Living the Good Life

(Fellow Southern Baptist pastor by the name of Shane Sowers posted a message he called “The Good Life” from Ecclesiastes 9. This sermon is developed with gratitude using much of Shane’s resources. Thank you, Shane Sowers!)

On this Labor Day weekend, I want us to begin this morning by looking at one verse found in Ecclesiastes 2:24. I am reading from the New Living Translation of the Bible.

So I decided there is nothing better than to enjoy food and drink and to find satisfaction in work. Then I realized that these pleasures are from the hand of God.

In his book, Connecting, Larry Crabb writes: A friend of mine was raised in an angry family. Mealtimes were either silent or sarcastically noisy. Down the street was an old-fashioned house with a big porch where a happy family lived. My friend told me that when he was about ten, he began excusing himself from his dinner table as soon as he could without being yelled at and walking to the old-fashioned house down the street. If he arrived during dinnertime, he would crawl under the porch and just sit there, listening to the sounds of laughter.

When I heard this story, I thought, “What it would have been like if the father in the house somehow knew this young boy was huddled beneath the porch and sent his own son to invite him in?” Imagine what it would have meant to him to accept the invitation, to sit at the table, to accidentally spill his glass of water, and hear the father roar with delight, "Get him more water! And a dry shirt! I want him to enjoy the meal!"

The Westminster shorter catechism question number 1 asks, “What is the chief-end of man?” The answer is very profound. “To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”

We spend a lot of time talking about the need to glorify God, but do we spend enough time declaring the need to enjoy our Lord. Some might say, well if you look at life there is not much to enjoy today.

We’ve certainly heard enough about all the trials we are experiencing at this time in our lives. But we cannot lose sight of all the gifts the Lord has given to us. There is still much to enjoy. There is still much for which we are to be thankful.

1 Timothy 6:17 (NIV) Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.

Ecclesiastes 3:12 (NIV) I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live.

God wants you to enjoy your life. God wants you to be happy and to do good while you live your life! And this is what Solomon wants us to understand today.

Ecclesiastes 9:7–10 (NLT) 7 So go ahead. Eat your food with joy, and drink your wine with a happy heart, for God approves of this! 8 Wear fine clothes, with a splash of cologne! 9 Live happily with the woman you love through all the meaningless days of life that God has given you under the sun. The wife God gives you is your reward for all your earthly toil. 10 Whatever you do, do well. For when you go to the grave, there will be no work or planning or knowledge or wisdom.

Three things Solomon says we should do to live the good life.

I. Enjoy Your Life, Ecclesiastes 9:7-8, (NLT)

7 So go ahead. Eat your food with joy, and drink your wine with a happy heart, for God approves of this! 8 Wear fine clothes, with a splash of cologne!

Life’s enjoyments are not guilty pleasures but godly pleasures—or at least they ought to be. Now God is not saying we should live a hedonistic lifestyle. We are not to be selfish to the point of caring only about our own happiness and satisfaction. Solomon is saying, “Life is often hard and challenging. So make the most of it when you can!”

From the very beginning of Ecclesiastes, he has been telling us mostly about the troubles of life. He says our existence under the sun is meaningless, vanity, and striving after the wind. But he doesn’t stop there. This is not his only theme. He speaks to pleasure as well as to pain.

Ecclesiastes 9:7 NLT - So go ahead. Eat your food with joy, and drink your wine with a happy heart, for God approves of this!

Solomon is pointing out that we need to live our lives with a balanced perspective. Yes, there is plenty of bad times in life but there is also an abundance of good times in this life. So we need a balanced perspective.

For all our difficulty, there are many things that we are able to enjoy in life. Life is bitter and sweet. If we fail to uncover this balance, we fail to experience life as it actually should be lived.

Notice also how Solomon reminds us in all the passages of enjoyment and pleasure given have the Lord at the center.

Why should we enjoy eating and drinking and working? In chapter 2 it is because these activities come “from the hand of God” (v. 24). In chapter 3 it is because these activities are “God’s gift to man” (v. 13). The same is true in chapter 5, which also says that God keeps us “occupied with joy” in our hearts (v. 20). The Preacher may be frustrated with life in this fallen world, but he still acknowledges the gifts that come from the hand of God.

We see this perhaps most clearly where the Preacher tells us to enjoy bread and wine because “God has already approved what you do” (v. 7). This is not a blanket endorsement of everything that people do, as if God would ever approve of wickedness. Primarily the Preacher is saying that our eating and drinking enjoy the blessing of God. A merry heart has God’s approval. It is part of his gracious will for our lives.

Ecclesiastes 9:8 The celebration continues in verse 8: “Let your garments be always white. Let not oil be lacking on your head.” (NKJV)

White garments were the “dress-up clothes” of the ancient Near East. Many festive occasions were adorned with robes of white. They were worn by war heroes in a victory parade, by slaves on the day they gained their freedom, and by priests on the high holy days of Israel. To put this into a contemporary context, the Preacher is telling us to put on our best clothes and go out and celebrate the good in life!

Solomon also tells us to wear sweet perfume. To anoint someone’s head with oil was to pour out something richly scented, like cologne—what the Bible terms “the oil of gladness.” I do like the NLT version of verse 8 here that says, Wear fine clothes, with a splash of cologne!

T/S – Solomon, who is also referred to as the Preacher in Ecclesiastes also commands...

II. Enjoy Your Wife, (or Husband, or Family), Ecclesiastes 9:9 (NLT)

Live happily with the woman you love through all the meaningless (fleeting) days of life that God has given you under the sun. The wife God gives you is your reward for all your earthly toil.

The Preacher is commending the daily pleasures of marriage and family life. But specifically, life with your wife the one you love.

Life with your wife implies her as well. Enjoy your wife. Enjoy your husband. Enjoy each other. Marriage and family should be one of the more meaningful and enjoyable experiences of life!

We are commanded to enjoy each other. Have fun with each other. You both should be best of friends. Spend time together as friends and in all the busy demands of life, set aside time to do things together that you both enjoy.

If I might be personal for just a moment. After 40 years of marriage, through all the ups and downs, the disappointments and the celebrations, I can honestly say to you, life is good when you have the right woman standing beside you! And I have certainly had the right woman beside me in life!

Proverbs 18:22 (CSB) A man who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord.

Proverbs 31:10 (NKJV) Who can find a virtuous wife? For her worth is far above rubies.

The same could be said of a husband who loves his wife as the Bible commands.

Ephesians 5:25 (NKJV) Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her,

This verse tells us as husbands we are to love our wife with the same costly, sacrificial love that Jesus demonstrated when he died for our sins on the cross. I have learned that if you want a happy wife (and a happy life) husbands must love their wives just as Christ loves His church.

Love and enjoyment go together. If you love one another, be intentional about enjoying one another. But if you are having trouble staying in love, ask God for the grace to love again the way you used to, or maybe the way you never have but know you should.

I know many of us find ourselves in a place now without a wife, or a husband, but perhaps you still have a family. Children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, brothers or sisters, even distant relatives can and should be a source of joy for us in this life.

T/S – Living the Good Life means we enjoy our lives, and we enjoy our wives, but in honor of Labor Day, we also are to enjoy our work!

III. Enjoy Your Work, Ecclesiastes 9:10 (NLT)

Whatever you do, do well. For when you go to the grave, there will be no work or planning or knowledge or wisdom.

The last pleasure that the Preacher mentions is work, which is part of our portion in life. Back in verse 9 he closes the verse by saying, “Enjoy … your toil at which you toil under the sun.” (NASB)

The phrase “under the sun” does not refer to backbreaking labor in the heat of the day but to the regular calling of our earthly existence—whatever God has called us to do.

So, whatever your job, or career in life may be, we are to both enjoy it and do it well.

Whether we labor in the service industry, or sales, in education or construction or engineering or business, in medicine or ministry (or in all of these areas through the high calling of homeschooling or homemaking), God has given us good work to do.

And Solomon reminds us, this work is a gift from God that we should enjoy as long as we can.

He goes on in verse 10 to reinforce what he says about work by giving a strong command: “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might.” Here the Bible tells us what to do, namely, whatever lies near at hand. NLT says, Whatever you do, do well.

I love the coincidence that the verse on the front of our bulletin this morning is Colossians 3:23, “Whatever you do, do it from the heart, as something done for the Lord and not for people.”

- In his sermon on this verse Charles Spurgeon described a young man who dreamed of standing under a banyan tree and preaching eloquent sermons to people in India. “My dear fellow,” said Spurgeon, “why don’t you try the streets of London first and see whether you are eloquent there!” Each one of us should do whatever work God has given us to do, not what he has given someone else to do.

This is especially true for everyone who knows the grace of God through the saving work of Jesus Christ—his death on the cross for our sins and his return from the grave with the free gift of eternal life. It is for this reason, most of all, that we are able to eat our bread with joy, drink wine with a merry heart, enjoy life with the people we love, and find enjoyment in the hard work of our daily calling. It is all because we know the Savior.

CONCLUSION: I want to close this message by returning to our text but this time by reading from Eugene Peterson’s loose paraphrase in The Message:

Ecclesiastes 9:7–10 (The Message) 7 Seize life! Eat bread with gusto, Drink wine with a robust heart. Oh yes—God takes pleasure in your pleasure! 8 Dress festively every morning. Don’t skimp on colors and scarves. 9 Relish life with the spouse you love each and every day of your precarious life. Each day is God’s gift. It’s all you get in exchange for the hard work of staying alive. Make the most of each one! 10 Whatever turns up, grab it and do it. And heartily! This is your last and only chance at it, for there’s neither work to do nor thoughts to think in the company of the dead, where you’re most certainly headed.

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