Take and Give, Part 3: God Gives - Ecclesiastes 5:18-20

Well, this morning we conclude chapter 5 here in Ecclesiastes, and we're still holding together where we've been for the past two weeks, which is titled, Take and Give, and in fact, we're not even done with it as we head toward chapter 6.

We'll see a sharp contrast beginning in chapter 6 in the same way we saw a contrast here beginning in verse 18 from what we saw last week. And so we're looking at the idea of taking and giving, two very different approaches to life, a way of clutching, possessing, seizing, as opposed to receiving, taking.

The idea is we take what God has given because we recognize it's a gift that comes from His hand rather than trying to seize or clutch or provide for ourselves. So there's taking and giving shot through all of these passages, and there's subtle nuances within that.

God Gives as the Refrain of Ecclesiastes

I'm going to illustrate some of that this morning and we'll carry it through as we begin chapter 6 next week. The thing that I want to focus on this morning in verses 18 through 20 is the fact that God gives.

Now, this is not something foreign to our time in Ecclesiastes. In fact, there was a series of a few sermons where we emphasized that God gives because we're returning to one of the so-called carpe diem statements.

I'll explain more about that in a moment if we've forgotten what a carpe diem statement is. But the emphasis here in verses 18 through 20, in the same way it was emphasized in these earlier refrains, these earlier carpe diem statements, is the idea of what comes from God's hand, the fact that God gives.

And I just want to point that out to you as we read verses 18 through 20. Here is what I have seen. It is good and fitting for one to eat and drink and to enjoy the good of all his labor in which he toils under the sun all the days of his life which God gives him for it is his heritage.

As for every man to whom God has given riches and wealth and given him the power to eat and drink and to enjoy the good of it, to receive his heritage and rejoice in his labor, this is the gift, variation on what is given, gift of God.

For he will not dwell unduly on the days of his life because God keeps him busy with the joy of his heart. So we're going to prioritize what God gives in verses 18, 19, and 20 as we close out this chapter.

Now as I mentioned last week in verses 13 through 17, this is echoing the earlier frustration and vexation of the king in chapter 2, verses 18 through 23. So we're already seeing some repetition as we have often in wisdom literature.

There's a cyclical structure. There's echoes and repetitions that resonate and the idea is every time you come to a repetition you ask what's different now? Why is this repeating now? What's changed or how does this repetition advance us in this pursuit of the theme?

So we looked at the king's frustration in chapters 1 and 2. He was toiling and laboring under the sun and it all slipped through his fingers like the wind he was grasping at. And that led him surprisingly to the first carpe diem statement.

If the summary of 126 through 223 is that he spent so much of his life amassing and laboring for something that passed out of his hands so quickly, then we're surprised to find that in fact there's a recognition of that which is true, which is satisfying that began in the very next verse, chapter 2, verse 24.

It was this conclusion, in light of the toil under the sun, in light of the wind that's passed through my fingers, nothing is better for a man than for him to eat and drink and for his soul to enjoy the good in his labor.

This I also saw was from the hand of God. So that was the big breakthrough that we were laboring for at the end of chapter 2. There's nothing better than this, to eat and drink and enjoy the fruit of your labor.

That's a gift that comes from God's hand. Now we worked our way from that toward chapter 3 and we saw again in chapter 3 the same idea, another carpe diem statement. And now we come here at the end of chapter 5 to the repetition.

Now if you remember right, the carpe diem, which means seize the day, we wanted to get away from that idea because if anything, Ecclesiastes does not want us to be the kind of people that seize the day, that think somehow we can muster up the strength to make our lives successful, satisfying and full.

So we said, let's throw out that lingo of carpe diem that the commentators use and we'll use a different Latin phrase, a carpe diem, which means receive the day. That's much more in line with the heart, the eat, drink, enjoy passage.

And we find that in chapters 2, 3, here in 5, and we'll see it twice in 8 and then 9. So we have six of these statements all together. And where they show up is very important. Think of it as a song. A song will have often a stanza, maybe three stanzas.

It will then have a refrain or a chorus and sometimes toward the end it will have a bridge toward that refrain or that chorus. And so you have things that are advancing, each of the stanzas, but then you have a refrain, the thing that's repeating.

And every stanza is advancing your understanding of that refrain. That's how you should view this. Every approach we make toward the next carpe diem statement is advancing our understanding of the whole of Ecclesiastes.

So think of it like a song and we've come now to the chorus. We've come now to the refrain. Labor toil, labor toil, labor toil is verse 1. And then the refrain is, what's better than to eat and to drink and to enjoy the fruit of our labor under the sun?

How important is what we're looking at here in 5, 18 through 20? Well, Martin Luther put it this way. This is his note that he wrote in 1534 on Ecclesiastes 5, verse 20. He said, this is the conclusion of the entire book.

That's a big statement. You want to understand the heart of Ecclesiastes, Martin Luther says you're looking at it here in 5, 20. This is the conclusion of the entire book. The refrains give us the key to understand the whole.

The statement is the interpreter of the entire book, he goes on to say. It really is the key. It helps us understand like a refrain what the song is all about. Here the king intends to forbid vain anxiety so that we can happily enjoy the things that are present.

In this way, he has joy even under the sun in his toil. And here in the midst of evils, he enters into paradise. That's Martin Luther's note. So we've come to another chorus. Let me just ask you taking a step back even from the text itself and just ask you personally.

You've heard it now twice and this is the third time. Has that made a dent in your life at all? Has that call and exhortation that there's nothing better in this life of wind than to enjoy what comes from God's hand?

Has that changed or altered the way you're living your life at all? What's the saying? Third time's the charm? What will be different this time around? Have you learned the wisdom of Ecclesiastes? We want to focus on three things that God gives in verses 18 through 20.

God Gives Portions to Enjoy

We'll do it a verse at a time and the first thing is this. God gives portions to enjoy. That's the first thing. God gives portions to enjoy. Verse 18, here is what I've seen. It is good and fitting for one to eat and drink and to enjoy the good of all his labor in which he toils under the sun, all the days of his life which God gives him.

For it is his heritage. That word heritage, perhaps a more important translation for my purposes, portion. It's synonymous. It's used and translated that way throughout. In fact, other translations use this word portion.

I think that's a very helpful word because though we're looking at inheritance earlier in this chapter, the idea of portion speaks to what God is supplying not just at the end but really every single day.

What is portioned out to you? What is doled out to you? What is from the hand of God for you? And so God gives portions to enjoy. A few things that we're going to see in these three verses. First, we're coming off the heels of the evil that the king has seen.

Remember where we began in verse 13. There's something evil and grievous I've seen under the sun. Now here in verse 18, here's something good, another translation, beautiful, fitting. Just as we saw in 311, God makes everything beautiful or fitting in its time.

And he says, well, here's something fitting. Here's something beautiful. And where do we go at the beginning of chapter six? Another evil that he sees under the sun. So it's kind of like life where there's a left foot and a right foot to seeing the good and the evil as we walk through this world.

We look at the fall, the plumage of the trees, of the sugar maples turning orange and bright red and we see the good and we take another step because there's a headline on our phone and we see the evil.

That's what the king is doing. He's looking around and he's seeing good and he's seeing evil. And he's reporting what he's seeing to us. It is good and fitting for one to eat and to drink and to enjoy the good of his labor.

Here's the repetition of chapter one, which he toils under the sun all the days of his life. That's important to remember for verse 20, all the days of his life. And where's verse 20 going to go? The few days that God has given him, the days that God has given him.

So that's going to bracket verses 18 through 20. So the king is not ignorant. He's not aloof to the brevity of life. He's not numbing his senses or his awareness of the brevity of life. He's aware just how passing life is, but he recognizes what God gives within the breath.

And he says, this is man's portion and there's nothing better. God gives portions to enjoy. In verse 17, we saw a man miserable because a day of trouble came and took away what he was working for. What was the conclusion of that man in verse 17?

He was miserable in sorrow, eating in darkness. And then we come to verse 18 and here's a man eating and drinking, not in sorrow, but in joy, not in darkness, but in light. The fool in Proverbs eats and drinks and says, be merry because tomorrow we die.

But also the wise man in Ecclesiastes says, eat and drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. They both are eating, they both are drinking, they both are seeking merriment and they both recognize tomorrow we die.

But one is a path of folly and destruction and one is a path of wisdom and joy. It's the same experience in two entirely opposed directions. And so we hold together this tension here in wisdom literature, a tension between wonder and glory of seeing the good, but also the tragic consequences of sin under the sun, seeing the evil.

And then we look at life through the lens of what comes from God's hand. The day of trouble comes from God's hand as much as a day of bounty. And we look at life with all of its uncertainty, with all of its curve balls and downturns and hollow expectations and we look at that life and all of its glorious absurdity and we look at it through the lens of gift.

That's what these refrains, these choruses in this music is telling us to do. Do you see the gift? Do you enjoy the gift? Do your eyes of faith understand where that gift comes from and where it returns to?

Do you recognize, as Eric Ortland said so well, that life under the sun is a good but vain thing? Good but vain. This is how he summarizes this, so helpful. Ecclesiastes is counseling us not to identify the value of our work with permanent results that we can secure.

That's why we don't say seize the day. The value of our work is rather found in its status as a gift from God's hand. Life under the sun is subject to incongruity and inconsistency that we will never understand.

Can I just pause there and ask you young people, do you think you're going to be able to make sense of everything? Has your life been somewhat reasonable to understand up to now? Life gets very confusing very fast and as the king said in an earlier chapter, some things are so crooked they can't be made straight, not under the sun.

Though we cannot understand things and though we cannot untangle things, we can enjoy life for no other reason than this. God gives it. It's from His hand and He gives it for this purpose. And so the king is telling us to avoid his mistake and avoid trying to manipulate the wind to become something permanent.

Rather his counsel, the song's chorus is enjoy what God has given you. Enjoy it. There's nothing better under the sun than this. We all enjoy things we do not deserve and each one of us lacks things we might want or expect to have.

That is inescapable under the sun. But the counsel for us is not to try to make sense of it all, try to cope as if we're having some sort of survivor's guilt as a result of sin, but rather to enjoy life as it comes from God's hand.

Enjoy work as you work or enjoy resting from work as you rest from work, but don't look beyond or maximize either of those things. Don't try to understand the life you have being secure or being taken away from you.

You accept it for what it is, he says, a good vain thing. Well to recognize the good we have to have sight. I looked and I saw something beautiful, he says. My eyes were open. We start there. Are your eyes open?

Is this chorus opening your eyes? It's meant to do that. Do you know what a good gift is? Every day do you view your life through the lens of James 117, every good and perfect or complete gift descends from the Father of Light.

Every day do you see that? Do you see gifts that descend from Him? Everything that's good and beautiful and enjoyable, every good and perfect gift comes from Him. Do you live every day in light of the abundance that God seeks for us to live in?

We looked at 1 Timothy 6, 17 for two weeks in a row and it was an exhortation to those who trust in their own wealth and what does Paul say? Rather, trust in the living God who gives us richly all things to enjoy.

That's the emphasis, to enjoy. A summary here of verse 18 is simply this, it is good to enjoy good. Do you know, Christian, how to enjoy what is good? The second point, verse 19, God gives power to enjoy.

God Gives Power to Enjoy

So the first thing, God gives portions to enjoy. Secondly, God gives power to enjoy. In other words, He enables enjoyment in a person's life. Ecclesiastes 5, 19, as for every man to whom God has given riches and wealth and given him power to eat of it, to receive his heritage and rejoice in his labor, this is the gift of God.

So again, this repetition of what God has given, it's threefold here in verse 19. God has given, given him power by implication, given him to receive, given him to rejoice and this is what God has given.

In other words, this is the gift of God. That phrase, that verb, He has given power, governs what follows. He's given power or the ability to receive and to rejoice. This is from the hand of God, this is what God gives, the power to enjoy.

This is a very important point. This ought to affect your prayer life, brothers and sisters. God, empower me to enjoy. Empower me, give me the ability to eat and to drink and to enjoy the fruit of my labor.

I don't have it in my flesh, the world's not going to help me in that end. You have to enable me, you have to empower me for this kind of joy. The statement is paralleling what we saw in 2 .24. Nothing is better for a man than this.

It comes from the hand of God. So there's two ways to live this life. You can either try to approach what is the wind and secure it, or you can live in the enjoyment of what comes from God's hand. That's the give and take.

God has given, it's quite literally there, three times. And we are to take, another translation of receive. We are to take what comes from Him. He puts it out in front of us and He invites us to take it up.

This is what I'm giving to you. God gives, we receive, we take, and then we enjoy. There's nothing better than this. This is a gift. What is a gift? A gift is not something that you earn, it's simply given.

We see the Father of Lights does not shower gifts just on unbelievers. Good and perfect gifts don't just descend into church pews, do they? They're spread throughout the world. Atheists and rebels to God's holy will enjoy croissants and kittens.

Every good and perfect gift showers down upon even the ungodly. That's what Jesus said, the rain falls on both the just and the unjust. And all that comes from that rain and the field and the flower and that which produces for man and yields man satisfaction.

That's all His good and He gives it freely. There's no obligation, there's no earning, it's simply given. It can't be purchased, it's simply received. It's not obligating or bestowed out of some desire on the part of God to get something out of us, it's just in His nature.

Isn't that what we saw in Psalm 36 as we began the service? They are abundantly satisfied with the fullness of your house. What's that kind of language? They're not just satisfied meagerly, they're abundantly satisfied with what?

With the overflowing fullness of your house, of all that you have made. Receive, rejoice. This is pointing us to portion over profit. A portion is what comes from God's hand, a profit is what we seek.

If I can put it this way, don't turn God's portion into some vain attempt for profit. When you try to turn a gift into gain, it all falls apart. That's why the king could never enjoy the fruit of his labor.

It's why he has to tell us these choruses again and again and again. Notice that the portion is not the wealth itself, as Michael Fox very astutely points out. Because a rich man, a wealthy man, is then commanded to take his portion, which shows us that you can be wealthy, you can be rich, and yet not actually enjoy the portion.

So what is the portion? In verse 19, it's the ability to enjoy. It's what God empowers. That's the portion. The portion is the enjoyment. Receive the portion, don't turn it into something more. Enjoy what comes from God's hand, don't try to gain by it.

Don't try to make it ultimate. The reality is you don't need to have abundance in order to have joy. You need to have perspective, you need to have gratitude. You need to recognize the good of a simple day's work, of a simple meal, of a simple break.

You need to recognize how short life is and recognize that's not a tragedy, that's actually something that clarifies our life under the sun. It draws our hope out toward God. Ecclesiastes is very helpful in distinguishing between materialism on the one hand, an abject pursuit of the things under the sun, and asceticism on the other, the denial of things that can be enjoyed.

So the idea is we don't need to gain or amass or hoard, we can simply enjoy what comes from God's hand, and then we rest. We rest in God's timing, we rest in God's provision. As one puts it, God becomes present not just in miracles, but even in meals.

You see it all from his hand. He's not in the spectacular, he's not in the abstract, he's in the everyday mundane gifts that descend out of his goodness. That's enjoyment. There's nothing better under the sun than this.

Well, how can we approach this? How can we do what the king wants us to do? Literally, to taste and see the goodness of God. Actually slow down and appreciate exactly what's in front of us every single day.

The challenge of taking and giving in this way, the challenge is to take the givenness of things and somehow see it from God's hand, or to put it another way, to become unfamiliar with the familiar, or to see the extraordinary in the ordinary, and connect the gifts to the giver.

J .R. Tolkien would put it this way, it's to clean our windows. To clean our windows. Listen to this, this is his defense of his fictional writing, which was meant to bear us toward the good and the true and the beautiful.

He says, we should look at green again. What a great sentiment. We're trying to make the familiar unfamiliar, we're trying to make the ordinary extraordinary, we're trying to connect the gift of what is given back to the giver.

We should look at green again, and be startled anew, but not blinded by blue and yellow and red. We should meet the centaur and the dragon, and perhaps suddenly behold like ancient shepherds, sheep and dogs, and horses and wolves.

He's talking about legends and myths and things that go beyond our experience. The experience of the ordinary, so that we can be retrained to experience and understand the ordinary. That was his whole task.

This recovery, key word, recovery, helps us to make, in that sense only, the ability to be childish. With childlike eyes, with childlike wonder. We need, in any case, to clean our windows, so that the things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity from possessiveness.

That's right on. If I understand it, if I can possess it, if I can seek it, I'll never view it as something that comes freely from God's hand. I'll be clutching at it, but never wondering at it. I'll be longing for it, but never imagining with it.

I'll never trace the gift back to the giver. I'll never allow the imminent to draw me toward the transcendent. You see, that's the idea, that's what the king has recognized. I was at the Museum of Science a few days ago for Abby's birthday, and it was an interesting time there.

And, of course, you're surrounded by people that have a very different worldview. You can just tell in the way that they're speaking and talking about the exhibits they're seeing. We went to the planetary section, and they had this incredible display where they're trying to show, in relative scale, the distance of the planets in our solar system from the sun.

So, they have this massive sun on a wall. It's only about half of it, and then they have these tiny little marble-sized planets that are spaced around this large area. And then you go up to the sign, and it says, well, actually, a proper scale would have this marble in Rhode Island or something like that, and it's just mind-blowing.

Then they have a section on the back wall, and you go and you press this button in the first panel, and it shows you where Earth is in the midst of our solar system. So, you press this button, and this little tiny light lights up, and there you are in this black velvet expanse.

Here's this little light with our planets circulating around the sun. Then you go to the next panel. Now, here's our solar system in the midst of our galaxy. You notice that little speckle of white, and you're amazed to consider that galaxy.

And you go to the next panel, and you press the button, and here's our galaxy in the midst of this cluster. And you go to the next panel, and here's this cluster in the midst of the known universe. And pretty soon, your mind is just numb because you can't scale out that kind of magnitude.

But for everyone that doesn't understand the difference between what is given and the giver, that's the extent, that's the ceiling of their ability to wonder. A Christian looks at that, tries feebly to get their imagination around that, and recognizes that was just God speaking.

So, what must he be like? What must he be like? Gift to giver. What is given? What is imminent? Becoming something transcendent. I said last week, our excesses, this is Adam Phillips, our excesses are the greatest clue to our poverty.

What are the things that prevent us from actually enjoying and cleaning our windows in this way? Well, here's a few things. I think the first thing is, we don't enjoy the good as a portion, but we try to pile it up and make it more than a portion.

If I could put it this way, it's the danger of too much of a good thing. Too much of a good thing. If you remember the classic Roald Dahl tale, Matilda, there's this great part where Brucie is challenged to consume a chocolate cake that he took from Mrs., was it Turnbull or Trumbull or something like that?

And as punishment, he has to eat the whole cake and all of his classmates are cheering him on and this poor kid is stuffing mounds of chocolate cake into his mouth. It was a wondrous thing when it was just a single slice.

It becomes something hideous when it's the whole cake. Speaking of Abby's birthday, I'm speaking out of experience. It's like, no, we're not taking that home with us. You keep it there. Something delicious at first that becomes sickening when you're giving yourself over to it.

Too much of a good thing. C .S. Lewis put it this way. Don't demand the encore. Don't demand the encore. This is a way of recognizing God gives portions for us to enjoy, but those portions, that daily manna can never become something more than that.

When you hoard it up together, it spoils. It becomes something gross and off-putting. And you might be piling up manna for quite some time before you realize just how spoiled that has become, but you don't demand the encore.

Alisha and I were in Italy earlier this year. We went to go see an opera, and if you've ever been to a classical concert, especially something lyrical like an opera, it's mandatory that you applause wildly for about 20 minutes in hopes that someone will come back and they act like they're doing it with hesitation, but they've prepared for it the whole time.

The whole orchestra knows what to play, and they give an encore performance. I want more of this performance. And when we enjoy something good, like Foolish Children, we demand that encore. I want that again.

I want to have more of it right now. That's not recognizing what God has given in its time and its place, a portion. So there's a danger of too much of a good thing. Secondly, there's a danger of optimizing our joy.

Well, this was good, but it would be even better if I did this, and then if I did this, it would be even better if I did that. It ends up ruining the ability to enjoy. So we spend more time and more energy trying to optimize the experience.

I struggle to find an illustration for this point, but I can only relate it to you like this. Think of me what you will. It's when you have your Chipotle or something, or your meal, and you're all excited to dig into it, and then you need to find the perfect video to watch while you eat it.

But you keep scrolling, and you keep scrolling, and no, no, that won't do, no, not that one, and your burrito's getting cold, and you're like, maybe this one, and you watch for a minute, you're like, no, that won't do, and now you're frustrated because your food's cold, and you lost the ability to enjoy it, why?

You were trying to optimize the experience. It's another way of forfeiting what God has portioned to you. It's good, but I want it to be better. So it's not an encore, it's an optimization. And then we need to recognize after the things that come from God hand that we should not appraise them.

It's the difference between praise and appraisal. Praise is, that was good. Appraisal is, was that good enough? What could be better next time around? These are all subtle ways we lose the ability to enjoy what God portions for us.

Christ Alone Satisfies Our Longing

And with that, I would say we need to learn then to trace that residue of longing, because no good gift ultimately satisfies a heart with eternity. And so rather than trying to fill it, trying to optimize it, demanding the encore, we just learn to recognize that longing, that sense of what is off, and trace it forward.

For Christians, we have the vocabulary to do this. For Christians, we have the story, the narrative by which to frame this. We recognize eternity's demand for satisfaction will be fulfilled in the end.

In this life, there's good to enjoy, but it can never fully satisfy us. And so there's a tension that we embrace, and we learn to walk in the midst of that tension. Gratitude and enjoyment for what comes from God's hand, even while we hunger and thirst for satisfaction yet to come.

The Germans have a beautiful word. Germans are very good with words. And they have a beautiful word for this. Sehnsucht, this being longing, this heart longing, this yearning that's at the core of my being.

And I feel it lingering and haunting every experience of good, every experience of joy. It's good, but it just misses. It's just off the mark. Maybe if I repeat it, maybe if I optimize it, maybe then, but no, under the sun, there's always that missing dimension.

And so a Christian learns to trace that longing redemptively. Christ alone will satisfy sehnsucht. Jesu, the hymn says, joy of man's desiring. We know that the good gifts that descend from the Father of lights have taken form incarnately in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

He's joy incarnate. He's the Father's good gift made flesh. He's the satisfaction for human longing. But we can't yet see him, and we're not yet with him. Not until that day when our faith becomes sight, when seeing him, we're made like him.

Then our hearts are finally and forever satisfied. What comes from his nail-pierced hand every day is what I can enjoy. I don't have to optimize it. I don't have to repeat it. I don't have to clutch it.

I don't have to secure it. I don't have to make it the foundation for my identity and my life. I just enjoy it as a good gift that comes from his hand. There's nothing better under the sun than this. If I can live in gratitude and in praise.

And if that cleans my windows. Now I look around, I see everything is gift. Think about this. I start seeing situations in my life that are hard, that are troubling, as a gift because I recognize what God is going to do through them.

I recognize how he's keeping me low and malleable, and he's conforming me to the image of his Son. I look at other people, not as obstacles, not as sandpaper, but as gifts in my life. Even the most irksome, or burdensome, or oppositional people can actually be a blessing in disguise.

Laban may not have been the blessing of God, but God used Laban to bless Jacob. So you learn to see everything through the lens of what comes from God's hand. It's gift. And you trace that longing, and you ache with the absence of joy.

And it draws your mind to what is numinous. What is full of awe. We say in that song, God's awful throne, and we should put the E in there, because we use awful in a very different sense from how it originated.

Full of awe, that's what numinous means. Full of awe, to capture the wonder, again, of what God has done. The givenness, becoming something unordinary. If I could put it this way, you see givenness with these clean windows, and the whole world sort of shines with an eerie sense of the disfamiliar.