Pleasure in Moderation: Work in Moderation

Work in Moderation: The Three Choices in Ecclesiastes 4

Please turn your Bibles to Ecclesiastes chapter 4. That can be found on page 555 if you're using the Pew Bible. Ecclesiastes chapter 4. When you have that, please stand. Verses 4 through 6. Then I saw that all toil and all skill in work come from a man's envy of his neighbor.

This also is vanity and a striving after wind. The fool folds his hands and eats his own flesh. Better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after wind. Amen. You may be seated.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for your many gifts to us. You have given us so many things and you have even given us work as a gift. We pray that we would enjoy this gift in moderation and that your word today would instruct us in how to enjoy this gift that you have given and that we would do so in a way that not only helps us to appreciate your gifts more fully, but especially to appreciate Christ himself, your perfect gift from heaven.

In Jesus' name. Amen. Well at this stage in going through these different matters of pleasure in moderation, I have been walking through the list of things that the Westminster Larger Catechism talks about sobriety in.

Talks about in what is required by the sixth commandment, a sober use of meat and drink, physic, which refers to medicine, sleep, like we talked about last week, and labor. Labor, work. Moderation in labor.

This passage is an excellent passage to look at for moderation labor because it addresses both excess labor, a little, too little labor, and then the right quantity of labor. It addresses all of these.

Says he sees all the toil and skill and work come from a man's envy of his neighbor. It's vanity striving after win. People labor hard to get things that their neighbor has and then eventually it all disappears.

That's what Ecclesiastes is talking about when it's talking about vanity. It's talking about things being fleeting. They do not last for long. It's a striving after wind. It just fleets away eventually.

But the fool on the other hand, the one who works too little, folds his hands and eats his own flesh. Rather than building up something for himself that he can enjoy, he instead, in not working, just has to consume his savings, his resources, even his own self.

And then in verse 6, better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after wind. This is describing moderation. A handful of quietness, one handful, not working, is better than two hands full of toil for something that is just going to slip away.

So we have here this described as hands. Okay, what are the options here? You can have two hands full of toil for something that's ultimately going to fleet away, given that our lives are temporary. You can fold your hands, have no hands involved, and consume your own flesh.

Or you can have one hand that is resting and the other hand working and this being something that is much better than both of those extremes. Okay, you have three options. Two hands, no hands, one hand.

That is the picture that is given for you. And if that helps you think about the nature of moderation work, then then it is a biblical picture that is designed for that task. Now it may seem odd to you to speak about this in a series called pleasure and moderation.

Work as a Gift from God

Many people do not think of pleasure when they think of work and they do not think of work when they think about pleasure. It is not the kind of thing that gives them enjoyment. In fact, there are many different movements, I guess, among people in order to essentially get rid of work in all kinds of different ways.

There are people who, just out of a kind of communist bent, want the rich to provide for them. They kind of see everything as a fixed pie, that things just exist without anyone working for them. And if we all just shared, then we would not have to work.

And they imagine work itself just being a curse on man that is not good. There are others who think that maybe by the power of artificial intelligence, man will just stop having to work and then he can just sit around and lounge or maybe create, you know, be an artist, something like that, but nothing much more than that.

Yet work was given as a gift from God to man before the fall, before sin ever entered the world, before there was any kind of reason to, before there was any suffering, before there was any reason for God to to punish man or anything like that.

God gave work as a gift. Genesis 2 .15 says, The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it. This is a gift to man, something for his enjoyment that he would work it.

Throughout the series, I've made comparisons to the angels. The angels do not have the same kind of needs that humans do. Now, on one hand, you might think of that weakness as making you a lesser creature, and in some ways it does.

But in other ways, the fact that you have needs means that there God created you to receive pleasures that other beings do not receive. Now, part of the fact that you need to acquire food in order to survive, that food being a pleasure, God has also made the work that would provide the food to be a pleasure.

Adam was put in the garden to work it, to enjoy that work, and then also to enjoy the food that would come out of that work. Now, work is still a good thing even after the fall. It didn't cease to be a good thing.

It is still a good thing. Ecclesiastes 2 .24 says,. There's nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God. It's a blessing from God that someone should be able to work and then enjoy the fruit of their labor.

Ecclesiastes 3 .13,. Also, that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil. This is God's gift to man. Ecclesiastes 5 .19,. Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil.

This is the gift of God. Okay, work, the ability to work and to receive fruit from that labor is a gift of God and remains as such even in a world where there is death, even when things are fleeting, when they are, as the word is translated here, vain, that they are fleeting.

It is still a gift of God. Now, this is true and will continue to be true even in the final state. Even when Christ has returned and there is a judgment and we go to be with him forever, many people imagine that that will just be a kind of static environment where everything, of course, it will be stable, but stable in such a way that it never changes and that it is just sitting there maybe singing all the time.

Or a lot of people have the notion that we will kind of be sucked up into God's eternity. But what I mean by that is we will become timeless as God is timeless. That is not the case. We are people who exist in space and in time.

We will continue to be people who exist in space and time. And the world that God has in store for us is something that's so much greater than the world we have here. There is no reason to think that it would have less things in store for us.

Rather, God, out of his goodness to his people, having given man work, we have every reason to believe that there will still be work. There will still be much to do if God has placed us over creation.

And then, because Christ has come to save us, and he being made a little while lower than the angels, like we talked about this morning, and being risen up high above all things and seated in the heavenly places, and we with him, what that means is that this dominion that we have over the earth doesn't cease.

It only increases. And so if the dominion only increases as we inherit all things with Christ, what does that mean for the entailments of our dominion, which are to work and to cultivate this earth? Does it not only increase in that eternal state?

This is something to look forward to. It's a wonderful thing. All this to say, work is a gift from God. And so that means that work in its proper measure is a good thing. Work in its proper measure is a good thing.

The Good of Work, Provision, and Rest

First of all, you can see that just from the nature of possessions, how they come about by work. It is possible to toil too much, but to toil too little is what the fool does. The fool folds his hands and eats his own flesh.

He just consumes himself. And then on top of that, we have the New Testament statements that it's important to work not just to be able to provide for yourself, but also to be able to provide for others.

We should, and this is true, not just of one's own family. Bible says that it's one who does not provide for his own family is worse than an unbeliever. But given the nature of the gospel to fill our hearts with love for one another, it should cause us to want to work so that we would have even more to be able to give even more of ourselves.

You see the nature of the early church in Acts 2 and onward, that they're so full of a love for one another and a love for Jesus Christ that it overpours it. Their possessions, they give for the sake of the church, for the good of God's people.

This is not them abandoning work and saying they wish they had never raised up those things. It is instead them realizing all the good things their possessions can go to. And so let the thief no longer steal, but let him work diligently with his hands in order that he may be able to give to those who are in need.

So they say good thing. We also see this from the nature of rest. God has organized such things. God has organized creation and man's nature so that those who do not work hard do not have as sweet of a rest.

You wouldn't think that that would be the case. You'd think that someone who dedicates themselves to rest and to leisure would enjoy rest more. They would have more of it, but it's not the case. They have less rest.

Ecclesiastes 5 .12 says, sweet is the sleep of a laborer, whether he eats little or much, but the full stomach of the rich will not let him sleep. Those who work, the laborer, receives sweet sleep. Those who do not labor do not enjoy sleep nearly as much.

And maybe you've noticed that before, a day where you just kind of lazy, stayed around maybe scrolling on your phone or something like that. It's kind of hard to go to sleep at the end of the day, and you're surprised that it would be that way.

But it just is because if you do not labor, you do not rest. Shakespeare, in a play called Cymbeline, has this line, weariness can snore upon the flint when the rusty sloth finds the down pillow hard.

Now, I'll break that up for you if that was hard to understand. Weariness can snore upon the flint. That means if you have worked hard enough, remember how Jacob at Bethel slept on a rock, right? That felt comfortable.

You can feel comfortable on a rock if you're working hard. Have you ever been so tired that you could just lay down on concrete and it feels better than standing up? Okay, that's what this is talking about.

Weariness can snore upon the flint. And then he says, when a rusty sloth finds the down pillow hard. But if you are slothful, if you're lazy, then it doesn't matter how soft your pillow is, it will feel hard to you.

Excessive Labor and the Temptation of Pride

Now, work is good. There is a curse that has come upon man because he failed in the task that God had given him and he listened to his wife and ate the fruit. And so thorns have come up from the ground so that all of man's labor, whether he be tilling the ground or anything else, all of it involves a curse so that there is some toil involved in it that wouldn't have been apart from the fall.

But that does not mean that work itself is not good or that we should not work or we should find ways of avoiding work. That's not the case. Work is still good even with that curse. Same thing for children.

Children are still a heritage from the Lord even though there has been a curse applied on women such that they toil in their childbirth. That labor, same word, even in scripture, that labor has difficulties on it that would not have been apart from the curse.

Yet children are still a blessing. It is still good to be fruitful and to multiply. Same thing is true with work. All right, now having addressed that work is a good thing in its proper measure, especially more than not working at all, excess work is bad.

Excess work is bad. There's all kinds of toil that man can engage in that is difficult for him and then profits him nothing. Proverbs 23, 4 through 5 says, Now there are many different ways that that could happen.

You can work very hard for something, just very hard for something and then it goes away just like that. When I was in high school, I knew someone who had worked all summer long to save up for a ticket to go on some special school trip to Europe and then 9 -11 happened and the school canceled the trip and because their parent wasn't going to take them to Europe and the school wasn't going to take them to Europe anymore, it all just fleeted away.

All that work just went away. Maybe you know someone who's worked for something and it all just goes away like that. And then of course at the end of our life, all of our things go on to another. Lord willing to children who carry on our name and inherit it, but regardless, we don't get to enjoy that anymore.

And so to work for things not recognizing that reality is foolish. Think about the man that Jesus spoke of who built up his barns and said that he will rest, he'll just enjoy himself now that he's worked so hard for so long.

You fool, this night your soul will be required of you. But this is how many people are. They work in excess, not thinking about the limited nature of their life. Why is it that people are drawn to excess work?

I think there are a number of temptations, but I believe that as I have considered them, they mostly fall into two categories. And that first one is pride. I'll leave the second one for a moment, but the first one is different kinds of pride.

Okay, so one kind of pride could be that you have an identity in your work and maybe that's the position that you would hold or advancement in career. Maybe it is in the actual activity itself, but you have such a pride in it that you can't let that go.

You can't give that up. And so you have to just keep working in excess. Maybe other people look at you as a busy worker and you have to maintain that sort of identity. And so you do not rest when you ought to rest.

Okay, so that could be something. Or it could be envy. Maybe you want things that other people have. This is what Ecclesiastes 4 is talking about. And I saw toil and all skill and work come from a man's envy of his neighbor.

This also is vanity and a striving after wind. If you have envy of your neighbor, if you're just trying to keep up with the Joneses, trying to get more, many people work hard in their career just to keep up with others because that apparently is the standard for some unknown reason.

You think about how foolish that is. If others were very lazy, then you would think that laziness was okay. It doesn't really work. We ought to be content. 1 Timothy 6, 6 through 10. Think about this passage.

This is talking about, a lot of it's talking about false teachers, but the statements that it makes apply to anybody. But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world and we cannot take anything out of the world.

But if we have food and clothing with these, we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.

For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and have pierced themselves with many pangs. It's all kinds of envy that leads people to be uncontent.

If you're godly and you are content with what you have been given, there is much gain in that. That doesn't mean that you are lazy and kind of abandon on your things. Many people have that idea that the right Christian life is some sort of monastic thing where you leave work behind and you are just content with hardly anything.

The Christian life ought to be building a lot of things up that you would be able to give to others, whether it be to your children or to the church. It is not a laziness and abandonment of work. But it is a contentment.

It is a happiness with whatever God should give. And people, as it describes here, have wandered away from the faith on account of their desire for more, on account of their envy. Paul describes fellow workers with him who have just wandered away.

Demas, who just went and was more interested in the wealth of the world, the things that the world has to offer than the glories of laboring in the gospel. Many ministers have walked away from excellent opportunities in ministry because they had the spirit of Demas.

There are all kinds of people who, because they are more concerned with what the world has to offer, have had the faith choked out like weeds around a good plant. This is how it's described in the parable of the sower, that the thorns choke out the faith.

And this is different than the rocky soil, the rocky soil where you have the plant that falls away because of hardship. Okay, if instead of hardship being too difficult, won by thorns, because he is so ensnared by his covetousness, his riches, this is describing a worse fate.

Elsewhere in scripture, Hebrews 6 and other places, it describes as a far worse thing to be struck by covetousness. Hebrews 13, 5 says, keep your life free from the love of money and be content with what you have.

For he has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. We are called to covetousness and this is something that needs to be trained. Paul says that he has learned in whatever situation he is in, to be content.

You must learn likewise to be content, to train yourself in situations where you have less, to be content with what you have, situations where you have more, to be grateful and to thank God for those things so that you could easily, with an open hand, lose those things.

This is what God calls us to. Okay, so this is another kind of pride. Wanting more, thinking that you are owed more, that you're entitled to more. Then beyond that, there's the kind of pride that is unwilling to delegate to others.

All right, that says, I just need to do this. I'm going to be better at this than others and is not thinking about how they need to invest in others. And so they do not train others and they don't delegate like they ought because they're too prideful about the way that the work is supposed to be done.

There are all kinds of examples of this that could be given. Two that come to mind. I have seen with not just the most recent advents in technology, but even others where people are so prideful about their craft that they are unwilling to use tools that will make it easier.

Just to give you a very simple example, I knew someone who was, well, I received a haircut from someone once who was just so prideful about not using clippers. They only use the scissors. So did the whole haircut with scissors.

It was not a better haircut and it was much slower. There's all kinds of, this pride led to extra time accomplishing far less, right? And there are all kinds of ways that people reject good tools. That's happening right now with a lot of the changes in technology.

A lot of people are resisting that because they have a lot of pride about the nature of their craft and it changing. This is also a common thing among mothers. A lot of mothers are unwilling to delegate tasks to their children.

Children should learn how to help take care of the home, how to clean, how to cook, things like that. A lot of moms are unwilling to delegate that to their children. And so what happens is less ends up getting done.

The house ends up messier and then the children are less prepared for adulthood. And so a lot of pride ends up keeping that from, keeping households from being run well. And instead, mothers end up overworking.

And then there is also the kind of pride that I had something in mind here. Excuse me. Got a phone call. There's another kind of pride that does not recognize your own finitude. So if you think that you can do much more than you really can, and so you take on many tasks and are not willing to say no, and you just say yes to everything, even if it's not things that people are offering you, but it is things that you are looking at and you think, I could do that, I could do that, I could do that, because you think so highly of yourself.

That's another kind of pride. Okay, so there's different ways that pride tempts people into excess work. There are also ways that people are tempted into excess work by something that you might not suspect, and that is laziness.

How Laziness Creates Overwork

Laziness tempts people into excess work. And as I have considered all the situations that I can think of of excess work, I really think that they almost all come under those headings of different kinds of pride and different kinds of laziness.

So what do I mean by laziness? Many people end up overworking, and the Proverbs talk about this, the one who does not sow in time ends up scrambling during the harvest to figure out how to get any food.

Okay, someone who is lazy during the early part of their day is going to end up staying late in the office to try to get all the work done. Okay, and so a lot of overwork is really just a kind of laziness.

Proverbs say that the sluggard says there's a lion in the streets, I shall be devoured. Why does the lazy person say this? Because they don't want to do work and they will use anything as an excuse, including safety, right?

So there's all kinds of ways that people out of some kind of concern, whatever that concern may be, will choose something that is takes a lot more time, but is much more of a known quantity because they don't want to do the hard work of something that might be a little more difficult, but consume a lot less and reap a lot more.

In Ecclesiastes 11, 4, it says, he who observes the wind will not sow and he who regards the clouds will not reap. So many people are lazy and that they're thinking too much about the outcome and they're so kind of frozen with analysis paralysis that they don't actually work because they're thinking about the outcome and thinking about the outcome is keeping them from doing the work, but then eventually the work has to get done and other people looking onward might say, wow, that person was really working, but really it was just because there was laziness on the front end that led to overwork on the back end.

A lot of it may be a failure to plan. Proverbs 21, 5 says, the plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty. So because you are not interested in doing the hard work of planning upfront, you end up doing a lot more work later.

We're in a valley of engineers. Many of you know this. If you don't plan well enough, you might think that you can get the project done faster if you spend less time planning, but what ends up happening, you end up throwing away all kinds of things that you end up building when you realize why they don't actually fit together and you do a lot of work for nothing.

So it is lack of diligence there, a failure to plan and a failure to train. Ecclesiastes 10, 10 says, if the iron is blunt and one does not sharpen the edge, he must use more strength, but wisdom helps one to succeed.

So if you do not sharpen the ax, if you do not prepare yourself for good work, you will end up spending much more time actually working. This is the way that blank Issachar, Issachar is described in Genesis 49, says that he is like a donkey that sees the green grass and lays down, but then he's put to forced labor.

This is what happens to many people in their life because they don't spend the first half of their life training. They end up working very hard the second half of their life. And so all that overwork is because of a failure to plan, a failure to train.

Many people's overwork is really just a laziness that's hidden. Now, if you know Jesus Christ, you have the cure for excess work, you have the cure for too little work, in part because of the same reasons every other week, he forgives and he provides his spirit, which will guide you in the right path.

Okay, so that is still our great hope is the forgiveness of Jesus Christ, the work of his spirit in us, so that we will not stray to the left or to the right, but stay in the narrow way that he has called us to.

Christ as Master and the Lasting Value of Work

However, I want to point out a few things about God's gift to us in salvation that should also help you think about the nature of work in moderation. First is that we have been given a new master. Colossians 3, 23 to 24 says, whatever you do work heartily as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord, you will receive the inheritance as your reward.

You are serving the Lord Christ. You are to work heartily, not as unto men, but as unto the Lord. You have a new master. Now, what does that mean? First of all, it means that the reward is going to be much greater than any kind of earthly master.

It says, knowing that from the Lord, you will receive an inheritance as your reward. That's something far greater. If you work for the sake of the fruit that comes from the ground, if you work for the sake of the paycheck, which is, these are valid reasons to work, they're very good reasons to work, then how much better is it to work for a greater master who is going to give you something far greater?

This shifts everything into perspective so that who would be lazy in the task? And then, if he does not want you to engage in excess, and there could even be penalties for such things, why would you ever work more than you are called to work?

Okay, so the nature of having a greater master, a better master, a perfect master who sees all things, this changes the dynamic quite a bit. Beyond having a greater master, we have a greater purpose in our work now too, because we are serving the Lord Christ.

Ecclesiastes 2, 22 to 23 says, What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night, his heart does not rest.

This also is vanity. Ecclesiastes 8, 16, When I applied my heart to know wisdom and to see the business that is done on earth, how neither day nor night does one's eyes sleep. It's talking about all this excess work that is inevitably vanity, inevitably slips away.

What is the result? Yet there's a permanence that happens of our work that happens through Jesus Christ. If our work on earth, while on one hand the physical results of it are fleeting, but if it is ultimately for him, then there is a permanence to it that it does matter from an eternal perspective.

That gives us reason to work in the proper way that we ought to work and not to, not to be lazy. But then on the other hand, if God is the one who gives success to that work, then that means we should not overwork.

Psalm 127, 1 -2 says,. Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil, for he gives to his beloved sleep.

Okay, if the Lord builds the house, then it is truly built. But if the Lord is not building the house, then the labor is laboring in vain. There's nothing that's going to come from that. The watchman stays awake, but the Lord doesn't end his work.

He's going to miss everything that he's supposed to be watching for. So if God has called you to a certain kind of work, but not to more than that, but to instead attend to your duties elsewhere, where they belong, why would you exceed?

If he has guaranteed success in the proper measure, and you know this because your eyes are open and you have this new master, why is it that you should exceed in work? There would be no benefit from that.

It will not actually yield better results. Psalm 90, 17,. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us and establish the work of our hands upon us. Yes, establish the work of our hands. This is a prayer for blessing that God would establish the work of our hands.

The implication being that if he doesn't, the work of our hands isn't established and nothing comes from it. Yet to have the blessing of God as his people, being able to pray this prayer, lets you know that work in the proper measure has its reward, but not work that wouldn't be, that would be not according to God's will.

Because what kind of prayer says he answers? He doesn't answer prayers that are not according to his will, he answers prayers that are according to his will. And his will is that man would be rewarded for right service to Christ.

First Corinthians 15, 58,. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast and movable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord, your labor is not in vain. If your labor is in the Lord, which some labors are particularly in the Lord, the work of ministry, sharing the gospel, that kind of thing, those are things that are particularly in the Lord, those are not in vain.

But any time that you work out of an obedience to God, that is also not in vain, that also has its purpose. Even though this word, as it's translated in the Old Testament, now Hebrew and Greek, different languages, but here it gets translated vain.

Ecclesiastes talks about all these things being vanity. And what does First Corinthians say? If it is in the Lord, it is not in vain. It is lasting. It has that purpose that goes on forever and ever. Turn from, evaluate your life and the way that you work, whether you work too little, you work too much.

Applying Moderation to Work and Daily Duties

Consider the motivations that are involved. This is more important actually than considering the hours. It really isn't so much about hours. There are some seasons in your life where you will be called to work many more hours and much harder than you might be called in other seasons of your life.

It really has to do with assessing what has God called you to and what are your motivations for working. Is it for the envy? Is it out of pride? Is it out of laziness? And assess those things. Assess the duties that God has given you and whether or not you're being negligent in anything else that work is competing with.

Even if it's just the duty to enjoy the creation that God has given and not be someone who is ungrateful for all of God's blessings. And then assessing that, turn away from sin towards righteousness and following, being led by the Spirit, following in that narrow way, neither to the left nor to the right, not to too little work, not to too much work, but following as God has called you to.

There's a great blessing in that. Better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after wind. And begin doing this today. You remember the passage from last week, a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest and poverty will come upon you like a robber and want like an armed man.

What was the point there? The point is, what people's patterns tend to be is they're a little lazy, they're lazy on one occasion, then another occasion, it's not a big deal. But before you know it, many occasions have piled up and you have missed on all kinds of opportunities to grow.