God Gives - Part 1: Nothing Better - Ecclesiastes 2:24-26

Ecclesiastes 2:24-26 and the Beginning of the Answer to Life Under the Sun

Well, this morning we look to complete the second chapter of Ecclesiastes. Of course, as we just read a moment ago, we're still in full swing from the first chapter where around verse 26 we began with this testimony of the king under Jerusalem, and that carried us well into chapter 2 as he began to survey all that could be wrought under the sun, all the things that he could build or acquire, devote his mind to or distract his mind from, trying to find the answer to that burning question that began in verse 3 of chapter 1, the programmatic question, the question that drives the whole of the book.

What profit has a man from all of his labor in which he toils under the sun? And even last week in verse 22 we saw that programmatic question, that driving question has returned. Verse 22 we read, what has man for all his labor and for the striving of his heart with which he has toiled under the sun?

And so we're returning again in some ways as we come to verses 24 through 26, this very close of chapter 2, where broadcasting the big question begins to have an answer here. This isn't the fullness of the answer, in fact, this answer will be repeated five additional times before we're done with Ecclesiastes, but it's the beginning of the answer.

What profit a man can have for all of his labor and all of his toil under the sun? And that answer begins in verse 24. Of course, when we consider what we saw not only last week but over all the weeks, we saw toil, labor, wisdom, skill, a striving of the heart, a hunger of the soul, and especially even what we just read.

I hope you could hear that ringing repetition, labor, toil, toil, labor, labor, toil. It's meant to be repetitive in that way, just like our labor and our toil is repetitive and it seems like there's nothing new under the sun other than exhaustion and intrigue and despair, all those things that have made us so sad.

And we come finally like a vista of glory or a stream in the wilderness. We come to the first of the so-called carpe diem passages. It's not my term, that's what commentators and interpreters have often called these statements that appear here first in 2 .24 but will appear, as I said, five additional times.

We'll have it twice in the next chapter, in chapter 3, again in chapter 5, and then also in chapters 8 and 9. So these carpe diem statements, that's the Latin phrase, seize the day, take hold of the day.

And the idea is, you know, come on, go make it count, you know, live life to the max. Go out, YOLO, if that's not a dated reference. Carpe diem, seize the day, and they've labeled that. We're not disfamiliar with the idea that we see in this passage of eat, drink, and be merry, that also appears elsewhere in the Scriptures.

In fact, in Proverbs, that attitude is roundly condemned, it's a thoughtless, often foolish attitude of I can only live for the day, and since I can't guarantee tomorrow, I'm almost going to spend my day chasing the pleasures of eating and drinking and joy.

And so this comes in some ways as a surprising counter. Again, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes sort of balancing one another out, fulfilling and giving us a whole picture of walking in wisdom in this life. So eat, drink, enjoy, this is a theme that's scattered in these verses and will be scattered again throughout the passage, and it's the beginning of the answer in verse 3.

Let me read it for us, beginning in verse 24. Nothing is better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that his soul should enjoy good in his labor. This also I saw was from the hand of God.

For who can eat, or who can have enjoyment more than I? For God gives wisdom and knowledge and joy to a man who is good in his sight, but to the sinner he gives the work of gathering and collecting that he may give to him who is good before God.

And this also is vanity and grasping for the wind. Well, let's just briefly look at these verses and then consider how this is the beginning of an answer, and then maybe by contrast have some application toward the end.

That's a lot to accomplish, but I'm confident we can do it. First verse 24, nothing is better for a man than that he should eat and drink. This is the conclusion of the king under Jerusalem. And in some ways you'd think after all of your searching and building and surveying, this is your conclusion?

You didn't even have to do any of that. If that's the conclusion, that nothing is better, you went on a big journey just to come back to where you could have started, just eating and drinking. And that's kind of the rug getting pulled out from under his quest.

He's like, yeah, I went around and I did it all and there was nothing that I held my hand back from. I accomplished it all and I found in the end I didn't need to accomplish anything to find that the best thing in life is simply to find good in labor and eat of the fruit of labor.

That's as good as it gets in life under the sun. That's his conclusion. But he recognizes how that's true. And here's something that he couldn't have understood until he took his circuit around the sun, until he surveyed everything with wisdom and knowledge and skill.

This also I saw was from the hand of God. That's the key. That's the beginning of the answer. The hand of God as a phrase, it's often used to portray God's providence. And we use that phrase in that way.

I can see the hand of God working in this situation. I see the hand of God working out these things in my life. We use that as a way of talking about God's providence, his control over the unfolding events and affairs of life.

But it also can speak to God's favor. So not just his control over time or event, but also his benevolence, his goodwill, his desire to bless. We truly have the hand of God upon us or I can see the hand of God upon you.

We also use the phrase in that way. He recognizes that even to eat, even to drink, even to enjoy the good of labor or the good that comes from labor is actually a gift that comes from the hand of God.

It's the beginning of an answer. Verse 25, for who can eat or who can have enjoyment more than I? Now here we have differences in translation. I think this is a really important translational choice. I actually would prefer some of the more recent translations that I think are more faithful to how a manuscript tradition has differed in the past.

English versions are split, although the majority take it in a different way. You have that phrase more than I, and this is simply just a, in Hebrew you have two letters that look remarkably alike and if one of them has a longer tail, it can be transcribed or shorter tail, it can be mistranscribed.

And that's accounting for why there's a difference in the manuscript tradition here. I won't bore you with the details, but that little tail makes a difference between from or more than I versus from or more than him.

Or in another way of understanding that, apart from. And I think looking at the New English, the NASB, the NRSV, the NIV, they rightly understand it's apart from him. And this isn't just a modern understanding.

This goes back to the Greek translation, the subtuagent, the the Peshitta, the Syriac. Jerome gets this into the Latin. And so I think we're on pretty solid footing here to read it in this way. Who can eat or who can have enjoyment apart from him?

That makes a lot of sense as we read right into the next verse. We also find that same repetition in 3 .13 and 5 .18. So it would seem odd that it wouldn't be the case here. It's apart from God. That's what's repeated in 3 and in chapter 5.

So I think we have internal and external evidence that a better translation is for who can eat or who can have enjoyment apart from him. That is apart from God, because it's only from the hand of God that we can actually enjoy, that we can actually find the good of our labor.

We can't eat. We can't enjoy apart from God. The point is that no one receives life's pleasures and also no one receives life's pains apart from the hand of God. And as we'll see as we survey Ecclesiastes, both valleys of trial, days of trouble, as well as hilltops of blessing are recognized to be from the hand of God.

This is all going to be bringing us toward the wise conclusion of Ecclesiastes. 226, for God gives wisdom and knowledge and joy to a man who is good in his sight, but to the sinner he gives the work of gathering and collecting that he may give to him who is good before God.

This also is vanity and grasping for the wind. The first thing I would draw your attention to is the repetition of that that word give or even the idea of giving. God gives wisdom and knowledge and joy to a man who is good in his sight, but to the sinner he gives the work of gathering and collecting that he may give to him who is good before God.

This also is vanity and grasping for the wind. So we have the hand of God and what does that hand do? It gives. It gives wisdom and knowledge and joy to a man that is walking rightly before him. It also gives the work of amassing and gathering and breaking one's back to the one that is not walking rightly before him.

And then the irony of that is the one who is walking rightly receives from the one who is not. That somehow the work of the sinner, the one who is gathering and amassing and filling the barn in folly, will end up actually giving to the one that is upright and wise.

And here I think we're peeking into eternity. That somehow the meek inherit the earth, the works follow, and in some ways we even receive that which is good, that which has been built by image bearers in the glory that is to come.

I think that's something of what's going on here. Somehow we inherit, we gather, we collect what the sinner was not able to procure, was not able to hold onto. This is the difference between the righteous and the sinner, and therefore the conclusion is for the sinner this is vanity and a grasping for the wind.

Michael Fox, in his commentary, he gives a very good translation on this. He says, to the man who pleases Him, God has given the wisdom and shrewdness to enjoy. And to him who displeases Him, God has given the urge to gather and amass, but only to hand it on to the one who pleases God.

The idea is the one who's able to find his limits, and he doesn't have this urgency and this desperation to gather all that he can like the fool who fills his barn, but his soul is required that night.

God says, because you're walking in my ways and you know your limits, and with contentment you've received your portion in life, I'll take that fool's barn and it will be yours. The meek will inherit the earth.

The king in Jerusalem has come to see himself as an example of a man who had this urge to gather and amass. He had all these toils and strains to accumulate wealth and wisdom. He did everything he could think to do under the sun.

I think he's surveying his life and realizing that was displeasing to God. I think he thinks of himself in this way as the one who now must give over the good work for those who are actually rightly pleasing to God to receive.

He recognizes he's been able to avoid all these labors and all these toils. He never found the thing he was hunting for when he should have just limited itself and received it from God's hand as it came.

Of course, in some ways we're returning back to these creational themes. As we've said all along now, Ecclesiastes is in some ways a running commentary on Genesis 1 -3 on creation and the effects of the fall on creation.

There's something going on here about the nature of creation, the nature of what it means for human beings to be embodied in this world and given a task of dominion that involves labor and working and the fruit of one's labor.

This is all bound up in the call to exercise dominion as God's image bearers. Within that there's a certain right to bodily life. That was a famous sermon that Bonhoeffer put together. In his words he said, eating and drinking do not merely serve the purpose of keeping the body in good health.

That would be a very reductionistic or materialistic way to view eating and drinking. They afford natural joy in bodily living. We are not subsistence eaters as human beings, are we? If we were, it would just be astronaut food all of the time.

Just give me the powder packet. That's the only caloric intake I need. What kind of life would that be? We already know that would be miserable. Half of the point of eating isn't just bodily sustenance, it's enjoyment, it's pleasure.

You cook something to enjoy it, you prepare something, you arrange it, you smell it, you season it, maybe some better than others. The point is to enjoy it. Clothing is not intended merely to cover us, to sustain our bodily warmth, to maintain a certain bodily level, but it's also meant to be an adornment.

Recreation is not designed to increase working efficiency. That's the way our modern society views recreation. That's why we see recreation beginning to fall to the margins. There's less and less and less recreation, proper recreation, than perhaps there ever has been before.

We have more technology, more means of convenience than ever before, and less recreation. Isn't that fascinating? We've taken the technology that's meant to free our time toward recreation and we've squandered it to become more efficient, more workaholic.

There's that famous sociologist Max Weber who had his thesis, The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, and I would almost want to write a little book called The Protestant Recreation Ethic.

That's what needs to be recovered, because God instills a rhythm of work and rest, of labor and recreation, into the fabric of creation. And man in his rebellion, like the king in Jerusalem, he wants to avoid the recreation.

He thinks, if I work a little bit harder, a little bit longer, a little bit more, if I could just keep amassing and build that second barn, I'll finally turn the corner and find that meaning, find that fullness, find that satisfaction.

And he only finds it slip through his fingers. That barn will go to the one who has understood the goodness of God, who's walked in the rhythm of work and rest, who's received his portion and will receive it everlastingly.

Bonhoeffer's conclusion, the life of the body assumes its full significance only with the fulfillment of its inherent claim to joy. That's very thought-provoking. That the conditions of our bodily life have within them an inherent claim to joy.

I was made to enjoy something. God gave me taste buds. God gave me not just the sense of recuperation, but that bodily, ah, when I rest. I was made to also find joy in labor. When I watch that YouTube video for the 18th time and I finally get the dryer working again, and I stand back and I'm like, ha-ha, you know, life, come, look what I have done, you know, my hero, and then I strut around the house for the rest of the day.

There's a goodness in labor, isn't there? There's a goodness in working and in resting, in laboring and in eating the fruit of labor. This is actually how we were created. There's an inherent claim to joy in the way that God has created us.

Sin, the effects of the fall, have disordered and decayed that inherent claim to joy. Now it's gone awry. We're looking for that joy in all the wrong ways and in all the wrong places. That joy can only come about by redemption and finally and fully at the last, which means it must be something that's waited for and yearned for.

But that doesn't mean, as we see here in this first statement in verse 24, that doesn't mean that we can't get a foretaste, a glimpse, an appetizer of the goodness of God in His work of redemption. That even under the sun in the midst of toil and decay, of a right call to dominion going awry, going disordered, that God can still give us the simple joy, the simple if temporary fulfillment of how He made us to be.

The goodness of labor, the goodness of eating and drinking, and there's a lot of wisdom in recognizing at a creational scale, there's nothing better for man than this. There's nothing better for Adam than this, because Adam, Adam, mankind, was created for this, was created to labor and bring God's glory and works of dominion over all that he had made and to eat and drink of everything that God supplied that was meant to please him in body and soul and bring about this glorious gratitude toward God.

The wonder of His goodness and His love through all that He has made and how He's made us to receive that. This is what Ecclesiastes is holding forth. If that's not obvious to you, let me make it a little more obvious.

Again, Ecclesiastes, a running commentary on Genesis 1 through 3. Of course, Genesis 1 has a lot to do with man working, keeping the garden, extending the dominion of God to the ends of the earth. So toil or labor, before labor became toil, that's bound together with eating, as it must always be.

Work is bound together with rest. Labor is bound together with fruit. And what do you do with fruit? You eat it. When I come home with groceries, the fruit is the first thing to disappear. It's like, ah, I can't wait to get into those.

Who ate the nectarines? The whole bag is gone. What you do, as soon as you garner fruit, you eat it. You work for it that you may eat. You eat and you work for it. These things are bound together before sin enters the world.

It was part of the enjoyment of man's experience of life as a creature in the midst of God's glorious creation. Toil and eating are bound together, and think of how the fall affects that. Genesis 3, 17 and 18, bookended is the ground, because that's the stage.

The ground on which man is planted, the ground into which man sows and reaps, the ground which brings forth fruit for man to enjoy, the ground then that receives the curse, and the ground in the text is bookended.

Cursed is the ground, that'll be where the curse ends, for your sake in toil you shall eat of it. Well, you were always going to eat of the ground, and you were always going to labor on the ground, but never in toil will you eat from a ground that has been cursed.

That's a result of sin. In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. What's growing from that ground? Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field.

The things that were natural and plentiful and harmonious with man's labor now are against it. I remember being in Scotland and finally seeing thistles just so abundantly all around me. I was so excited.

I wanted to grab a bunch, and I had brought some big books to read, and so I wanted to press them, and I went to grab them just thoughtlessly, and I pierced my hand through with all these thorns. Thistles are nasty little things, and you realize how frustrating it would be to gather delicate herbs out of the field when you're having to avoid thorns and thistles.

This is enigmatic imagery of the ground being in rebellion against man as man has been in rebellion against God. At every level there's disorder where there was once harmony. What should have been splendidly, harmoniously fruitful is now the very opposite.

And man, rather than finding the joy and the refreshment of his labor and eating the good in the sweat of his face, he'll eat bread until he returns to that ground. There's the fullness of the curse. So we see that Ecclesiastes is engaging this.

This is life under the sun. The ground is now cursed, and toil we eat of it all the days of our life. We get orthopedic knee bands, and we have slipped discs, and things begin to falter and weaken. Just when we feel like we finally understand our trade or our craft, our bodies begin to break down, and we can't take it to the length or the height that we want to.

What is this but thorns and thistles that are getting in the way of us pulling out the herbs we want to enjoy? And in the sweat of our face, we're just trying to get bread from the ground until we go back into it.

This is a result of the fall. But even still, the preacher has found, the king under Jerusalem has found, God has given man labor and recreation, eating and drinking. And if you recognize that just to have that still is a gift that comes from His hand, just to be able to work and eat and drink is something wholly undeserved.

Somehow, even though the ground is cursed, and our labor upon the ground is cursed, God has still shown His goodness to mankind, and that we can work, and we can bring something out of that ground, and we can put something in our mouths that can give us enjoyment and refreshment.

Even in that, we can see the good gift of God, the good mercy of God. Zach Eswine, in his book, Recovering Eden, puts it so well, when Adam and Eve left Eden, they were not given a different calling. Their calling remained as it was, even though death was now alive and active in the world.

They were still to love one another, to work unto God, to care for the things that He had created, and finally to meet with Him again. That's how it was before the fall. That's still the calling upon them after the fall.

The calling didn't change, the environment did. God's purpose in creation didn't change, the creatures did. God's calling didn't change, but the ground did. The ground is now cursed, the harmony did, not only between man and his relationship to the ground, or fellow creatures, or with God, but with everything.

This is why the preacher, while he describes how difficult this environment has become, still upholds the Edenic calling as our way of true joy in life. This is not some reductio ad absurdum. This is just, you know, in the end, all that really matters is you eat.

That's the Epicurean answer. Just eat, drink, and be merry. Tomorrow we die, let's just live it up tonight. That's not what's going on here in 224. We're going to see this building, the additional times that this kind of statement repeats.

This is not an Epicurean call, this is an Edenic call. There really is nothing better for man than this, because this is what man was created for. It's a variation on a phrase that has meant a lot to me from Bavink, and I know I've shared it, because some of you have it on your coffee mugs, grace restores nature.

And so you have to understand what is the good, the good design, the good purpose, the good call of God that grace correspondingly is moving me toward. Grace is going to be restoring me to that natural good, that natural call, that natural purpose.

Grace restores nature. It's not beneath it as something subsidiary, it's not transcendent or far above it. It just restores it. It restores God's good design. We approximate that even under the sun, that we must return to the ground, and we must toil through thorns and thistles with sweat on our face.

Now, what is the first thing this foretaste causes us to see? I think the first thing is it causes us to acknowledge our creatureliness. When we're trying like the king under Jerusalem, when we're trying to go beyond our limits, I'm going to build farther and better than anyone.

I'm going to amass more than any. I'm going to be wiser than anyone that's come before me. It's that babble quest to become godlike. I want, as it were, to rise to the very top and think I'm a lot more like God than I am like a creature that God has made.

And coming to the limitations of our creatureliness is a way of confessing that only God is God. Only God is the creator. I'm a lot more like chickadees and iguanas. I eat. I'm wholly dependent on food sources that God gives, on bodily ability that God gives.

Truly, just to eat and work is a gift that comes from the hand of God. So the first thing this calls us to do is to acknowledge the givenness of our creatureliness. Gregory of Nyssa, back in the fourth century, he says, what is more advantageous for you than the earth's bounty which the creator has made?

He's summarizing this statement. There's nothing better for man. What's better for you than the bounty of what God has created? This is what Adam and Eve were created to enjoy. Have you found something better?

Is there something better? Do not fruit trees contribute to your nourishment? Then why do you violate the bounds of authority? That's what he recognizes as the issue. When we're trying to transcend our creatureliness, trying to find some alternative good that will make us like God, which is how Adam and Eve fell.

When they went after the food, went after the yearning that would make them like God, they became more beast-like than ever before. Again, this is the disordered desire of dominion after the fall. Man's rebellion against God is marked chiefly in this way.

If we're not viewing ourselves rightly as creatures dependent on God, who both labor and eat the fruit of labor as a result of his hands, it's his gift that we can work. It's his gift that we can eat.

It's a gift beyond comprehension that we can have a hope of eternity in him. That somehow our laboring will not go to the hand of those who are right with him. That's a gift, an incomprehensible gift.

You see how that's tied in with gratitude. To recognize that you're a creature, to recognize your dependence on the hand of God, is to recognize that your relationship to God is primarily one of gratitude.

They did not glorify him as God. That was what Paul says was true of sinners in Romans 1. You don't glorify God as God when you're trying to become like God. A little bit more. I can just get this going.

I've got it better than most. I'm almost there. When I'm trying to be like God, when I'm trying to transcend my creaturely limitations, trying to understand life as something that I must rest and squeeze and force or manufacture, rather than something that I must receive, I will probably not be glorifying God as God.

I'll rather be trying to become like God. And that will mean what? Rather than being thankful for things that I receive that I should not receive, that I didn't work for and yet I enjoy, that I don't deserve, rather than being thankful, what?

I'll be a complainer, a grumbler. And probably to the point that I don't see the problem in me. I see the problem in everything around me. It was my upbringing. Things shouldn't have gone this way. It was this marriage.

It was this work. Well, this really messed me. It wasn't supposed to go this way. I was so close and just this thing fell apart. Doesn't a grumbling or a complaining spirit already tell us that we're thinking that we're a lot more like God than a creature dependent on whatever comes from the hand of God?

They did not glorify Him as God, nor were they thankful. That's what happens when you don't glorify God. You don't have gratitude for God. And the result of that, not desiring to glorify God, the very thing that we were made for, the inherent claim of bodily joy as a cause for such gratitude.

Look at the glory of what you've made. Look at how good it is. Look at how good it tastes. Look what I can do with it. Look how I can bless with it. God, you are an amazing God. Rather than glorifying God with gratitude, being filled with thankfulness to Him because we see everything that's from His hand, we become futile in our thoughts.

Our foolish hearts become darkened. Professing now to finally be wise, we become fools. That's Romans 1. So carpe diem. I really hate that that's the label for these statements. Because it's not seize the day, seize life.

Get what you can out of it while you can. No, it's not seizing life. It's receiving life as a gift from the hand of God. The world around us, because of this lack of gratitude, because they desire to be like God, is trying to live the good life by way of seizing.

They're trying to make it happen. No one has done it yet. I'm quite confident to say no one ever will do it. You cannot actually get the good life under the sun. And even if you could, you won't get it by seizing.

The good life, if there's any good life under the sun, actually comes by receiving. Receiving as a creature from the hand of God the goodness that He portions out. So this is not Epicureanism. This is not eat, drink, and be merry because this could be our last hurrah.

It's a call to recognize the most mundane experiences of life. Something that we do every day, multiple times a day, thoughtlessly, is actually a gift that comes from the hand of our Creator that deeply parallels what we were made for and why we were made.

I don't often put my hand into the Cheez-It box and, God, you are so good as I, you know, this is amazing. It's usually just thoughtlessly, hunger, pain, I'm working, let's, you know, stop the hunger, pain.

Do you see what the preacher is saying? There's nothing better than to recognize at the foundation of it all, whether you eat or you drink, you ought to glorify God. There's nothing better for man than this.

Do you live life in that way? I think we are so like the world in this respect that we would actually be annoyed and frustrated if we were living with someone who lived life in this way. I remember my dear grandmother on my mom's side, who was just such a sweet woman, and Alicia and I lived with her toward the end, and I wish we had a lot more time with her.

I wish I wasn't so selfish and foolish and immature. And I look back on that, and maybe it was just her years growing up through the Depression, but she didn't take many things for granted, even in her old age.

I remember the sparkle in her eye when I would bring home a bunch of bananas to her little kitchen in Ludenburg, because she remembered having, for the first time as a teenager, tasted a banana in the farms of Nova Scotia, never having access to that before.

It's like, what is this? This is amazing. And then, as a result of the war, not having any access to them for quite some years, and so she treasured bananas. You could just see it. Or we'd go, we'd have a little birthday celebration, we'd get Dollar Tree napkins.

It's just like, yeah, I guess we'll be festive, and she'd be there, and she'd be pondering over the print, and go, isn't this glorious? And we're like, it's just a napkin, Grandma. I could see myself, just in a few exchanges like that, getting kind of like, ah, you know, it's time.

Grandma's slowing down, everybody. No, I think she's starting to get it. She might be seeing more clearly than anyone. She recognizes the most mundane things of life. There's a goodness. She was living as if there's nothing better than just to enjoy the things that God brings.

Now, of course, that brings attention to us. There's been attention this whole time. It causes a lot of angst. What do we do with this passage? Does it really fit here? We just came through all the gloom and doom, and now the answer is just, hey, enjoy.

How did we get here? And so some commentators, they go, oh, actually, this is just part of the vanity, and then his conclusion on even that sentiment is even this is vanity. It really is all hopeless, a black void of despair.

No, I think that's totally wrong. He's already given us the key. He hasn't turned it, and he hasn't opened the door, but he's given us the key, the hand of God, what God gives. Now, sometimes that key will turn in ways that we don't want it to.

Those chapters will come, but the point is God gives. There's a God-given-ness to life that corresponds to our creaturely given-ness, and that creates a tension. How could the one who was just bemoaning and bewailing that all is vanity actually be able to slow down and enjoy not only eating and drinking, but even just the fact that he had worked?

I think the problem, and Aton Levine, in an excellent essay, says that the problem is we're atomistic, and we want everything to be an either-or. Well, was he really struggling and sad, and did he really have this despair about life, or was he actually joyful, and he was really content?

You know, which is it? And the answer is, like, yes. He really was despairing of how life under the sun seemed to have so much potential that could never be realized, and watching his own life stumble and falter under the sun was a really difficult thing for him to experience and witness.

Hold that simultaneously with the truth that he found pleasure and joy when he opened his eyes to receive everything that came from the hand of God as a gift. So in my words, we must hold together this tension between the wonder and the glory of God's creation of life and the tragic consequences of sin under the sun.

We always have to hold these things together. We're doing it all the time, whether we realize it or not. You have these degenerate festivals, pride parades, and the sun is shining, and the birds are singing, and they're able to eat and have human relationships and approximate something of God's good design, even as they thumb their chin in rebellion against him.

You see God's goodness shining against the depravity and the rebellion of man, and it recognizes we're always holding these tensions together. The wonders and the glories of God's good creation and the tragic consequences of the fall.

And so this hits us as a call to see life through a lens of gift. And as I say, this is going to develop. The key will turn. We'll see this lens of gift against the backdrop of days of trouble and even death itself.

In some ways, it's the days of trouble and the prospect of death that most keenly help us to view life through the lens of gift. Well, one question to ask ourselves, brothers and sisters, is do we even know what a good gift is?

Do we even know what a good gift is? Every good and perfect gift is from above. It comes down from the Father of lights. Every good and perfect gift we usually do not see or even receive as a good and perfect or complete gift because we're either using it as a means to some other end or we're trying to make it some end in itself.

We want it to be the ultimate gift. And so we have some natural desire or skill or talent. Rather than receiving that as a good gift from God that can be used to perhaps bless others, enjoy life and enjoy the goodness of God, we try to make it ultimate.

We define ourselves by it. We're no different than the man who takes a tree and cars it into an image and bows down before it. We take a skill set or a reputation or a career path and we sculpt it and mold it into something that we bow down and worship before.