Eat, Drink, and Rejoice in Your Labor

Transcript (edited for readability).

The fifth counsel gives us a summary recommendation. Notice we've had observations about life, and joy in life, and discerning, seeing, discovering the joy that God wants to give to us in and through our work. Now comes the first conclusion, which sums up everything that's gone beforehand, and there's only one point here that's new.

So I myself recommend joy, rejoicing, because there's nothing as good for a man under the sun as to eat and drink and rejoice. That will encircle him like a wreath. Now, this is a picture here of wearing a wreath on your head, and it will circle him like a wreath in his work all the days that God gives him under the sun. This is the first of three conclusions from what's gone beforehand. We have a shift here from "I have seen" to "I recommend." This is his advice.

Now, the picture that he uses here is important that you get. In the ancient world, people would wear wreaths, stylized crowns, as a symbol of divine acceptance and approval. So a king would wear a crown, which was a stylized wreath, as a sign of the fact that God had chosen him as king, and he had divine power. Athletes who won the events in the Olympics, in the ancient Greek world, would receive as their only reward a wreath, as a mark of divine honor and semi-divine status. It's a symbol of divine acceptance and approval.

Now, people used to wear wreaths of laurel and flowers and other things like that for festive occasions. Most especially, couples would wear wreaths on their heads when they were married. You'd have a wreath on your head as man and woman, showing that God approves of this marriage and that God blesses this marriage. Well, the picture here is that we are to wear wreaths not just on one or two occasions in our life — say, at our wedding, or maybe at our children's wedding, or some other important occasion — but we are to wear wreaths every day of our lives. Which means that our whole life is to be lived under God's approval, with God's blessing, and our whole lives are to be lives of rejoicing.

We don't just rejoice occasionally, like at the birth of a child, or a wedding, or some other great occasion, or on one of the great religious festivals. Our life is to be one of continual enjoyment, and not just in the meals that we have. I'd expect him to say, "Okay, put a wreath on your head imaginatively every evening when you have a meal together with your family." No — we are to go out into our work with a wreath on our head, because we are working together with God. God is pleased with our work, and we are working together with God. That's the picture. Joy in all our works — rejoicing in our daily work. Remember what Luther said in his writing on daily prayer: go into your work with what? Joy.

Sixth counsel. Now, after the observations and the recommendations, now we have pieces of advice. You have seven instructions here, and then in the next passage, eight instructions. Now, for those of you who know the ancient world, seven is the perfect number, the complete number. So this is the be-all and end-all, the sum of enjoyment.

Notice the imperatives here. Go — now don't overlook that. The idea is: go on your way, walk on your way through life. And the opposite of "go" is "sit down, stay." So keep walking — that's the picture. Keep walking on your way through life.

Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a good heart — you get the sense of that best if you translate it as "with a good conscience." I like that. For God has already approved your works, what you do. Let your clothes always be white, and let perfume not be lacking on your head. See — or experience — life with your wife whom you love, all the days of your fleeting life, your breath-like, fleeting life, the wife whom God has given to you under the sun, all your fleeting days. For she is your lot in life, and in your work at which you labor under the sun.

Now comes the great thing: whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for there is no doing, or planning, or knowing, or wisdom, in the underworld — the grave — where you are going. When you're six feet under, you can't do any of this.

Seven instructions as the key to enjoyment in life — seven, the complete number. The first three together: first of all, go, walk, keep on traveling. The danger in life is always that at some stage we settle down and we stop living. We stop living. Have you noticed that with people, old people? They shut down, and their life is over. But it can happen very early in life too. Sometimes people stop living already in their teens, and their journey and life is over. Keep on walking, keep on traveling through your life.

Secondly, eat — but don't just eat, eat with joy, with enjoyment. God gives us food not just for our nourishment but for our enjoyment. Thirdly, he says, and drinking — the idea here is drinking wine, or beer, with a good conscience. With a good conscience, because sometimes we feel we shouldn't enjoy food and wine, that it's wrong to enjoy food and wine. Enjoy it! The fact that God has given it to you means that God approves that you enjoy food and enjoy wine.

That's pretty good, because I live in South Australia, in the Lutheran Church, where some of the best wines in the world are grown by Lutherans, and so God provides good wines for me to enjoy. And if he provides the means that I have them, then I needn't feel bad about enjoying them. Christians — human beings — are not to be killjoys. People think, "If you enjoy something, it must be bad for you," or worse, "If you enjoy something, it must be a sin." It's a sin to have fun, a sin to enjoy dancing, a sin to enjoy food and drink and all those lovely good gifts of God. God has approved of them. If he hadn't approved of them, he wouldn't be giving them to you.

Then next, wearing — he says, let your clothes be white, and let perfume not be lacking on your head. Let your clothes be white. You don't wear white clothes in the ancient world, for a simple reason: they get dirty. And the only time you wear white clothes is on special occasions. Priests wear white clothes at the temple, but for ordinary people it's only at weddings, and maybe birthday parties, occasions like that, that you wear white clothes. They're the most expensive clothes, the most beautiful clothes. They get dirty, so you'll wear them rarely. So he says, where do — let your clothes always be white. Dress up as if every day is a special day, a wedding, a time of rejoicing. So dress up for enjoyment.

And then he says, let perfume be on your head. People didn't wash very much in the ancient world, which meant that there was quite a lot of body odor around the place. You would wash very, very rarely, and then you'd just wash your hands and your feet, but it meant that you could smell people before you could see them, particularly in a hot climate — you know what that's like. And so it was customary in the ancient world not just for women to wear perfume, to please their husbands or to gain attention, but for people of both sexes to wear perfume on their heads, to anoint their heads with perfume, as a sign that God, because of its sweet smell, was pleased with you, and God was pleased with what you were doing. So it's not so much that you wear perfume in order to please your spouse — your husband, your wife, your children — but you wear perfume because God is pleased with you and wants you to enjoy what you're doing. That's rather cool, isn't it? Perfume and white clothes were only used for religious festivals and festive occasions.

Now come two completely new things. Now, I'd expect him to say, "Enjoy your wife." But he says, "See," experience life with your wife. And here we have one of the most interesting and profound teachings on enjoyment. You know that shared enjoyment is squared enjoyment — it's not just double enjoyment, it's squared enjoyment. Joy is infectious. And you know the way it is: when you enjoy something, you have to share it with somebody else, and when you share it with somebody else, the joy is multiplied. And sometimes the most frustrating thing about life is that you can have something to enjoy and you can't share it with anybody. There's nothing worse than having a good joke — just ask Brian Wolfmiller for a good joke — and there's nothing worse for Brian than having nobody to tell the joke to. So he's been telling us the same joke over and over again. We're sick of it, but we know it's coming, because he starts cackling. He enjoys it even more, and he enjoys it because he can tell it to us.

See, experience life with your wife, with your spouse. God gives us marriage for many reasons, but one of the most important reasons for marriage is to increase our enjoyment — not just of each other, obviously. Marriage is meant for enjoyment, and if it's not, I don't know what it's for. But marriage is meant for enjoyment, and more profoundly, marriage is meant so that you have somebody to enjoy life with, in all the moments and all the stations of life. And that's so sad when you lose your spouse. I've heard this said again and again by people who've been widowed, who've lost their partner: "I've got nobody to share my life with." See life, experience life with your wife. The sad thing for single people, for divorced people, particularly later on in life, is having nobody to enjoy life with.

And now comes the key point. It says, whatever your hand finds to do — notice the framework there — whatever your hand finds to do, the idea here is that God gives you something to do; he puts it in your hand. So whatever God puts in your hand to do, how are you to do it? With all your might. You won't enjoy the work you're given every day unless you do it wholeheartedly. The more you throw yourself into it, the more you will enjoy it. You know that? One of the hidden secrets of life is that you need to throw yourself into your work, give yourself over to your work. Do it with all your might, every day, with enthusiasm, zest, gusto for your work.

I've found — and this is a funny experience, and I think I only consciously experienced this first when I was in university — I had to study subjects that I really had no interest in. But I told myself, "I'm going to master this," and by mastering it, I was going to enjoy it. And so I've come to enjoy all sorts of strange things academically, because I've given myself over to it. And that happens in all areas of life. Whatever God gives you to do, whatever God puts in your hand to do, do it with all your might. Now that's going to vary from person to person — an extrovert like me will mean something different than it does for a person with less energy than me. But you do it with all the might that you have. You give it all you've got, and strangely then you experience the greatest joy.

This is in such contrast with a large number of people in the United States who should be working at that age, but they're not — they're on drugs instead of working. The devil is having a field day, isn't he? Yeah. And there's also an Australian tradition — a good Australian word — "bludge," which means that you don't work very hard, you take it easy. It has lots of other connotations, but a lot of people bludge at their work. They do what they have to do and no more — there's a minimum you do — and a lot of pastors are like that. You do your basic work — you take the services, you take confirmation, you visit the sick, that kind of thing — and that's all I have to do, that's all I want to do, and you do it half-heartedly. To be able to throw yourself into your work — work is so important. It's part of God's design for us. By giving us work, God gives us some of the greatest joys in life.

Now we come to — any questions on that? Yes, please. Yes. That's right. Yep, yep, yep. Like I was saying about the studies — there's stuff that I had to do, and I switched my mind and said, "I'm doing this not because I have to do it, but because I want to do it," and then things changed. That's "with all your might." So what is exhausting is when you do things with a divided soul — you do it, but you're not really in it, half of you is there, and it exhausts you. One of the strange things about throwing yourself into work is that it not only gets the adrenaline going, but instead of depleting energy, it actually energizes you — that's just on a human level. Have you noticed that? If you throw yourself into your work, it energizes you, and it energizes other people around you.

Last, the seventh counsel, with eight instructions. So it's seven — you have number seven, so we have seven counsels of enjoyment. This is the sum of earthly enjoyment, finding joy under the sun, and now we have eight here. That's also significant — it's two and five, five fingers, two fingers.

It begins with a riddle: light is sweet, and it's good for the eyes to see the sun. Let's just dwell on that. Light is sweet. Light is given to which people? Everybody. The sun shines on evil and good, young people, old people — everybody receives the light of the sun. Remember, he's talking about life under the sun. Light is sweet, and it's good for the eyes to see the sun — it's good to be in the sunshine. Now, that's fairly obvious, but it's a riddle. What's he saying? How does that apply to you and your life? Light is sweet, and it's good for the eyes to experience the light of the sun. The light of the sun — the sun stands for God, the light of the world. He gives good gifts to everybody, and that light is sweet. It's not dangerous light, it doesn't give you sunburn or whatever — it's light that's sweet, and sweet means it's good to taste, it's to be enjoyed. You eat the light — it's sweet to your taste. It's good for the eyes to see the sun, and the sun shines on everybody, day by day. You see a different sun, if you like, every day — a different kind of light to enjoy every day.

Now I'll stop my little meditation on this proverb, because I could go on and on. But you can work out how it applies. So light is sweet, and it's good for the eyes to see the sun. Now you get the conclusion he draws from that little riddle, that little picture, that little proverb: if a man lives many years, let him rejoice in them all, and let him remember that the days of darkness will be many. All that comes in the future is breath-like — that's for old people, me. But this applies to most of you young guys: rejoice, you young person, in your youth, and let your heart or mind cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk — notice that "walk," we had that previously — walk in the ways of your heart or mind and in the sight of your eyes, and know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment. Remove vexation or disappointment from your heart, and banish trouble from your body, for youth, and the dawn of life, is breath-like.

We have an opening proverb here about the sunlight and enjoyment of sunlight. I didn't know how much I enjoyed the sun until I lived in England — I was sun-hungry, and so was Claire. I won't tell you the whole story, but realize that one of the special things about living in the part of Australia that we do is that we have so much sunlight, and there's an extraordinary quality to the light where we are. But the problem is that you have it day by day, and you don't notice it, you don't appreciate it, you're not sensitive to it — because every day is different, and the same scene is different depending on the light, the play of the sun on the scene. So one of the things I do almost every day is go for a bike ride on the same route down to the sea, which we live close to — it's about a mile and a half from where we live. I always take the same route, the same track. I go by the sea and come back the same way, same road — but every day I see a different scene, something different to enjoy.

Now, this is a picture here for human life on earth, and what this picture emphasizes is that just as the light of the sun is given as a gift to every single human being, so God's gifts to us are given freely, for our enjoyment. They're given freely, so that we can experience — and here we have a different metaphor — the sweetness of what God gives to us. The sweetness of work, the sweetness of food, the sweetness of seeing life together with your wife, the sweetness of each stage of your life. It's a picture of eating and enjoying life.

Now he gives eight final instructions: two to a mature person — that's putting it kindly, to an old codger like me — and six to young people. So eight altogether. He gives only two pieces of advice to a mature person, because that's all they can take in. There's a problem of forgetting, as well as the problem of nostalgia. What's the besetting folly of old age? That you keep looking back to the old days, the good old days — the problem of nostalgia — and you stop looking forward, you stop enjoying where you are, you keep looking back.

So he gives two directives to old people like me. First, that you are to enjoy all the days of your life — meaning each stage of life. It doesn't run out when you hit 70, or 80, or 90, or even 100. All days are given for our enjoyment, each stage. But then comes something rather puzzling: he says, remember that the days of darkness will be many. The days of darkness means when you die, when you go into the grave. Life is short, finite. And strangely — people have quite often commented on this — it's the finite nature of life that makes life so precious and valuable. Can I repeat that? It's the finite nature of life that makes life so precious and valuable. And the more we are aware that it won't always be like this, the more we will, if we are wise, enjoy what we have.

Just imagine if you knew that today, at the beginning of today, was the last day you would ever see a tree, or grass, or the face of your children, the face of your spouse — what would you do? You would drink it in and enjoy it for all it's worth, because you'll never have that face, that tree, that flower, those hills, those clouds, that sea, that sun ever again. So, paradoxically, the remembrance of death leads to the enjoyment of life. And that's most important for old people. You remember, time is running out, so make sure you enjoy what's given to enjoy, when you feel there's so little left to enjoy. The days of darkness, death — so the emphasis here is on old people enjoying, eating, the passing blessings of life, of old age, and treating every moment in life as precious and unique and special.

Then you get the concluding advice to a young person, and this is quite countercultural but very penetrating. I don't know whether you know the great English playwright George Bernard Shaw — he makes the rather witty remark, "What a pity youth is wasted on the young." And that's the way I see it: look, you had all that stuff when you were young, and you didn't know what to do with it. Enjoy it! I'd like to go back there now and have it all over again — I'd be able to do my life much better. You know, how good would our marriage be if I could now, with the wisdom, the limited wisdom that I have, go back to the beginning again and start all over? What a pity youth is wasted on the young.

And that's not usually the way we see it, because usually we think young people have everything going for them — and then, when we come into our prime, midlife, we lose everything. So young people have everything — but that's not the way Ecclesiastes sees it. He gives six pieces of advice.

First of all, he says, rejoice — when? Rejoice, young person, in your youth. Now, why would it be necessary to tell a young person to rejoice? What do young people always do? Just overhearing some kids playing, a week before I came over here, a young kid of about four or five was saying, "When I am grown up…" Children always think that good things are going to be — you know, when I go to school, when I go to high school, when I go to college, when I have my first job. So the time for joy, the time for rejoicing, is always in the future, and seldom seen to be here and now. So Ecclesiastes says, okay, rejoice in what God gives you to do, here and now, in your youth. Adulthood has its own joys, and unless you receive the joys now, you'll probably miss out on the joys of adulthood too.

Secondly, he says, let your heart, or your mind, cheer you in the days of your youth; walk in the ways of your heart and in the sight of your eyes — walk. First of all, he says, let your heart, your mind, cheer you. One of the memories that I have about being about ten years old was that I always expected the worst to happen. Were you like that? You know — what would happen if I failed an exam, and if I wasn't good enough, then things would fall apart. So the secret for enjoyment in your youth is to have a positive attitude toward life. Let your heart, your mind, cheer you. Don't look for what's wrong. Young people do that all the time — teenagers, people in their early twenties, are very critical, particularly of parents and of other people. Don't look negatively at life, but look for the positive things in life. Have a positive attitude — that comes from a cheerful, good heart. Your attitude, the way you see life, comes from your attitude.

Thirdly, it says, walk in the ways of your heart and mind, and in the sight of your eyes. So "walk in the ways of your mind" means go with a cheerful attitude to life, not a negative attitude, a positive, optimistic attitude to life, and focus not on the distant fields which are always greener, and the best gold that's further on, but walk in the sight of your eyes — enjoy what you see, what's given to you to experience here and now, this day, rather than tomorrow, or with somebody else. Walk in the sight of your eyes — actually look at where you are and where you're going. What's the problem? We're always looking over there, so that we don't see what's here. Walk not there, but in the sight of your eyes, what's put under your very nose.

The proverb says the eyes of a fool are on the edge of the world. Very witty — because you're always trying to look over the horizon. What's funny about that? You can never see what's over the horizon; the horizon always recedes. So the eyes of the fool are on the ends of the earth. The converse of that is: the eyes of a wise person look at where they are, right here and now. That's the third one.

Now comes, for me, the most surprising, special bit of advice, and most translations mistranslate this by putting a "but" in front of it, which is totally wrong — there's no "but" here. He says, and know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment. For what things? God will bring you into judgment if you don't see and enjoy the things that God gives you to see and enjoy. God will bring you into judgment if you don't rejoice every day of your life.

Now, we see it negatively, and most commentaries put a negative spin on this, which is totally wrong. They say, "Watch out what you do so that you don't sin, because then God will judge you or damn you." No — the Jewish rabbis had it right when they said this: it says basically that God will judge you not for the bad things you do, but for not enjoying what was given for you to enjoy. So the rabbis say, every man must render an account before God for all the good things he gave him that he beheld in his life and did not enjoy. God will hold you accountable for not enjoying the gifts that he gives to you. This is not advice to old people, but advice to young people. So, since God will call you to account if you spurn the gifts he gives you day by day, make sure you enjoy the gifts that are given to you day by day. Because God is going to say, at the last judgment, "What did you do with the gift that I gave you? You threw it away, you trampled it, and chased some other fantasy instead of enjoying the good gift he gives you day by day."

Then the next one is: remove vexation from your heart — and this is coupled with the next one — and banish trouble from your body, which you could also say as: remove vexation from your heart so that you banish trouble from your body. One of the problems when you're young is that you're easily disappointed and scarred. You try, let's say for example, you rather tentatively start off dating somebody, and you're very, very vulnerable — you love her, and you're caught — and then she dumps you, or he dumps you. The temptation when you're young is to say, "I'm never going to date again, because I don't want to be hurt." And so your philosophy in life is to stop being hurt, which means that you basically stop living. And do you realize that these kinds of bad experiences that you have in those critical teen years scar people for all their life, or for part of their life, and prevent them from enjoying life?

And it happens at so many different levels — you don't try things, and it's not only because you've had a bad experience, but you stop enjoying things and trying things out, because you might be hurt, you might be rejected, and particularly in societies like Australia and America, you might fail. So it's better not to try something than to fail. And so you become bitter because you've been hurt, or you become cynical — and that's the greatest killjoy of anything: cynicism, as well as bitterness and resentment. Now, there's a close connection between vexation, disappointment, bitterness, resentment — all those things — and trouble in your body. You banish physical trouble from your body by refusing to let vexation, disappointment, bitterness take over. Okay, that's the advice for a young person.

Now, the reason he gives those six pieces of advice is that you're not young for long. Youth is breath-like, it is fleeting — you're not always there. Your teen years are given only for that short space of time, and they'll soon be over, and you'll never have a second chance to be a teenager again, even if you think that once you reach my age you could go back and recapture it. Okay, so, seven counsels of enjoyment. And if you want to go further, you can read the next chapter about remembering your creator in your youth, before it's too late to enjoy the gifts. Remember, you're going to die — and that's not bad news, that's good news, because if you're going to die, the time for enjoyment is here and now.

Let me now draw conclusions from what I've said, but before I do that, are there any questions or observations from what I've done this session? Okay. That's pretty good. Yes.

General conclusions: in Ecclesiastes, we have instruction on God's good gifts that are given to every single human being — gifts in the order of creation, first-article gifts, the gifts that God gives to all people on earth, people who have civil righteousness — that's being moral, good, upstanding, God-fearing people, clean-living people, not just Christians, but your ordinary, everyday, good bloke or decent woman.

The good gifts that he gives to everybody: first of all, the days of their lives, the lifespan — and it doesn't matter how long or short your life is. What matters is the amount of joy, the degree of joy that you have. So a short life can give greater joy than a long life. We think a long life is automatically a better, more joyful life — no, it's not the length of your days that matters, but the joy that fills them.

So, first, the days of your life. Then your food and drink, and enjoyment from your food and drink. Very simple — everybody eats, everybody drinks, everybody sleeps, but so few people enjoy it. Can I have a little jab here at our modern way of life? When Ecclesiastes talks about eating and drinking, he doesn't mean snacking on the run. He doesn't mean irregular meals. He doesn't mean going to a restaurant, even, and he doesn't mean eating by yourself, fitting it in when it suits you. What is he talking about? Family meals, communal meals, meals together within your home, together with whatever part of your family is there. Of course, if you're living by yourself, then you eat by yourself, but preferably have somebody else with you as often as possible, because eating food with others enhances the enjoyment.

People have done studies, and you can see that with young children — children who have bad eating habits, or who don't eat very much, it's very often a result of irregular meals in the household. If you eat together with your children, then they develop good eating habits, and they actually enjoy food. "Everybody else is having broccoli, so I have it too" — and then, surprise, I actually like broccoli. That it is communal, meant to be done in your home, in your family — that's the point.

The third thing that God gives to every human being is your work and the enjoyment in your work. And not just work — work in itself is not where God's providence ends. He gives work so that we enjoy our work, in our work. Now, the hidden part of this, which Ecclesiastes doesn't touch because he's talking about everybody and not the people of God — but the hidden dimension is that when you do the work that's given to you to do, you are working not just together with other human beings, usually, but you're working together with God. You're not just working for God — that would be pretty good — but God gives you work so that you can work together with him. And the joy comes in work because we are working with God, not just for God.

Number four: God gives you your spouse, if you're married, so that your enjoyment is squared — not just doubled, squared. You have all the more to enjoy. Just look at it from this point of view: if I live by myself, I have my life to enjoy. If I live with my wife, then I have two lives to enjoy equally, and then those two lives come together, and there are new experiences. And then if you live together and have children, then you have the life of your children to enjoy, the life of your grandchildren to enjoy — seeing, experiencing life together with your spouse. Joy is communal, joy is infectious. We're not called to enjoy life alone, as individuals, as lone rangers who carve our way through life.

Just an aside here — one of the problems we have is that instead of seeing and enjoying life with our spouse, we want to enjoy our spouse, and then they become the object of our enjoyment, and we manipulate them, because we think it's their duty to make us happy and give us joy. And that, by the way, as far as I can see, is the best recipe for sexual disaster in marriage. Sex works best if, instead of concentrating on enjoying the person you're married to, you concentrate on enjoying life together with that person, seeing life together with that person. But that's a whole other story.

Next, God's gift is not just to give us work, but to see what is good in our work. And that's the most hidden and most difficult thing of all. What is there to enjoy in a conflicted congregation full of antagonists? What is there to enjoy when your kids go off the rails? What is there to enjoy with a terrible boss who victimizes you? These kinds of situations — it requires eyes to see what's good in the work you do in those situations. We'll have more about that in due course.

The next point is that it's true God gives us different joys at different stages of our life, but together he wants to give us lifelong enjoyment. So it's not just parts of our life — say, when we're young, or when we're married, or when we retire — that he wants for our enjoyment; he gives us the whole of life for our enjoyment. So enjoyment is meant to embrace the whole of our lives.

Then the next point: God gives us wisdom to act, and knowledge to receive and experience the gift of joy from God, at each moment and stage in life. God gives you wisdom from experience — you can't get any how-to textbook that holds the secret of joy, because the secret of joy in your marriage is different from mine, your family different from somebody else's family, the secret of joy in Australia is different from the Midwest USA. There's no one pattern that fits all — in fact, in each case it's going to be different, because you're dealing with different situations, different people, at different times, in different places. So the secret of enjoyment is to receive from God the wisdom that knows and discovers what is actually there in that particular situation, time, and place, and the wisdom and knowledge that you need to have in order to receive joy from God at that time, that place, with those people.

This is revolutionary within the wisdom tradition of the Old Testament and the ancient world: that wisdom is basically the knowledge of what makes for joy, and what enables us to experience joy — the wisdom that maximizes our enjoyment. That's a bit subtle, but it's very profound.

Next, God gives us our wealth and our possessions, everything we need for our livelihood. So enjoy your house, enjoy your car, enjoy your garden, or whatever. God gives us these things for our livelihood, but also for our enjoyment.

Lastly, the greatest gift that God gives us is what I would call the capacity for enjoyment — the ability to eat our food with a hearty appetite day by day, to enjoy every meal, every day, and to receive every meal as if it's a totally new menu, as if you've never had this meal before, and it's something new to enjoy. The ability to accept your lot in life — and notice that's not a negative thing, not "I better put up with it," but to take it up and run with it, to receive it as a great blessing from God, and to rejoice in your work — the capacity to do that.

Let me just wrap up with a few things. Remember what Paul and Barnabas said to the people at Lystra: "He" — that's the living God — "did good to you, pagan people, by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness." God gives gladness to all human beings, even to people who are wicked. God, however, makes special provision for earthly joy for God-fearing people in their station and vocation. So Ecclesiastes 8:12 says, "I know that it will be well for those who fear God, because they fear him." So a God-fearing person, whether Christian or not, things will go well for them, just because they fear God, they respect him in their lives, they respect God's providence and his allotment of gifts to them in their station and vocation.

Lastly, from Timothy, last Sunday: "Godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content." Contentment means having enough, because the joy is not in the amount of stuff you have, but in the joy that's given in the stuff that you have. Greed is the opposite of contentment. The great gain from our work in life is enjoyment of life.

Lastly, from the same pericope that you heard last Sunday, and this is one of my favorite passages in the New Testament: God richly provides us with everything to enjoy. Did you hear that? God richly provides us with everything to enjoy. And that means that you are all very rich people.