"The Good Life"
Ecclesiastes: Meaning When All Seems Meaningless • Sermon • Submitted
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Intro: It has been a reality check kind of book we have been walking through. And without a doubt, it is needed. It is comforting to know that what we experience is not something that is not addressed in Scripture. God knows and even gives us in this Bible the reality of pain and suffering. But in that, tucked away in this reality, we get some glimpses of another kind of reality check that I think we as God’s people need to heed. What we are going to talk about today may seem unspiritual, for we often have a view of the body and of life in the gloomy and serious in our Christian circles. But what we are going to talk about today is rooted in God’s good created order and something that we need to remember, especially in a fallen world.
CTS: Go and enjoy the good life that God has graciously given to you.
I. Feast on God’s Blessings (7-8)
I. Feast on God’s Blessings (7-8)
Another way to say this, is go and have a PARTY. Yeah, I know. We aren’t allowed to do that,right? That’s too unspiritual for Christians. But God is telling us quite the opposite. Feast! Drink! Dress up! Party! No, not the drunken party that we often see portrayed on TV or movies or seen on college campuses.
The increasing nature of the Preacher’s message is one that moves from a better than approach to a command approach. In the meaningless life under the sun, full of heartache and vanity, it is best to begin to take life as it is and enjoy it. No longer advice, but a command to contrast and juxtapose against this vain experiment. We would do well to Go!
ILLUSTRATION: I remember as a youth pastor, I took the youth one time to an amusement park. I had developed a trust with these youth for many years. And I also set aside some rules that I wanted them to abide by. They needed to always be in a group with someone and they needed to check in every 2-3 hours at a certain location. They also had to have someone that had a phone that I could call at any point if I needed them. But then after I gave them, that I said…Go! Have fun.
Or there have been times when I just let them loose on a buffet of food somewhere. No hesitation. Sometimes they though, really? I can have as much of this as I want? YES. OF COURSE YOU CAN. The delight in their eyes.
This is God telling us, commanding us, to Go!
A. Rooted in Created Order
A. Rooted in Created Order
It’s simple really. Enjoy the food that God gives. This is rooted in the created order. Every bit of this passage is rooted in the Genesis narrative. It was there that God gave man dominion over the earth, to cultivate and to eat, to drink the vines of the earth.
14 You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth 15 and wine to gladden the heart of man, oil to make his face shine and bread to strengthen man’s heart.
To have a good meal that God provides is nothing to scoff at. And we should slow down and enjoy it. To eat what God gives and recognize it is the life-sustaining means by which God blesses us and sustains us. So gather with your family and friends, make a meal and feast together. Drink the wine (and yes, this is wine as you think it is. Remember, Jesus drank wine and created wine). The problem is that often alcohol is abused and that is warned against in Scripture. It may be wise for you not to drink that, for a couple of reasons. Testimony and your history with it, including family history. It may also cause a brother or sister to stumble. All things to take into consideration. But here’s the main message here. Enjoy the food and your favorite drink, recognizing it as God’s good gift to you. Your favorite steak, that cup of coffee in the morning, a glass of sweet tea. Every created thing has a purpose. That purpose was good.
Also, we dress with joy, dress like we are under the hand of God and blessed by Him. White garments would signify joy and celebration alongside of their usefulness in the hot sun of the arid climate. Oil was a perfume. In other words, think about this? How does one dress in light of the redemption of God? No, I’m not talking about wearing a suit at all times or a dress. We sometimes get caught up in what is often cultural. But we dress joyfully, reflecting the grace and joy we have recieved in Christ! Not to show off, but as gratitude and reflection of God’s goodness.
The problem is that sin entered and made everything broken. The created good things became the worshiped things. Much of these things can be abused and worshiped. Satisfaction and wrongly ordered hearts will abuse such things and make them our identity rather than understanding them as gifts from our good Creator. We need reoriented hearts.
B. Redeemed by Jesus
B. Redeemed by Jesus
Jesus, with an earthly body, ate meals with people and attended parties! He fed the 5000. He broke bread with His disciples at the Last Supper. He ate in His resurrection body. Jesus made wine at the wedding at Cana. The body is important, theological. In His body, He redeems out brokenness, and reorients the created good things to their proper end.
Jesus uses the bread motif to remind us of His restorative power, His redemption.
51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
And as we are redeemed, we are commanded in Scripture to do all things, including this earthy bodily thing for the glory of God!
31 So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
Jesus, our Great Shepherd provides a table for us, a feast.
5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
This earthly blessing of food, drink and dress is but a preview of the coming party. In heaven, we will feast and enjoy God’s blessings in full. That which was commanded in creation will be fully fulfilled and glorified. You’ll eat in heaven. You’ll dress in heaven. And so much more.
God approves what you do: Rooted in the creation account, for this is what we were made for. Sin has broken this, but Christ has come to reverse it, to bring us back to our original order. Food, drink, and the created order is not inherently sinful. We just unfortunately have put these things in the place of God. When they are properly ordered, which also necessitates a heart change, things things are good and are full of worship when we rightly recognize where they originate from, God HIMSELF.
II. Enjoy Loving Companionship (9)
II. Enjoy Loving Companionship (9)
Another command of the created order, even before the Fall is the idea of companionship, and most clearly seen in the husband and wife relationship.
18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”
There are exceptions, but the natural order of our lives is to find a spouse. Genesis tells us of becoming one flesh. This is the life that God intended for us, to know a husband or a wife and life together in this life.
24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
The Preacher is most likely telling that young man here (in the Hebrew it points to almost a command go and get a wife). Part of the joy of the created order is that help meet. This isn’t supposed to depress you as a single person if you are. Paul himself was single and even said that some are called to this end. But even those that are single are to have companions, friends to enjoy life with. But unless you know that’s your calling, you can and should eventually seek that spouse in your life. Married men and women, enjoy your marriage as Christ intended for you.
This joy is rooted in that marriage is a blessing
18 Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth,
Men, remember that this joy is rooted in the command of Scripture.
25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,
Both spouses are reminded a little later..
33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
Give great care to the marriage relationship. Enjoy life in it. It will look different as years go on. But make that marriage relationship your number one priority in your earthly relationships, EVEN MORE THAN YOUR KIDS. You have a small time, in the midst of a seemingly vain existence, so enjoy it with the live whom you love. Love well! Enjoy those companions of life.
4 Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.
III. Work Hard (10)
III. Work Hard (10)
Finally, work hard. Why? Work was commanded in beginning as well in Genesis.
28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so.
Dominion means to cultivate and to work. Work is good. It is what makes us human. Work becomes harder and backbreaking because of the Fall. But Jesus has come to do His work in obedience to the Father (unlike Adam) and redeems work through His own work on the cross. Now, as believers in Christ, we can work with joy. Work isn’t our God, but a fulfillment of what we were made for. We work hard, not just to move up the ladder or to impress, but as worship. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for the glory of God. Why? The Preacher doesn’t see work to extend beyond the grave. You won’t find identity, knowledge, or wisdom in it. You do it out of your God-given gifts. And we do it with might and joy. That is our lot!
23 Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, 24 knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.
Martin Luther King Jr is quoted as saying this in support of this idea: If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.
Conclusion: So, the conclusion is simple. Can we make that our application for today and for the rest of our lives? Just let yourself enjoy life as God made it for you. It’s not unspiritual. You don’t have to live so sober and joyless until Jesus comes again. God wants you to enjoy His good gifts. And you need too, because you never know what is coming around the corner, in the midst of a broken world.
Jesus: the breadgiver, the cup, the bridegroom, and completed his work with all his might to give us eternal life, the good life!
Enjoy life! Yes, the bad days are real. The heartache and heartbreak is devastating. Death happens. The righteous die and the wicked live on. Be prepared for it. That’s what Ecclesiastes is doing for us. Preparing us for reality. But there is also the reality of enjoyment. In the midst of this broken world, the perfect Son of God came and has begun to redeem and put back together what is broken, and He has begun it in you. He is making you more human than ever before. Now we can truly enjoy God’s good gifts, because instead of becoming our identity and our worship, they become graces of the God who gave us life, bread, wine, clothing, spouses, and work as His good gifts to enjoy and to worship Him with. You worship God when you enjoy these things rightly. So feast/party for the glory of God! Love for the glory of God! Work for the glory of God! How? By enjoying these things in Christ.