrible evil, which is common under the sun. He’s thinking about what you lose if you follow the world’s way of living. That’s the under the the sun living that’s common to most of the men as verse 1 indicates. Riches and wealth are God’s good gifts. He gives them sovereignly, and yet you may possess them and not be able to wisely use them. They don’t actually benefit you. There are many who have all their heart’s desires, verse 2 seems to indicate. They want nothing for their soul of all that they desire and yet they’re not satisfied. When we talk about the rich young ruler, we talk about the rich fool, the rich men in the story with Lazarus, and you look at all these situations and they come to mind, yet something is missing. They can’t really enjoy the wealth that they have. Something spoils it. Well, God is behind that spoiling. Yet God giveth him not power to eat thereof. Verse 2. Here, the idea is you have no power to savor it. To enjoy what you have. And he lists several things. that may ruin the good gifts that you supposedly have here that God has given you. Sometimes your wealth falls to a stranger. He says here in verse 2, a stranger eateth it. You do all the work, somebody else enjoys the benefits. It doesn’t necessarily mean to have to be after you die. It certainly could be. could even happen in this life. You could be someone who develops a new product and call someone in to help you. Maybe it’s a household cleaning product, a dust destroyer or something like this. You get this newcomer in and he’s supposedly helping you with the business and before you know it, you’re suddenly robbed of your rights and your little empire is gone. He’s taking it from you. he enjoys all the labor, all the effort you put into building this company. Sometimes God as you toil for years to build a business and just when it’s going to be profitable, you die. Someone else takes over. New CEO takes over and he’s the one who benefits from it. God sometimes frustrates a person by taking wealth away from them. God can’t give you wealth and then remove it from you. Sometimes your prosperity may be a large family. He says in verse 3. You might get 100 children. Men live many years. So the days of your years be many. You know, usually if you have a large family, a huge family in the Bible, this is a good thing. If you read Psalm 127, 128, it seems to be a benefit to having children. To have your quiver full of children and grandchildren, to have a hundred of them or whatever, would be wonderful, you’d think. Now, in order to see the growth of your family tree, you might have to live to be quite old. Many years. Maybe you’re in your 90s. Maybe you’re in your hundreds. And yet suppose, in spite of this tremendous honor, you’re despised by your children. So that you’re not even given a proper burial. You’re not even treated with respect. Because he says here, his soul be not filled with good and also that he have no burial. That would be a terrible thing, wouldn’t it? There’s a total absence of all suitable affection and honor that’s due to you. They’re just happy to greedily divide up your estate. That’s all. That’s all they care about. Wouldn’t that be frustrating? Wouldn’t that be frustrating? Wouldn’t be frustrating than know they don’t care about you before you even lie. This is a foolish way to live. But here you are, living your life out under the sun without God. What is your future? The grave? Like the rich man, you’re going to lift up your eyes in hell when it’s all over. In this life, you may have possessed wealth and all kinds of goods. But God does not let you be satisfied. There’s frustration. frustration here. Now Solomon says something here from verse 3 through verse 6 that’s sort of surprising in a way. He says a stillborn child is better off than you are. Think about that. At least this infant comes and goes without any of the sorrow, the frustration, and the trouble you’ve had. He misses all the misery that plagues you. He certainly has more peace than the person who slaves away for years, even a thousand years. Or twice that much. And yet fails to enjoy his prosperity because the prize always alludes him. We said it’s just like a carrot in front of the donkey, a carrot on the stick. You never can get it. Psalm is on to something here. His argument seems irrefutable. If this life is all that there is and it ends up not being a satisfactory life and miserable in many ways that a stillborn baby and a billionaire who all go to the same place, you’d better off to be the stillborn baby. Death ends whatever meaning life has provided for you. What does the secular man have the hope for? Always God is this life. So, if you are merely the product of evolution and time and chance, even wealth and honor can’t make you happy, you might as well skip life and die a martyr or die early. Once you leave God out of the pitch, your life looks pretty bleak. You’re chasing the wind, he says here. He’s talked about all these things in a sense before, so I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this. So you cannot truly enjoy life by falling in the way of the world. Notice thirdly, you must consider these things. things to have an enjoyable life. Versus 7 to 12. Your contentment is better than constant covetousness. Versus seven to 12, 7 to 9. All the labor of man is for his mouth, yet the appetite is not filled. For what hath the wise man more than the fool, what hath the the poor that he knoweth to walk before the living? Better is the sight of the eyes and the wondering of the desire. This also is vanity and vexation of spirit. Verse 7, Solomon takes time sort of the review, the implications of what he’s taught up to this point. The purpose of your endless labor remains elusive, he says, in verse 7. Now, ordinarily, ordinarily you work for your mouth in this. sense to feed yourself, to support your life. Your constant desire is for life-sustaining food and the needs you have in this life. But that never ends. There’s a constant need. Yet, despite all your labor, your appetite can’t be satisfied. The same natural cravings return day after day. The worldly desires are also not satisfied. Your mouth here is a symbol for all your affection. those of the flesh and of the mind and you’re not going to get satisfied. So the covenous man here finds the more he has, the more he wants. And it’s a strange delusion to think that if I just have more of this world’s goods, it’s going to satisfy me, with what you already have has not satisfied. Verse 8. Does the wisdom of the wise man, the humanly wise man, And the boot-licking service of the poor to gain favor really make them any better off in the end. Don’t they all go to the same place? Each person tries to get ahead and his are on her own way in this life tries to gain something. But what does it really matter? Are you better off? you’re still battling the same problem. He can’t be satisfied. The conclusion he gives in verse 9 is this. Better is the sight of the eyes. And here I think he means, it’s better to enjoy the good things you already have than possess. Then the wondering of desire to have a roving desire for more and more and more. What does it gain? So enjoy what God has given you. Is what He’s trying to get across. Why wear yourself chasing after more and more, regardless of your station in life? Because satisfaction is only found in knowing the Lord, and you don’t know the Lord if you’re just pursuing goods. No wonder, the psalmist says that turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity in Psalm 1, 1937. Keep me from this delusion about the vain things of this life. So your contentment is better than constant covetousness. Your submission to God is the essential thing, verses 10 to 12. That which hath been is named already, and it is known that it is man. Neither may he contend with him that is mightier than he. Seeing there be many things that increase vanity, what is man the better, for who knoweth what is good for man in this life, all the days of his vain life which he spendeth as a shadow, for who can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun. Now Solomon here is reviewing, I think, the results of his long inquiry that he’s already conducted. Whatever a person is, has already been considered. You’re either wise. or you’re foolish. You’re either rich or you’re poor. You’re a ruler or you’re a subject. You’re honored or you’re despise. You’re an oppressor or you’re a sufferer. It doesn’t really matter ultimately. The bottom line is you’re a mere man, fallen in Adam, depraved in spirit, and responsible to God. And therefore, you must be right with the Lord. or there is nothing that can happen that would be better. Now, neither may he contend with him that is mightier than he says in last part of verse 10. You sometimes pretend that you’re the one that rules your life, not God. But are you wiser than God? You think maybe you’d be better off with more, but more may only increase your sorrows we’ve already saw in verse 11. It’s hard to know what is good for a man, he says in verse 12. You don’t know what’s best for you. What you think is good may be evil. What you think is evil may turn out to be good. So you can’t even enjoy these things. You don’t even know what’s going to come after you. Somebody else is going to inherit it all you have, and he’s already told us could waste it. Who knows what will happen? In the story of long, versus in Genesis 13, we find that Abraham and Lot once well together. Remember, he’s his nephew. Lot is Abraham’s nephew. But they had all this wealth and abundance, many cattle and so forth, and there would be squabbling between their servants over the land, you know, grazing rights and over the wells. And Abraham’s saying, this isn’t good for us to strike. in front of the heathen in this land. See, so I’ll tell you what, Lott, why don’t you and I separate? I’ll tell you what, you pick whatever way you want to go. If you go to the west, I’ll go to the east. Whatever you want to do, I’ll let you choose first. And I’ll take what’s left over. Well, Lott made his choice. He looked around. He saw the well-watered plains of the Jordan. He thought, boy, this is great for grazing cattle and sheep and so forth. I think I’m going to go this way. And so he picks that territory around Sodom and Gomorrah. Because it seems like it’s a very lush area. Lots of greenery. Great for cattle. It seemed like a natural choice. it seemed like just what he needed. So we read those ominous words that he pitched his tent towards Sodom. The next time we see Lott and hear about him, he’s living in Sodom. And he is actually one of the elders of the city as a political position in the city. So he’s got wealth, he’s got position, he’s got honor. But Sodom is a very evil place. The Bible tells us that men of Sodom were wicked sinners before the Lord exceedingly. The New Testament tells you that just Lot vexed his righteous soul by the conduct or behavior. Here are the conversation of these wicked men. But chose what he thought was best for him. It wasn’t what was best for him. He was wrong. It was probably the worst thing he could have done. When the foreign kings came in and conquered Sodom and hauled him all off. And Abraham had to go out and rescue the whole city. And spared lot. You think that we would learn something from that. But he doesn’t seem to learn anything from it. And then there’s that ominous day when the Lord and two of his angels come to visit Abraham and Abraham is told, I’m going to destroy Sodom and the Moor in the cities of the planet. I’ll wipe them all out. And what’s Abraham thinking? What about Lot? What about Lot’s family? What’s going to happen? He begins to plead with the Lord. Remember how? He’s pleading it. If there’s 50 righteous, will you spare the city? Is there 45? If there’s 30? If there’s 20? It was just ten righteous, yet there were not ten righteous in the city. So what happened was Lot lost everything. He lost his wife even as she looked back and turned into a pillar of salt. And he’s too fearful to live in a little city that he asked God to spare. He’s like, let me stay in his little city of the plane. He was too frightened because he knew those people were just like the rest of the city. them. So what does he end up? He’s in a cave, living in a cave, and unwittingly father’s children by his two daughters that are with him. That’s what that’s, that’s his end. From choosing what he thought was best because he doesn’t know. Where we heard about Abraham’s heritage and saw Russell Reddit, God says, I’ll give you all the land. Here you walk up and down to three. it, whatever you see here, it’s going to be yours. He has nothing at the moment, but he’s going to have everything, eventually. We can’t play God even for one day. Think we know best. We don’t. We have to simply submit to God’s wise providence. Well, let me close tonight by saying this. What’s the world’s happiest nation? I can’t tell you that. I don’t know that there’s an answer to that question. genuine happiness is involved in a relationship with God. If you don’t have a relationship with God, you’re never going to be satisfied no matter what you have of this life. Ultimately, it is God who grants you all the benefits of this life, all the good things, and the contentment to enjoy them. All things are yours, verse Corinthians 322, the things present and the things to come. They’re all yours. The true difference between the godly and the wicked is not necessarily the good gifts that God provides. Because God could give the same gifts to both people, the good, the righteous, and the wicked. But the difference is in the power to properly use those gifts. And only the Christian has the ability to use the good gifts that God is given in a proper way so that God is honored and we are benefited. And we enjoy them right. You need not be the slave of earthly gifts. You can be the master of them if you use them in the right manner. The ungodly know nothing of joy of heart that’s provided by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, they have no comfort in their losses and their sorrows. They only have misery. And God has set both the day of good things and the day of sorrow back to back in a person’s life. He might not find anything after him, as the scripture indicates to us. Job is a man who loses everything, and yet he still blesses God. The Lord gave, the Lord take it away, blessed it be the day and the Lord. Why? Because he is joy and his heart from God. My friends, unless you are reconciled with God through the Lord Jesus Christ, you have no hope of true happiness. Otherwise, it would be better for you if you had never been born. That’s what Solomon tells you here. Because your end is going to be quite horrendous. Let us close with a word of life.