TEXT: Ecclesiastes 9:7-10

SUBJECT: A New Year’s Cheer

God wants you to enjoy your life. Some of this happiness is found in things we call ‘spiritual’. Believers cannot be too thankful for the Holy Spirit, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sin, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. From the bottom of our hearts, we can sing the Psalm--

Today’s Scripture, though, says nothing about these ‘loftier’ blessings. All the things named are earthy; they’re the common pleasures of life.

Go, eat your bread with joy. ‘Bread’ is the Bible’s shorthand for food of any kind. If all you’ve got for dinner tonight is a baloney sandwich, eat it as if you were dining at the best restaurant in town. If you’re going to that restaurant, don’t let the calories and the prices and the less fortunate spoil your dinner; enjoy it, it is the gift of God—and not given to feel guilty about!

Drink your wine with a merry heart. Drunkenness is a sin, but drinking is not: we have freedom to drink or not to drink, and the freedom isn’t to be shot through with anxiety or shame. The Preacher doesn’t tell us to tip our glasses with embarrassment, but with merry hearts.

My mother grew up in a dry county in Arkansas. She told me about a neighbor who drank her moonshine in the closet, so Jesus won’t see me. We shake our heads at her folly—how can a closet door hide her from an all-seeing God? But I wonder if there’s not a deeper folly here? Why would the Jesus who made 150 gallons of wine at the wedding in Cana need to be hidden from? Why did the dear lady think the only way she could drink her wine was with a sneaky heart?

Let your garments always be white. White garments were to the Ancient World what tuxedos or evening gowns are to us. They were worn only for special occasions, and I might add, happy ones, like weddings or dining with an important person. If you saw a man wearing sturdy broadcloth, you’d say, ‘He’s going to work’; if you saw him in sackcloth, you’d say, ‘He’s going to a funeral’, but if he was dressed in all white, you would know, ‘There’s a man on his way to a party!’ Live in a tuxedo—you might say—because your life is God’s party.

Let your head lack no oil. People back then didn’t bathe as often as we do and lived outdoors more than we, and this means their skin got dry and their bodies became, shall we say, ‘pungent’? The best cure for the problems was oil. A big bottle of it was poured on the head and ran down the body deliciously. We read of this in Psalm 133, where unity is compared to—

If Aaron’s oil conjures feelings of beauty and refreshment, there’s a later anointing that does the same and more. A few days before our Lord was crucified, He and His disciples spent a day with their friends in Bethany. While they were enjoying themselves around the table, the hostess, Mary, sneaked off to the pantry and quietly brought in a bottle of spikenard, the most expensive oil in that part of the world. Only the rich could afford the perfume, and if people less than rich had a bottle, it was only for the most important occasions; it was a once-in-a-lifetime purchase, and nobody ever wasted a drop of it. Mary kneels at the feet of her Savior, and pours it all out on Him. John, who tells the story like an eyewitness, or rather, a nosewitness—

Solomon says, ‘Slap on a dash of spikenard every morning’. Live as though today is something special, as though—

Live joyfully with the wife whom you love. This is the language of honeymoon. The Lord wants men—not just to love their wives and makes the sacrifices love demands of them—but to enjoy their wives, to like being with them—and not just in bed. Almost all marriages start out this way, but how many keep it up? How many middle-aged men feel the same thrill in seeing their wives they did when they were newlyweds? Of course there is a practical side to marriage, but the bigger side is romantic. Solomon had a wider experience with women than most men do, and he summed up his philosophy in one line—

You cannot directly change your husband or your wife; trying to can only make things worse! But, by God’s grace, you can be changed. Inasmuch as it depends on you, don’t settle for a life of quiet desperation. Brothers, seize the day! Seize the flowers! Do everything you can to—not just live with your wife—but to live joyfully.

This happiness at home should be taken to work—Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. Don’t think of your job as a necessary evil; think of it as what it is: a calling, and not just any calling, but God’s Calling. This was the background of Paul’s thinking about work, including the kind nobody aspires to! He told slaves, of all people, to work hard and honestly and with a good attitude, and thankfully, because, in their jobs, they are—

God wants you to enjoy your life, and not just the exalted pleasures of heaven, but also the ordinary joys of life on earth.

Before we move on to the whys and wherefores of this happiness, I’ve got to ask you something: Do you enjoy the life God has given you? Or are you a malcontent? There are two sorts of malcontent: one is not religious enough and the other is…too religious.

In the world, you mostly run across the former. These are people who believe God or fate or evolution has given them a bum deal. The jobs and families and health they have are sources of bitterness rather than joy because—of course—they deserve better jobs and families and health than they have and ‘somebody up there’ has cheated them out of the things they have coming. I won’t linger here, but if you are this kind of person, you ought to be ashamed of yourself! Neither God nor fate nor evolution owes you anything. But, if you had the eyes for it, you would see you have been given much indeed. Setting aside fate and evolution for a moment, the Bible says all these things come from the Lord and one of the main problems He has with us is, having gotten them all from His generous hand—

Apart from Christ, out minds become ungrateful, unimaginative, foolish, and dark.

Let me put it this way, and move on: Moping is a sin, and like all other sins, Jesus Christ calls you to repent of it.

If irreligious malcontents are bad, religious ones are worse. There is a kind of Christian who feels a happy life is not worth living. How can I be happy if not everyone is saved? How can I rejoice if I still sin? How can I have a merry heart at the table if the food and drink and flowers and friends I meet there are passing away?

Before I give him an answer, let me say, the questions are not new ones. Where is the text of today’s sermon? It’s in Ecclesiastes, and if any book in the world has a ‘realistic’ view of life it is this one! The opening verse sets the tone—

‘Pointless, pointless, everything is pointless’—that’s what it means. Why is everything pointless? Two reasons: the world is a mess, and this means the most qualified person doesn’t always get the job, and money squirreled away for years can disappear with one click of the mouse at your bank. The other reason is, even when things are not messed up in this life, you’re going to die, and leave your perfect little life to somebody who couldn’t care less. This realism caused the author of Moby Dick say—

The commandment to enjoy our lives, therefore, is not naïve; it’s not written by a man who hasn’t been around, and seen things ‘the way they really are’.

Moving to the text itself, observe the dark threads woven into the bright fabric—Rejoice in your bread and wine; put on your tuxedo, spray on the best cologne, love your wife and enjoy your work—but in doing all this remember—some of it is pointless and none of it is going to last!

Talk about a mixed message! In chiding his students for wandering in the pulpit, Charles Spurgeon said, A sermon is about one thing! By his standards, Solomon is bad preacher—with one hand he is building up hope, and with the other he is taking it down. That, at least, is what the first glance makes you think.

A closer look at the verses, however, show them for what they are: one of the most life-affirming, encouraging, and hopeful passages in the Word of God. In the last two hundred years, Bible scholars have done the Church a grave disservice. They have looked at isolated parts of Scripture so closely that they have lost the big picture. In other words, every word of Ecclesiastes is true—but only true in the context of the whole Word of God.

What does the whole Word of God teach? Three things: God created the world good, mankind messed it up, and God is now restoring it and will finish the work with the Second Coming of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Apply this to our verses and here’s what you come up with:

• Nothing in this world is perfect or lasting. Under the sun all life is vain.

• Life under the sun is not the only life. There is a life over the sun, too, and some of it has already come to us.

• One day, the fullness of that life will be ours, without vanity and without end.

This means: we can eat and drink with joy because the meals on earth (whether baloney sandwiches or beef wellington) are appetizers for the Banquet in Heaven.

This means: we can dress up and put on our cologne with joy because the ‘dress up occasions’ on earth are dress rehearsals for the Welcome Home Party God has planned for all His children!

This means: we can live with our wives with joy because it is only a walk-through for the Marriage of the Lamb.

This means: we can work at our jobs because nothing we do in this world will be lost. It is the Resurrection—Paul says—that compels us to—

You don’t have to be neurotic; you don’t have to fret through the joys of life, knowing they will not last, for the fact of the matter is: they will last! Only better.

This is why the Christian is the only person in the world who can truly enjoy a good meal, a fun party, dressing up, or going to bed with his wife. Because he sees them for what they are: not the pleasures that are slipping away from him, but the pleasures that are coming to him, and will be his forever.

Frank Sinatra was right. For believers in Christ—