A Hard Teaching on Contentment

Today's text is Ecclesiastes 6, 1 through 12. There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, and it lies heavy on mankind. A man to whom God gives wealth, possessions, and honor, so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires.

Yet God does not give him power to enjoy them. But a stranger enjoys them. This is vanity. It's a grievous evil. If a man fathers a hundred children, and lives many years, so that the days of his years are many, but his soul is not satisfied with life's good things, and he also has no burial, will I say that a stillborn child is better off than he?

For it comes in vanity and goes in darkness, and in darkness its name is covered. Moreover, it has not seen the sun or known anything. Yet it finds rest rather than he. Even though he should live a thousand years twice over, yet enjoy no good, do not all go to the one place.

All the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied. For what advantage has the wise man over the fool? And what does the poor man have who knows how to conduct himself before the living?

Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of this appetite. This also is vanity and a striving after wind. Whatever has come to be has already been named, and it is known what man is, and that he is not able to dispute with one stronger than he.

The more words, the more vanity. And what is the advantage to man? For who knows what is good for man while he lives the few days of his vain life, which he passes like a shadow? For who can tell man what will be after him under the sun?

Pray with me. Lord, I ask that you would hide your messenger behind your cross, that your words would come through him. Clear revealing of the oracles. Lord, I thank you for your goodness and your grace.

I ask that you would edify the body today, that we would be built up in conviction and in encouragement. Lord, I ask that you would instruct our souls and that the helper would feel near. In Jesus' name.

Thank you, Church, so much. I hope to strike a slightly different tone this morning than I did last week. I don't make apologies. I have tremendous zeal for the law for numerous reasons. One of them is that it is the revelation of God's character.

The other is that it penetrates my soul, and I see from a young age how I've broken the law and how God's grace has covered me, and he has loved me and adopted me as his own. I see the value of life, and I see a zeal for the Church.

And you guys make it easy with your gratitude, with your care, and I'm very thankful for that. I think we have a forgotten commandment. I alluded to it last week. I'm going to, by way of repetition and introduction, read this verse again, and then I'm going to carry on.

Covetousness as a Forgotten Commandment

One of the ten, ten laws that God wanted mankind to follow, all of our laws come from these ten. And included in that ten is this law. You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

The next verse says,. And all the people perceived the thunder, and the lightning flashes, and the sound of the trumpet, and the mountains smoking. And the people perceived it, and they shook, and they stood at a distance.

And they said to Moses, Speak to us yourself, and we will listen, but let not God speak to us, lest we die. How often do we think about wanting to die when being exposed for our sin of covetousness? See, when you look at the law, and we emphasize the table, we know, Thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness.

Sins of the heart, sins of the hands, sins of the eyes, lustful sensuality, greed, misery. All of these things, we don't fear God whenever we indulge in them, whenever we court them. And covetousness is often the doorway by which many other sins come in, because it's internal.

And people don't come to you and call out your covetousness. It's much like pride, in the way that it's a sin that is often inside, hidden. And the fruit of it is the only thing that reveals the core, and the root of the sin.

And so often, covetousness is the root of the sin. I said last week that bearing false witness is prevalent in our Reform camp. And we know it's true. I know some of you guys venture into the broader Reformed world, and see the way that we just effortlessly lie about one another.

How pastors cut down people in the flock. It's a grievous thing. But you know, I think that sin is a symptom. And I think that the root is that in our camp, we have a lot of coveting. There's a lot of jealousy.

There's a lot of envy. There's a lot of desire for someone else's ministry. There's a lot of desire for someone else's stuff. Paul says in Ephesians 5 .5, This you know with certainty. No immoral or impure person or covetous man who is an idolater has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.

Coveting is not a small thing to God. I can think of no more scathing Scripture on coveting than what Solomon has given us that we look at this morning. But look at what we do. And it is insidious, and it creeps in.

We covet in our lives. We covet our future life sometimes. Our life post-young kids when we arrive and we get to do whatever we want. Or maybe post-teenage kids. Whenever they're out of the house and we're empty nesters and we just get to go on vacations and enjoy our stuff.

Or maybe it's post-retirement. I don't have to go into this grind anymore. And I'm going to be able to do whatever I want. And we covet a time we have no satisfaction. Maybe we covet the influence and power of other people.

Maybe we covet the friendships that other people possess. Maybe we covet the relationships that someone else has that we don't have. And it is a grievous evil to see that when you reach out in covetousness the very thing that you covet slips through your fingers because sin is not a means to get anything good.

We covet godly wives we look across and we fight in our home and we look at someone else's wife and we say I wish my wife would act that way. I wish my wife would be that way. I wish my husband was as godly as that woman's husband.

We covet cars. We covet jobs. We covet houses. We covet governments. We covet other countries. Why do we have a bunch of foreigners here? They covet our country. They want what we have. Very confrontational and controversial to say something like that.

And yet it is our country and we covet here aplenty. What do we do? I think what we need to learn from Ecclesiastes 6 what I want to see is that you need to have iron inside of you that your godliness is not brought about by your own willpower or your own self-determination or your assent to spiritual or religious theories or ideas or beliefs.

Your godliness comes from God. Your desire for God comes from God. Your contentment is a gift of God. Not just your things. Your very contentment is a gift from God that we should thank Him for. And your lack of contentment is a grievous evil and an affront to God and a challenge to His sovereignty and idolatry that Paul would tell us.

Discontentment as a God-Given Affliction

So let's look first at the first two verses, the prevalent evil of discontentment. And I say prevalent because it is everywhere and the good and bad news is it always has been everywhere. It is endemic to the cursed human condition.

And I think in many ways our cursed state is most shown by our lack of satisfaction. How can you be more cursed than to never be satisfied? To constantly strive and never arrive. To constantly hope and never receive.

And then when you receive, it tastes like dust and dirt. And it's no good. There is an evil I have seen under the sun. It is prevalent among men. A man to whom God has given riches and wealth and honor so that his soul lacks nothing of all that he desires.

Yet God has not empowered him to eat from them for a foreigner enjoys them. This is vanity and a severe affliction. Let's begin with the end of that section. Where does the affliction come from? God. The affliction comes from God.

People who are not satisfied. People who have riches and it does not do anything for them. People who constantly strive for more and more and have no content suffer an affliction given by God. Because God has the power to give contentment and satisfaction.

Do you really believe your doctrines of grace? Do you really believe in the sovereignty of God? Because friends, it goes all the way down to the bottom. Everything good you ever think is a gift of the Holy Spirit.

That's what Isaiah means when it says that our righteousness is as filthy rags. There is nothing that we conjure up. No matter how good we think we are doing. No matter how much we think we are working for someone else's benefit.

Without the helper, without the power of the Holy Spirit, that righteousness is a dung heap to God. It is of no value whatsoever. God has done this. God gives wealth and God gives poverty. And the most important thing to get is that what we will do is when we have joy and contentment in our lives in the brief moments that we do, we will look at what we've done and we will try to give our friends self-help advice about how they too can be content.

And we can't deliver it. How can you be content? And I think to myself how often I covet because I don't even give credit to the one who has given contentment and joy. And that is the very sin that is against the contentment and the joy.

Because it's covening the glory of God and His power and His credit and trying to take credit myself, which is idolatry. And what we do is we look at these men who are given everything. They come to mind, don't they?

Don't we sometimes like the psalmist question, why do the wicked keep getting fat? They are winning. They are succeeding. In the church, in the culture, in the world, in the industry, the wicked men seem to be winning over and over.

And the more they win, the more winning they do. They don't get tired of it, do they? It keeps going on. And we question and we go, what is going on? How is this happening? And what we have to understand is that God gives the riches and the wealth, but God also afflicts with the curse of discontentment for His own purposes.

Over and over again, we see hard-heartedness in man that results in a man who has everything that he wants, every single thing that money can buy he has, and yet he wants to go to Mars. He invents an operating system that rules the entire world.

He is the most powerful man for decades, invents windows, is on the health board, wants to give everybody vaccines for some strange reason, but it's not enough. He divorces his wife and he wants to live forever as some kind of transhuman.

What is that curse? Do you not see it? It is a curse that God has given. And then this thing always goes to a place. How do you know that we're late-stage civilization in America? It's all in Solomon.

You get to a point of wealth and decadence, and at this point you're not content with it, so God afflicts you with another curse, doesn't He? And that curse is, you don't even enjoy it, but all the people who mean absolutely nothing to you get to enjoy it.

A bunch of Somalians, a bunch of Indians, a bunch of people from all over the globe who had nothing to do with anything you created, nothing to do with the heritage and the wealth, and yet they enjoy all of the spoils, and this is a grievous evil.

It's an affliction, and the rich don't even see it. And it's super easy for us, isn't it, to pillory our politicians, to yell at them, to talk about the crazy amount of careless immigration that we've had in the last 70 years, astounding amounts of it, right, where the whole thing is swaying and teetering now, but it's all here.

Why did it happen? Because we don't have contentment, because God has afflicted us with a lack of contentment, and so what happens over and over again? It happened in Israel. You remember the admonitions over and over?

Don't marry women from other countries because what's going to happen? If you do, you're going to start worshiping their gods. What is worshiping other gods? That's idolatry, isn't it? Who is an idolater?

Covetous men. Why were they marrying women from other nations? Because they weren't from their nation, and they wanted them. They wanted something they were not allowed to have. They wanted something that God had forbidden, and so their riches were given to foreigners, to strangers.

It's an affliction. Have you seen covetousness this way? Have you connected it? Because Solomon does it for us. It's a tremendous evil. It's one of the ten. Has it hit us in the church? What do we do in rich churches?

We send endless money overseas to places that we don't know anything about, to places where we don't know the people over there. They report back every couple of years, maybe. They send us flowery emails and newsletters that are always going to be the positive light.

It's like reading Facebook to get news. Do you really learn about somebody's life from what they post on social media? You and I both know what we're doing on there. You're presenting the most positive angle, and that's where we send money endlessly while our country is burning down.

This is an affliction. God is blinded, and it comes from covetousness. What is the rallying cry of the American church? It is not to get bigger, isn't it? Isn't that the whole point? Get bigger so you can make more money.

Get bigger so you can have better coffee. Get bigger so that it'll be easy for all of my neighbors to come, because maybe they won't have to talk to anybody because when there's 8 ,000 of us in there, we're basically invisible.

We have families that are constantly gazing outwards for more while their own children are neglected. Your kids want your attention, but your attention is on something you don't have. Your attention is on what the other family's doing.

Your attention is what 10 years from now you is going to be doing. It's an affliction over and over again, and we see it, don't we? How does this whole thing run? Rich men in America provide endowments and scholarship opportunities for people that they've never met.

It's just giving it all away, and God has done this, and so what do we say? We say this. This is evil. Everything that I just described is evil. Friends, understand. What I have preached for the last 14 minutes would get me kicked out of 99 of the churches in this country.

Do you understand how dim the times are? Do you understand how far the covetousness has gone? Do you understand how far down the hole of sin that we are? And it's time to repent. It's the only way out.

How do I know it's evil? Well, Paul tells us. Continue with Paul. He is a master on covetousness. He says this. It's simple. If anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

Does that connect with Ecclesiastes 6? Of course it does. When your riches are given away to strangers, you have denied the faith, and you don't follow God. And we sit in here, and we go, yeah, but I said that Jesus died for my sins.

Yeah, but I said that I love you, Jesus. And when we deny our own, it doesn't matter what we say. It doesn't matter what we believe. Again, as a repeat from last week, what matters is what we do. A Christian is defined by what they do, not by what they think.

Because if what you think does not translate into what you do, then you have a dead faith, a faith that means nothing. Don't be dismayed, though, friend. I know it's, look, here's the thing. It's going to get worse here this morning.

Sorry. This is the easy part. But God has made vessels of wrath who are discontent to show his power in turning their ends into his divine purpose. Everything that I just described is being used by God, even as we speak, to give him more glory.

And his people will rejoice exceedingly when that day comes. We always have. We always have. But here it is for you, and I'm going to get into the object lesson. Do not be complacent. God is doing it all.

God is giving these gifts. But that doesn't mean that you get to sit here because we have commands that we have to follow. And covetousness and its fruits should never be accepted or tolerated among God's people.

The Stillborn Illustration and the End of Covetousness

Do you want to know how serious it is? Let's look. I call this a brutal illustration. I want you to think about this real quick. Can you imagine a pastor coming up with this illustration that we're about to do?

Friends, it makes me tremble. It has all week. My wife can attest. I have been afraid of this more than many passages I've preached because Solomon is unrelenting. At times, it's very cruel. It is hard, and I know that many have suffered with the tragedy that he is going to use as a lesson here.

I'm going to read it, and then we'll unpack. Remember, this is the discontented man. If he fathers a hundred children and lives many years, however many they may be, but his soul is not satisfied with good things and he does not even have a proper burial, then I say, better the miscarriage than he.

For it comes in futility and goes into obscurity, and its name is covered in obscurity. It never sees the sun, and it never knows anything. It is better off than he. Even if the other man lives a thousand years twice and does not enjoy good things, do not all go to one place.

Let's look at the tremendous contrast that's going on here, and then we'll look at the ways that he compares. So if you get everything that you desire, if you live thousands of years, if your progeny is so massive and endless that it's all gonna trace back to you, you have legacy, you have life, you have fame, you have notoriety, you have everything under the sun, but if your soul is not satisfied with all of those things you just got, if your soul is not satisfied with those children, with that lifespan, with that fame, with those riches, with that popularity, if you are not satisfied with that, then it would have been better for you to have died in the womb and been buried in the slaughter pit.

Friends, I know how much this tragedy has affected families. Don't let that be lost on you. I've prayed all week that I would not weaken this text. Solomon is going for the jugular here, and what he's telling you is the awful, grievous evil that covetousness is.

If you're not satisfied in what God has given you, it would have been better not for you to have never existed. He's used that argument. It would have been better for you to die and go into nothing before you ever even saw the sun.

At least that way you wouldn't have known that everything you did was foolish and vain. But don't miss it. Even the miscarriage one that Solomon is talking about, he goes to the same place, right? And so the miscarriage is not one of the people of God.

This miscarriage is one who just never gets to live the struggle of ending up in the same place of the one who thumbs his nose at God. It's a horrible thing, isn't it? And I want to end with the burial because it's the confusing part of this text.

And I want to talk about how this works out. Many people understand this, but look, we don't speak of it. We soft-pedal covetousness first in ourselves and then in people around us. I beg you, church, I want you to see its fruits.

And again, with tone, I want to deal with this in a different way. Where you see jealousy, you have covetousness. Where you see gossip and slander, you have covetousness. Where you see sexual immorality, theft, you see covetousness.

Where you see cutting down other people when your speech is negative about someone else, when you have suspicions in your heart about the success of someone else, you have covetousness. Do you remember where it goes?

If you indulge and accept and live in the slop of covetousness, it would have been better for you to have died before you were ever born. Do we treat that sin that seriously? There's rightfully a lot of ink spilled about the scourge of sexual immorality in our country.

A lot of ink spilled, rightly, about the death of the pre-born in our country. A lot of ink spilled about our lying politicians and the lying institutions and how we can't trust anybody. But there's almost no ink ever spilled about this grievous thing that Paul says is just like idolatry and that Solomon says is so pernicious, so evil, so vile, so futile, that it would be better to die before you ever saw the sun than it would to be to live as a covetor.

Have you thought about covetousness that way? Have you rooted it out of your life? Have you prayed to God that He would expose and convict the dirty, dark hearts that we have that look out at others and say, I wish what they had was mine because I'm not content with what I have.

It's such a dangerous thing. It's one of the 10. It's so brutal in the Scripture. So why would it be better to die as a stillborn than it would be to live as one who's not content? Why? Well, let's start.

Both of them's life is futile from the start. Futile means vain, empty, pointless, accomplishing nothing. Solomon says that if both of these people, both the stillborn and the one who lives with this content, that their life is both futile from the start but for the stillborn, they have the benefit.

Not only they're futile, but they don't have to go through the struggle. There's no ambition for them. There's no striving. There's no failing. There's no living and getting their hands smashed over and over again with their discontent.

They just mercifully die and go to hell so that they never have to experience the futility of this life. Why else? Well, the stillborn, they never knew anything or experienced this sickening evil. And this is better than having all of the things and having no contentment.

It's way better to have nothing and have no contentment and never see anything than it is to have everything and have no contentment at all. Why? Because the stillborn's degree of rebellion against God is so much less than the discontented, wealthy man's rebellion against God.

And at the end of the day, every human being is going to be judged and sorted and analyzed based on their rebellion or obedience to the living God. That's all that matters at the end. Now let's get to the burial.

They go to the same place without the indignity of it. Now remember what it said. There is a fertility thing, right? And we know this. Look, let's twist the knife a little while we're here. We have to, right?

There is a opposite in the man who has a hundred children and the stillborn. Because the stillborn is associated with a lack of fertility, with trouble, with the womb, with, in those days, with the belief of a judgment of God on the family that they were not able to have the family.

And so Solomon says, yeah, they're going to the same place and without a proper burial. Now look at this. There could be several ways to interpret this. Let's deal first with the rich man because he's the harder case.

The rich man who has everything might have an improper burial. Now remember in Genesis, I'll wind you back. Remember when Joseph was about to die, he had told his ancestors, don't bury me in Egypt. Don't bury me in Egypt.

And this promise was remembered and Joseph's remains were taken into the promised land because Joseph was a righteous man and his progeny, Joseph was content, was he not? He followed the Lord. He loved the Lord and his progeny buried him in his home, in his proper place.

We know that Jesus was buried in his proper place, right where he foretold, wasn't it? Among the wealthy. He was buried in the tomb of the wealthy even though he was a carpenter. And this is contrasted with what happens to the enemies of God.

Isaiah 14 verse 20 and what is a taunt to Babylon says this, you will not be united with them in burial because you have ruined your country. You have slain your people. May the offspring of evildoers not be mentioned forever.

You will die and go into obscurity even though you had all of these plans to be great. Oh, great Babylon. Where's Babylon today? Forgotten. They slew their own country just like when it goes back to the beginning of this, right?

You're ruled by foreigners. You don't even get to get buried in your homeland. The righteous will have nothing to do with you. You will not stand among the assembly of the righteous. You will be driven off like the chaff.

That's what happens to the discontented man. He is contrasted. He is at the most elaborate funeral of all time but nobody there loves him. Remember what happens with all the riches? Everybody just wants to take your money.

Who are your real friends? When Bill Gates dies no one's going to shed a single tear, are they? It's empty discontentment, godlessness, rebellion. They mean you will be buried in a place that's far from anyone who loves you even though you can dress it up with all of the trappings that you want to.

At the end of the day you're actually being buried just like the stillborn is. Now friends, I'm not going to twist the knife here but I want you to think about that for a second. I want you to think about the burial of the stillborn, of the miscarriage and think about what Solomon is talking about, the futility of the whole thing.

There is no pomp and circumstance. The Bible says that this wicked man is buried in the slaughter pit like an animal. It's a terrible thing. Are you there yet? Do you understand? Covetousness is a serious thing.

It's a very serious thing. The longest life that you can possibly have is of no advantage whatsoever outside of godliness and everybody's going to the same place. God haters, whether you live zero days, 100 days or 2 ,000 years, it means nothing.

God is storing up his wrath against you and there is only one way out and that is grace. Do you want some more futility? Let's carry the thread on. Let's look at the futility of sensuality. You're not happy with your riches.

The Futility of Appetite, Sensuality, and Mere Wisdom

You're not happy with the amount of kids you have. You're not happy with all of the pomp and circumstance. Let's look at this. A man's labor is for his mouth, all of it. You work so you can eat. Are you ever satisfied for more than a few hours with the best meal you've ever had?

How long did it satisfy you? Not very long, did it? What advantage does the wise man have over the fool? You think that you're going to break this code of covetousness by being smarter, by being wiser, by knowing everything?

No, no advantage over the fool. What advantage does the poor man have? You think, you know, I'm going to abandon all these riches and I'm just going to be poor and then I'll be more godly and I can ingratiate myself to everyone because we'll all have the same common struggle and as the poor man, I may not have wealth but at least people will understand me and they might even feel sorry for me and they'll listen to me.

And Solomon says, no advantage. Is it an advantage to know how to walk before the living? Think about the shadowy language he uses here. Is it any advantage to know what to do among the living? All going to the same place, right?

What the eyes see is better than what the soul desires. You know, the soul desires only what the eyes can see right now but the eyes keep seeing things and the soul keeps desiring more and this is futility.

It is striving after the wind. Your eyes will invent all kinds of new things to see. You think you saw the prettiest woman ever? Just wait. There will be another one. You think you saw the greatest, you heard the greatest pastor ever?

Just wait. There's 10 more better than him. You think you have the best family? You don't. You think you have the best thing ever? You don't. The meal doesn't satisfy, the car doesn't satisfy, the friendship doesn't satisfy, the stuff doesn't satisfy, the church doesn't satisfy, the country, the politics, none of it satisfies.

And over and over again, we look out and we think, you know, if only we had this and if only I had this and if only this would happen and if only we could get to this spot and if only he would like deal with that other person over there, then I would be content and it would happen.

And Solomon says, striving after the wind. In reality, in reality, is there any advantage to being super smart and wise at all if you have no contentment? Solomon says, no way. But us, us inside here, here's what we constantly think friends, you know this, you know this, you think that what godliness is is knowing all the doctrine.

Don't you? Let's be honest. Because the other one, remember, I talked about it, jealousy, gossip. Here's the third. If we could get these things out of our church, we will be so much more on mission. Jealousy, gossip, I'm throwing sexual immorality in there, but here's the big one, pietism.

Solomon is very concerned about what you do. He's not as concerned about what you think. It's not about being wise. It's not about being able to talk with everyone like you're poor and understand each other so that we all understand each other's minds.

But understand this friend, you know this and I know it, I see the fruit, I see it in myself, I see it in you, we see it every week. We think that godliness is about knowing more of what the Bible says without ever bothering to do any of it.

That is the height of foolishness. It's where we can see stuff posted. Great example. Sorry to call you out. I'll do it unnamed for the recording. We can make simple observations in the church about how women probably shouldn't show off all of their skin just because it's Halloween and they look more obscene than Julia Roberts looked in Pretty Woman, which was a movie about a prostitute.

People are showing more skin than that on Halloween and who is coming after you when you put that on social media? The church. People who call themselves Christians because what we think is that if we just know more stuff, if I can make a biblical argument for how it's okay to dress like a streetwalker one day a year because hey, girls gotta have fun, if I can make that argument from scripture then I can win and Solomon says what is so foolish?

What are you doing? What are you trying to strive for? There's no advantage in being wise without carrying out what God has done and what is carrying out what God has done in Ecclesiastes 6? It is being content with what you have.

Let me be very clear and not lose the plot. The purpose of today's sermon is that you would examine your life to see if you are content with the good things you have. Are you satisfied with what God has given you?

Here's a good way to tell. Are you always wanting more? Are you always thinking about what you don't have? Are you always pining for what someone else has? How often do you thank God for what you have in your prayer life?

How often are you overwhelmed by God's goodness to you? Not in a pietist way. Oh Lord, thank you so much that you love me. No. How often are you actually satisfied in what God has done and thank Him for the many ways that He has blessed you?

How often do negative things come out of your mouth about other people? You want to get there? Let's get there. I love this text right here. Whatever exists has already been named. This is an allusion to the naming of all creatures and the status of man.

And it is known what man is for he cannot dispute with him who is stronger than he is. For there are many words which increase futility. What then is the advantage to a man? For who knows what is good for a man during his lifetime, during the few years of his futile life?

He will spend them like a shadow. For who can tell a man what will be after him under the sun? Listen, you want to see if you're satisfied? Let me pinprick you. When you feel the slightest instance of an attack on you, how many words start to proliferate?