Live for God with Urgent Joy | Ecclesiastes 9:1-10 | 10/04/26

All right. Well, great to see you

everyone. If you don't know me, my name

is Josh. I'm one of the teaching elders

here. And as always, it's the great

pleasure of my life. Oh, my name's right

there if you forget. Uh, one of the

great pleasures of my life, uh, to get

to come up here on Sunday and convey to

you what I have received.

So, this morning, as I said a second

ago, we're back in the book of

Ecclesiastes, and we're considering

again just the fleeting nature of our

lives and our lack of control over the

future. Um, the author has kind of shown

us with some degree of painstaking

detail that nothing that we seem to do

in life, nothing that we can attain in

life ultimately matters, really matters.

We've been saying we're no matter what

we do, no matter how hard we try, no

matter how righteous we are, we're all

going to die. We won't really make a

difference in the end, and everyone

eventually will forget about us. And you

know, as I was preparing to preach this

message, I was like having an

existential crisis, just like coming to

terms with those facts.

But that's been the author's project for

the last few chapters is given those

facts, how then should we live? What

should we do? Given that we live in a

world like that, what do we do with the

fact that everything's hell,

everything's vapor, and yet here we are

living our life before God in a world

full of good and evil that necessitate

choices and decisions. What should we do

with that? And so far, we've seen that

there is value in being wise. We've also

seen that there's value in enjoying

life. That's one of the things Tom

talked about last week.

But how do we do these things with the

utter lack of certainty of what tomorrow

might bring?

It's interesting to think about like to

really take seriously this question of

like we have no idea when we're going to

die or what's going to happen tomorrow.

If we if we all took a little vacation

together, a little uh field trip as it

were as a church. We all got into our

cars and drove to some local graveyard,

anyone you want, and we walked around

and we looked at all the headstones.

We'd see young people and old people,

sick people and healthy people all dead.

And you would have literally no way of

determining was this person wise or

foolish?

Was this person kind or cruel?

Was this person good or bad?

The outcome for the good and the bad

appears identical and indiscriminate.

That's the way it looks.

And so

it introduces the dilemma, the question,

what actually is the point of all of

this? You know, in a in a uh the author,

the Cohelith had a frustrated outburst

early in the book where he's in an

emotional kind of he's like, why? it's

better to not even be born, you know,

and of course, which was an outburst,

but he can be forgiven for wondering

such things as he contemplates with

existential dread the overwhelming

questions of our meaning and our

mortality.

But what's so cool about where we're at

in the book now is that this morning, we

begin to see a real seedling of a real

answer. And the real answer is going to

help us build meaningfully on the

application we've received up to this

point. Here's what Ecclesiastes is going

to try to say to us today. And it's also

my main point.

Your times are in God's hands.

Your times are in God's hands. So live

for him with urgent joy.

Live for him with urgent joy. Please

open your Bibles to Ecclesiastes chapter

Ecclesiastes 9 · chapter mention

9. And let me just take a moment to kind

of remind ourselves where we are in the

arc of the book. So we've been on this

journey trying to answer the question,

what really matters? And Cohelith went

through all the main contenders, wealth,

prestige, pleasure, blah blah blah blah

to see, is this the answer? Is this fill

the hole in my soul? Is this the thing

that actually will give my life meaning?

And we've been given a resounding no.

None of these things that you think will

give your life meaning actually give

your life meaning.

But rather than

concluding that therefore nothing must

matter,

he started adjusting the kind of

questions he asked. Maybe I can't figure

out what ultimately matters, but that

doesn't mean nothing matters. What

matters?

And chapter fa seven was about facing

the hard realities of life and letting

them shape and sharpen your perspective

of the world.

Chapter 8 was about coming to grips with

the limitations of your own wisdom and

trusting God for judgment over time.

Human beings, it turned out at the end

of chapter 8, are not the ones who have

the last word over all of existence. God

alone is the final judge, he concluded.

But now here at chapter 9, we got to

start integrating these things. We got

to integrate all of the information that

the king has accumulated. Everything's

he can't discern why things happen the

way they do. The answer is not found in

solving the why question but in learning

to engage the everyday blessings of life

in a wise and righteous way.

But why?

Why? That question keeps lingering. Why

is life so random? Why don't the

righteous appear to prosper and the

wicked get what they deserve? He knows

he will never access the ultimate why.

But can I understand anything of why?

Can I deduce even a little bit of what

God is up to in the world, especially as

it relates to the apparent,

indiscriminate, random application of

life and death, tragedy, and sorrow to

the people who live on earth? Does God

really have nothing to say to us about

these unfolding events in and across

time? That's the preacher's question

today. Let's now humble our minds and

open our hearts for the reading of God's

word. Chapter 9, verse one.

But all this I lay to heart, examining

it all, how the righteous and the wise

and their deeds are in the hand of God.

Whether it is love or hate, man does not

know. Both are before him. It is the

same for all since the same event

happens to the righteous and the wicked,

to the good and to the evil, to the

clean and the unclean, to him who

sacrifices and to him who does not

sacrifice. As the good one is, so is the

sinner. And he who swears is as he who

shuns an oath. This is an evil in all

that is done unto the son. That the same

event happens to all. Also the hearts of

ch of the children of man are full of

evil and madness is in their hearts

while they live. And after that they go

to the dead. But he who is joined with

all the living has hope. For a living

dog is better than a dead lion. For the

living know that they will die, but the

dead know nothing, and they have no more

reward, for the memory of them is

forgotten. Their love and their hate and

their envy have already perished, and

forever they have no more share in all

that is done under the sun.

Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink

your wine with a merry heart, for God

has already approved what you do. Let

your garments be always white. Let not

oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life

with the wife whom you love all the days

of your vain life that he has given you

under the sun because that is your

portion in life and in your toil at

which you toil under the sun. Whatever

your hand finds to do, do it with your

might. For there is no work or thought

or knowledge or wisdom in shaol to which

you are going. This is the word of the

Lord. God, would you bind these things

to our hearts forever? Amen.

All right. This morning we're going to

look at this text in four sort of

movements.

We're going to start by thinking

together about the great dilemma as

Cohela sees it. The great dilemma.

Second, the gift that this dilemma

gives. Third, bringing flames from the

ember. And four, comprehending the

flame. The great dilemma. The gift the

dilemma gives. Bringing flames from

ember and comprehending the flame. Let's

look down at verse one. The author

begins by reminding us how seriously

he's taking all of this inquiry and

investigation. This I laid to heart. The

verse says, "Everything I'm seeing and

observing and learning, I'm taking deep

into myself, deep into my heart and

memory, letting it reshape and reshuffle

how I perceive the world as I

communicate to you."

Skipping down to the second half of

verse one. Whether it is love or hate,

man does not know. Both are before him.

What is that saying? One of the hardest

pills to swallow in this life

is that even if you try really really

really hard to do really really really

well, tragedy could still happen.

The the author knows I could devote my

life to wisdom. I could devote my life

to my family. I could devote my life to

my job. I could be a good neighbor. Do

all that stuff. But if the Assyrians

decide to come invade

if Babylon shows up with armies,

I'm going into captivity. I'm going into

slavery. All my whole world can be

turned upside down. The future that's

before me might have hatred or it might

have love. I don't know.

You and I, we try to love and invest in

people. We hope that one day our

children will grow old and take care of

us as we age, but we really don't know

what's going to happen.

We pray and hope for a future that's

full of love and care.

But we recognize and understand that the

opposite remains a real possibility.

And it's a crazy thing to think about.

It always remains a possibility because

death is looming like a spectre over all

our lives.

It is constantly striking in

unpredictable ways that no one is able

to anticipate. I mean, if you think

about it, real life could be a detective

novel. There's a serial killer on the

loose. He seems to be killing at random

and no one could figure out why he does

what he does. That's death. Verse two,

it says it's the same for everyone. The

same event happens to all. It doesn't

matter if you're righteous or wicked,

good or evil, clean or unclean. I mean,

he's he's thinking in religious terms.

There's this person who like goes to

church every Sunday, serves as an elder,

loves the people, is sacrificially give

and and he's still going to die.

And there's people who do none of that

stuff, who have the exact same fate.

They are all subject to apparently

random applications of suffering and

death. In other words, doing the things

that matter to God, devoting yourself to

them don't seem to have a meaningful

effect on the outcome of your life,

the way that you might hope they would.

We want to think there's a one toone

correlation. If I do a good job and I am

a good person, good things will happen

to me. And Coellith is like, it's just

not what I've observed. This is not what

I've seen in this world.

The results of the life for the

religious guy and the unreligious guy

look roughly equivalent. They both age.

They both have to deal with the pains of

aging. Some of them die young. Some of

them die old.

It's the same. It appears to be the same

for all at the top of verse two, which

creates a deep dilemma in the heart of

every thinking man and woman. Verse

three, there is an evil in all that's

done under the sun that the same event

happens to all. That word for evil there

just means bad, painful, difficult, or

harsh.

The word isn't trying to I the first

couple times I read that I was like, is

he attributing sort of a capricious

moral agency to God? He's not. He's

saying there's a terri there's a

terrible thing about living under the

curse.

It's saying the fact that everything

seems to basically go the same way for

everyone whether they're good or evil is

a hard bitter pill to swallow. And it's

so hard and bitter to swallow because it

opens up this other door to two things:

apathy and despair.

If how I live doesn't seem to affect the

outcome of my life, why strive to be

righteous? Why deny myself to help my

neighbor? If how I live doesn't seem to

affect the outcome of my life, why try

at all? Why care about anything?

If what I do doesn't ultimately matter,

how could it have any meaning? Or how

could it matter at any level in this

world? Apathy or despair?

Not only is the world broken and the

outcomes of our lives seemingly random,

but also we are broken. Looking at verse

three, the hearts of the children of man

are full of evil and madness. It says

this is true of everyone. No matter how

adamantly we strive for righteousness.

Evil is going to touch every part of us.

When it says full of evil, it doesn't

mean that you're as evil as you can

possibly be. It means that the effect of

sin touches every part of our person.

How we think, how we process emotions,

how we interpret each other.

Sin continues to infect each and every

one of us such that our out the outcome

of our lives, our future isn't simply a

good luck or a bad luck thing. When bad

things happen, we share the burden of

the responsibility for it because we

contribute to the sin of the world.

That's a rough set of things to just

say. Could you imagine if I just sat

down and was like, "Happy happy Sunday."

I mean,

it's hard because it's true.

It touches something real that we see

and we feel.

And I've said this a couple times now.

I'm going to keep saying it hopefully

for the rest of my life. Every time I'm

confronted with a hard, difficult,

painful reality in this world, the next

question you and I should ask is, "But

what else is true?"

What else is true?

Coella says in verse one, you might have

noticed I skipped over it. All this I

lay to heart, examining it all, how the

righteous and the wise and their deeds

are in the hands of God.

In the face of the apparent randomness,

in the face of the obvious brokenness,

in the face of the facts of all our

human sinfulness and wickedness, stands

a greater fact that no matter what you

think or what you might be tempted to

conclude about the universe, the Lord

God reigns.

He our lives are in his hands. The

righteous lives. Deuteronomy 32:39 says,

Deuteronomy 32:39

"See now that I, God speaking, even I am

he. There is no God beside me. I kill

and I make alive. I wound and I heal,

and there is none that can deliver out

of my hand. He stands over all else."

Genesis 50 concludes with the statement,

"What all of you meant for evil, God

meant for good."

God can take things that look like, "How

could this get more broken than what I'm

looking at? How could this possibly get

worse?" And just in a way that you would

never even think to imagine,

transform it into a source of blessing

and salvation for the world.

That's what that's saying.

Even in the face of madness, even in the

face of wickedness, whispers the voice

of God to us. his precious and powerful

words. What man means for evil, I can

mean for good.

When you and I look out at the world and

we observe and make notes of all the

things that we see, just like the author

of Ecclesiastes does, we are also

confronted with this dilemma. Do I

believe that all I'm observing, all this

unpredictable randomness concerning the

future, does that mean that my world is

in fact in the hands of chaos?

Does it mean that my world is in fact in

the hands of my enemy? And the answer is

by faith. No. My world is in the hands

of my friend

God Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.

You will not come to that answer by

looking at the world. You will come to

that answer by considering revelation,

by considering what God has done, by

considering the cross. You will come to

this conclusion by faith.

Neither whether you believe it or don't

believe it, it's not going to ultimately

change the outcome of your life in this

world, but it will radically affect your

journey.

It'll radically affect the way that you

process pain and grief.

For the righteous, your life and your

deeds and your ambitions are in the

hands of your God. And you can take that

to the bank.

For the person who turns away from God,

who has no trust in God, apathy and

despair are kind of the roads that are

before you.

Cohelith agrees with you that the bad in

the world is very bad. But he opens the

door for you to consider maybe something

else is also true.

So this is the dilemma that lies before

everyone who's ever lived. Does the

appearance of randomness mean that

nothing matters? Or is it possible that

things matter for reasons we can't yet

see? That's the dilemma in Cohelis's

mind and his answer is that our lives

are actually in God's hands and he has a

vested interest in blessing the

righteous.

So let's now transition to what this the

gift that this dilemma gives us. So

we've seen this dilemma. We've been

given an article of faith. We got to

choose to believe it or not believe it.

But there's more here. Verse four.

He who is joined with all the living has

hope. For a living dog is better than a

dead lion. Now, on the face of it,

that's a very strange thing to say.

[laughter]

I spent a while on that one this week.

It's actually quite profound.

The person who is alive has hope.

And they have hope precisely because

they still live.

Life itself is a blessing and a gift.

Existence itself is a blessing and a

gift. He unpacks this a little bit in

verse 5. For the living know that they

will die, but the dead know nothing and

they have no more reward. For the memory

of them is forgotten. Their love, their

hate, their envy have perished, and

forever they have no more share in all

that's done under the sun.

Think about everything the author just

said here. It's better to be a living

dog than a dead lion.

So, maybe you know this, maybe you

don't. For in the ancient Hebrew world,

they didn't think of dogs as fuzzy pets

that you take home and play with. Uh,

dogs were scavengers that hunted in

packs that were full of dirt and

disease, and you didn't want them near

you. If you wanted to insult them, like

we use the word dog to like call someone

your friend. What's up, dog? uh they

call you a dog like you know it was like

a pjorative

whereas the the lion I mean think about

how big and powerful and majestic lions

are those were like the kings of even

for them they were like the king of the

jungle so it's like saying it's better

to be a living scavenger than a dead

King,

the living know that they will die. I

spent a long time on that phrase and I

want let's take a second and just think

about what he just said there.

He could have said, "The living have

hope because they know they are alive."

But instead, he said, "The living have

hope because they know that they will

die.

What does that mean?

There's an author named GK Chesterton

who once famously said, "The way you

begin to love anything is by realizing

that it might be lost."

The knowledge that life will be lost

does not make life less valuable. It can

awaken us to life's true value.

Being alive and realizing that life will

one day be over. It can lead to apathy.

It can lead to despair or it could lead

to urgency and apprising and properly

valuing of every day you have. That's a

third door you can walk through. The

recognition that the future is in God's

hands can deliver you from the fear of

the future while at the same time

recognizing that life is temporary and

life is fleeting can help you put a

premium on the present.

I don't know what tomorrow may bring,

but I know I have today with all of you.

I know we have potluck after church.

I know that there will probably be

meatballs there.

I have today I have

who knows maybe I'll drop dead in this

pulpit. I sure hope not. But I have

right now to encourage you to speak

words of truth and life to you to exhort

you to love and holiness.

For Cohelith the living have hope

because they are alive to exist to

possess life is inherently valuable and

good. Even if you think life is hard and

painful and tragic and difficult and

marked by suffering and sadness, that

doesn't subtract in any sort of

meaningful way, that your life is still

a gift from God.

A gift that you were called to steward

and to use and to treat as sacred.

If your life is in God's hands, that

means that chaos and human sin and

physical suffering do not, cannot, and

will not have the last word over your

life. [snorts]

As long as you have life, as long as you

have a mind, as long as you can still

love your neighbor, as long as you can

pray, as long as you can still have

fellowship with God, human suffering

cannot stamp out joy from a heart that's

unwilling to bend to it.

That's my favorite thing about having

the Holy Spirit. Nothing anyone can do

can take him away from me. It's kind of

crazy to think about. [laughter] You

could could take body parts from me, but

you can't take the spirit of God from

me.

In verse six, we see that life is not

only precious in and of itself because

it's God's gift. We see further that

it's precious because we're all still

able to participate in the life that's

unfolding under the sun. Those who have

perished have no more share in all

that's done, but the living do. If you

are alive, you still have some degree of

influence. You can still offer to help

in ways that you're able. If you are

alive, you can notice that someone looks

nice today

or you can laugh at someone's joke. You

know what I mean? Like you can

appreciate how hard someone is working

to try to help. There's so many blessed,

good, edifying ways that you can

continue to participate in life under

the sun while you live that will be gone

once you die.

Life is good.

Life is inherently good.

When you see a child born with special

needs and people are tempted to

say things that diminish the value of

that life,

I really hope you will take that

opportunity to correct them that that

life is inherently valuable because it

is life and we love life because life

comes from God.

I lost my place. Where was I?

I think I've told you guys in the past

that there's been times over the course

of ministry where I've been really

overwhelmed and stressed and worried and

uh like something terrible has happened.

And one of the things I found to be very

helpful is like going to a graveyard and

just walking around a graveyard. Kind of

like the thought experiment I gave you

earlier. And it's been helpful to just

look out at all the gravestones and

remind myself all these people used to

stress out about things like I'm

stressing out about right now and what

happened to all their problems. You

know, who knows?

I think if Cohelith went on that walk

with me today,

he might try to get me to see things

from the opposite perspective.

Why are you so stressed out, Josh? Is it

not because you're trying to help?

Is it not because you want to do things

right

that sometimes are really, really,

really hard to do? Once your head hits

that last pillow, Josh, once you join

all the bodies laying down there in that

garden, your time to help will be over.

You have one life, one opportunity to

help Luke destroy the Death Star. in a

manner of speaking.

We don't control tomorrow. We can't stop

death. We can't stop all human

wickedness. But we can seek to do good

with the time we have in the sphere of

influence that God God has stewarded to

us.

Those who have died have no more

opportunities. But you do. You can leave

this room and do good to your neighbor.

You can go home and call your mother and

tell her that you love her

if your mother's alive. Sorry.

Embracing the fact that life is

temporary adds urgency to the present.

If you don't tell your mom you love her

today, you might not get the chance

tomorrow. If you don't clarify to your

kids that they matter to you, if you

don't tell your wife what she means to

you, if you don't choose to show

kindness to a brother or a sister who's

struggling, they might never know that

you actually loved them. Life is good,

but it's fleeting. Therefore, today is

precious. And what you do with today

matters because you're stewarding a life

that's been given to you by God.

Let's now land the plane here by looking

at how to blow these embers. I think

these are just little embers that you

have to build from. How to blow them

into flame.

When we get to verses 7-10,

we see words again that at this point

probably feel really familiar if you've

been here for the majority of these

talks. Eat your bread. Drink your wine

with joy. Rejoice in your wife. that

feels familiar and you feel like you've

heard it a lot at this point, but it's

easy to miss something that has been

happening as those words have occurred.

When the author first began to notice

the goodness of eating and drinking for

pleasure, he observed this on the heels

of what sounded like utter despair in

chapter 2. In Ecclesiastes 2:22-24, he

Ecclesiastes 2:22–24

says, "What is a man from all the toil

and striving of heart in which he toils

beneath the sun? For all his days are

full of sorrow and his work is full of

vexation. Even in the night his heart

doesn't rest. This also is vanity. And

then in verse 24 he says, "There's

nothing better for a person than he

should eat and drink and find enjoyment

in his toil." He kind of is like, you

know, life just like to me right now

looks like it's the worst thing ever. So

I guess just make the best of it with

the food you eat and the bread, you

know, the wine you drink. That's how

that started.

In chapter 3, he's gaining a little more

perspective. In chapter 3:12, he says,

'I perceive that there is nothing better

for them than to be joyful and to do

good as long as they live. Also, that

everyone should eat and drink and take

pleasure in his toil, for this is God's

gift to man.

Well, okay, that's a little more

forceful. It's not just that this is the

best you can do given how terrible

everything is. No, this is good. It's a

gift from God. He says

chapter 5, he pushes it a little bit

further. It's not just that simple

pleasures are good and from God. There's

something fitting about them in light of

all he knows about the world in chapter

5 18. Behold, what I see to be good and

fitting is to eat and drink and find

enjoyment in all the toil in which one

toils under the sun. And then he says,

the power to enjoy these things comes

from God. And this is a wonderful good.

Last week in Tom's text, the author

stopped talking about these things. He

stopped describing what he felt like was

the place in the world he's you know he

actually commends them to us. He says in

8:15 I commend joy for man has nothing

better under the sun but to eat and

drink and be joyful. He sees the good of

these things and says you know if you're

going to do something go rejoice. I

would commend joy and the pursuit of joy

in the simple pleasures of life. Now

look at what he does in verse 7 of

chapter 9.

Go

do it.

Eat your bread with joy. Drink your wine

with a merry heart. It's probably too

strong to call that a command, but

that's pretty much as close to a command

as you're going to get in Ecclesiastes.

He's telling you what you really should

do.

Hey, Cohelith, what really matters?

answer. I'm not sure, but it's good to

live wisely while taking pleasure in the

simple joys of life.

Listen to me.

This is inviting you into a way of

looking at the world, a way of

perceiving

what's going on around you every day,

all the time.

There are million things that you can

choose to focus on in this world. There

are a million things you can worry

about. Future, present, past, things

that matter. Your reputation, your

paycheck, your legacy, your memory, your

family. Here the king suggests that a

better path of life, a better thing to

focus on is finding pleasure in the

small blessings that fill your life all

the time.

He says, "Eat your bread with joy and

drink your m wine with a merry heart.

For God has blessed these things."

That's what he means when he says,

"God's already approved what you do."

God is pleased. He approves of you

enjoying bread and wine and taking

pleasure in celebrating with your

friends.

Let your garments be white. Let oil not

be lacking from your head. That's what

people did when it was time to

celebrate. That's what you do when it's

time to feast or rejoice or or give

thanks for something.

It's like he's se saying never miss out

on an opportunity to celebrate with the

people you love. Look for things to

rejoice about in your life and in the

life of your family and friends.

You know, when I was growing up, my

family didn't really make a huge deal

out of birthdays. Not cuz people didn't

care. It's just we're not, you know,

gift giving and gift receiving isn't

really my love language, nor anyone else

is in my family. And so, you sort of

like did it cuz you thought you were

supposed to, but no one really I don't

know. We didn't really make a big deal

out of it.

But it's been interesting reading

Ecclesiastes

because the fact that I'm still here is

a gift from God. Our lives are a gift

and we're supposed to look for reasons

to celebrate.

Celebrate your birthday.

Life is a big deal.

This is a way of looking at the world.

Enjoy the good things in your life. Take

pleasure in them. Practice rejoicing.

practice celebrating. Take every

opportunity to do it because life is

good and joy is good and we only have

this one life to enjoy these things and

then it's over.

He says, "Enjoy life in verse 9 with the

wife whom you love all the days of your

he life, this vapored life that God has

given you under the sun." Because that's

your portion.

It's your portion in your toil that you

toil under the sun. Be affectionate. Say

kind things to each other. Do nice

things for each other. Look for sparks

you can fan into flames.

Look for embers in your relationships

that you can breathe on to stoke into a

fire.

Try to enjoy your life with your spouse.

Do you see what the author is saying?

He's saying, "Do this." [laughter]

I know I've been talking about it. Now

I'm telling you, do this. This is a

worthwhile way to think about the world

and to conduct yourself in it.

Don't think about doing it. Don't

consider doing it. The clock is ticking.

Tomorrow is not guaranteed. Do it today.

And finally, in verse 10, do your work

as hard as you can because once your

life is over, it's too late. The

temporary fragile reality of life puts a

premium on the time you have to work in

this world. If time is fleeting and you

only have this one life, why not go work

as hard as you can? Go try to build

something good. Go try to make the world

a better place. Go try to ma make

something better than when you found it.

This is how you bring flames from

embers. This is how you bring light to

the world. You love your God. You love

each other. You find joy in the small

and the simple things of life. You find

joy in your relationships. You work

really hard to try to make things

better. And that's how you become a city

on a hill. It's how you become a light

to the world.

These are wise and useful exhortations

that lead to human flourishing.

So the dilemma gave way to a gift. It

turns out because life is temporary,

because we don't know what tomorrow

brings, life itself is precious and our

time is at a premium. And that gift

becomes an ember that can stoke into

flame all kinds of wonderful good

things.

Life is good despite what you can and

can't know about it. Life is a good and

you should seek to enjoy it because life

is fleeting. And because life's

fleeting, the command is urgent.

Because we're not promised tomorrow, we

should make the most of today. Try to

enjoy today.

Now, I want to close with a brief caveat

to try to clarify

uh um well, here we go. Comprehending

this flame,

we have to try to not read these words

through an American lens.

This is advice being given to a people

who spend their entire lives living in

scarcity.

Or to say that another way, this isn't

an advice given to the rich. These are

exhortations uttered to the basically

poor.

It would be a mistake to read these

words and to interpret them as Cohel is

saying go out and max out your credit

cards taking expensive vacations to do.

You know what I mean? Like that's that's

not what he's saying.

You and me, you and I are some of the

richest people who have ever existed.

>> We've talked about this before. You and

I right now could walk to a store.

It's over there. We could walk to a

store and we could purchase for probably

under five bucks the juice of any fruit

from any country in the entire world.

How many people that have ever existed

have had that sort of opulent luxury do

you think? Not very many.

The only reason we don't think of

ourselves as extremely rich is because,

as economists have long pointed out,

we're constantly reccalibrating what we

think is normal based on our perception

of our neighbors. So even though we're

like the wealthiest human beings have

ever been in the history of the world,

we still live with this subjective sense

that like I'm not that rich. It's crazy,

but it's true.

He says,

"Well, don't hear what the author's

saying and think," I need to go get a

bunch of expensive things I've always

wanted or I need to like, you know, go

pursue fleshly, worldly pleasure. He's

saying, "Enjoy your bread. Drink your

wine." These are things that everybody

ate and drank. Always be ready to

celebrate. That doesn't mean you have to

have the most expensive wedding in town.

That means you should seize every

opportunity you c you have to try to

rejoice with your friends to celebrate

them to congratulate them on a good job.

Enjoy your spouse. Work hard at whatever

your hand finds to do. Try to do a

really good job. Those are not things

that cost money. Those are not things

that require a college education.

This is commending to you a way of

thinking about the world.

I was created to take pleasure and joy

in the world God made and to try to

rejoice and celebrate with the people

around me and to bring life and light

and truth and holiness and love to every

interaction I go into.

The temption the temptation that many of

us live with is we're too busy to do

that right now. I'll do that later. I'm

too busy right now. But here the passage

warns us against assuming that tomorrow

will go the way we expect. We don't know

what tomorrow might bring. We might die

in the coming week or we might live for

another 40 years. We don't know. The

lack of clarity makes the task of

cultivating joy urgent.

We don't need to buy things to make us

happy. That's the lie of our consumerist

age.

You probably notice when you like watch

commercials or does anyone watch

commercials anymore? You probably all

pay for services, but you don't have to

watch commercials.

If you're poor and you have to watch the

commercials. I'm just kidding. Just

joking. I just finished saying I'm one

of the richest people to ever live.

If you have to watch commercials, it's

it's really interesting. They don't like

try to sell you the product. They try to

get you to think about the kind of

person who owns a thing like this,

right? Or they have like strategies to

make you think like, "Oh, this will

scratch some itch I feel deep in my

soul." You don't need any of that stuff.

With bread and water and love and

friendship and reasons to celebrate, you

have everything you need to live a full,

glorious life.

We have God.

We have his son, Jesus.

There's no product that's ever going to

be able to scratch and itch

like the heart of God and the soul of

man.

You have food to eat. You have drink to

sat your thirst. You have each other.

You have this beautiful place you live.

You have tastes and flavors and freedoms

and opportunities and beauty to behold.

Sunsets to wonder at.

You don't need to fan the flame of

reasons to rejoice. You need to

recognize that you're standing at the

foot of a volcano.

This world is full of glory and beauty.

There is innumerable reasons to give

thanks and to rejoice everywhere, all

the time, even for the people in the

worst of situations.

We have Jesus.

We have Jesus who died and rose again

from the dead. We have Jesus whose

resurrection grounds our entire

existence and demonstrates for us that

our choices are meaningful. I realize

I've gone really long. Let me just land

the plane here.

Jesus lives. And because Jesus lives,

apathy and despair are no longer an

option.

Because Jesus lives, there is only good

news for those of you who believe that

no matter what happens, even if the

worst possible thing happens in this

life, your fate is to behold the face of

God. And nothing and no one can ever

take that away from you. Your times are

in God's hands. So live for him with

urgent joy. Let's pray.