When Enjoying Money and Possessions Is a Work of Grace

00:00:00.000 | Pastor John, there's an interesting pair of passages in the book of Ecclesiastes, specifically

00:00:10.480 | Ecclesiastes 519 and 6-2.

00:00:13.760 | In those passages, we're told that God is not only the source of material possessions,

00:00:17.760 | but He's also the source of the power to enjoy those material possessions if He gives it.

00:00:23.480 | So what do you think this means?

00:00:25.040 | How much of delight in creation is a gift from God?

00:00:29.920 | Here's the short answer.

00:00:31.760 | Yes, we should pray for the ability to rightly enjoy what God has given us to enjoy.

00:00:44.200 | And all of truly God-honoring delight in creation is a miraculous gift of God.

00:00:55.560 | There is much non-God-honoring delight in creation that's not a miraculous gift of God's

00:01:03.920 | grace.

00:01:05.760 | But if any of us delights in creation at all with a heart for God that sees Him as the

00:01:14.680 | maker and sees the gift as a taste of the giver, that delight is a gift of grace.

00:01:24.360 | And none of us came up with it from our fallen selves.

00:01:30.640 | So that's my short answer.

00:01:32.280 | Yes.

00:01:33.400 | But to the question, what does Ecclesiastes 519 and 6-2 mean, we got to read them.

00:01:39.180 | So let me read them and then just make a brief comment.

00:01:41.400 | So here's 519.

00:01:43.120 | Everyone to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them and to

00:01:49.640 | accept His lot and rejoice in His toil, this is a gift of God.

00:01:55.200 | So yes, the gift of possessions and the power to enjoy them is a gift of God.

00:02:01.760 | Now here's 6-1 and 2.

00:02:05.160 | There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, and it lies heavy on mankind.

00:02:12.640 | A man to whom God gives wealth, possessions, honor, so that he lacks nothing of all that

00:02:18.400 | he desires, yet God does not give him the power to enjoy them, but a stranger enjoys

00:02:28.360 | them.

00:02:29.360 | This is vanity and a grievous evil, or a sore affliction, be another translation.

00:02:36.720 | Now just a word about Ecclesiastes.

00:02:38.660 | Almost everyone agrees, however you interpret this book, almost everyone agrees that one

00:02:43.540 | way or the other, the book of Ecclesiastes is meant to expose the emptiness and futility

00:02:52.260 | and frustration and final misery of life without God, or as he calls it, life under the sun.

00:03:03.240 | But the writer has a profound view of God's sovereignty and a profound view of God's total

00:03:10.520 | involvement in creation, and that we will all give an account someday so that the last

00:03:17.440 | verses of the book are, "The end of the matter, all has been heard.

00:03:24.000 | Fear God, keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.

00:03:28.640 | For God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil."

00:03:34.060 | So the person who asked this question notices rightly that two things are owing to God.

00:03:42.420 | One, the measure of wealth that anyone has in all his possessions.

00:03:46.940 | Yes, the providence of God governs that.

00:03:49.620 | And two, the power to enjoy it.

00:03:54.500 | The situation in verse 19, God has given wealth and the power to enjoy them.

00:03:59.900 | The situation in verse two of chapter six, God has given wealth and no power to enjoy

00:04:06.380 | it.

00:04:07.380 | A stranger enjoys it.

00:04:08.940 | So he's asking, "What does this mean?"

00:04:12.020 | What this means is that in God's providence, you can miss out on pleasure in more ways

00:04:20.000 | than one.

00:04:21.460 | You can be deprived of material things that you want, or you can get them and be deprived

00:04:31.580 | of the power to enjoy them because they're snatched away.

00:04:36.140 | I read the other day, I think this is a perfect illustration of what he's talking about.

00:04:40.500 | I read the other day of a man and his wife who were building a dream home.

00:04:45.740 | They dreamed about it, they planned it, they had designed it.

00:04:48.540 | They moved into a trailer beside it to watch it go up.

00:04:52.300 | And just when it was finished and they were about to move in, she died of a heart attack.

00:04:58.780 | That's Ecclesiastes.

00:05:00.180 | And his purpose in pointing out these miseries, the grievous evils of these sore afflictions,

00:05:07.260 | as he calls them, is not to make us godless or cynical or hopeless.

00:05:12.540 | His point is to make us despair that meaning and joy can finally be found in this world

00:05:23.700 | under the sun.

00:05:25.660 | That is, as naturalists, as godless.

00:05:32.100 | One man gets rich and gets the ability to enjoy his riches.

00:05:36.060 | Another man gets rich and loses his ability to enjoy it.

00:05:40.900 | And the lesson for both of them is, don't set your heart on riches.

00:05:45.220 | And so maybe the last thing I should do is read Paul, because Paul just writes like he's

00:05:50.100 | read this, right?

00:05:51.100 | In 1 Timothy 6, 17, he says, "As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be

00:05:58.580 | haughty, not to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides

00:06:07.580 | us with everything to enjoy.

00:06:09.160 | They are to do good and to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share,

00:06:17.540 | treasuring up for themselves a good foundation for the future so that they may take hold

00:06:24.780 | of that which is truly life."

00:06:27.780 | In other words, life with God in the kingdom, not finally life here under the sun.

00:06:34.300 | I think the writer of Ecclesiastes would say, "Amen."

00:06:39.560 | Indeed, amen.

00:06:41.240 | Thank you, Pastor John.

00:06:42.240 | And the weekend is upon us, and one must never head into the weekend without a great book

00:06:46.860 | in hand to enjoy.

00:06:47.860 | And if you haven't, perhaps you can use this weekend to check out Pastor John's new book

00:06:52.240 | titled "Seeing Beauty and Saying Beautifully, the Power of Poetic Effort in the Work of

00:06:57.200 | George Herbert, George Whitfield, and C.S. Lewis."

00:07:00.540 | You can download the entire book right now free of charge from our website, DesiringGod.com.

00:07:04.280 | Go there, click on the "Books" tab at the top of the page, and look for the title, "Seeing

00:07:09.240 | Beauty and Saying Beautifully."

00:07:11.360 | We return Monday with Pastor John again.

00:07:13.360 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:07:14.560 | Have a wonderful weekend.

00:07:15.640 | [END]

00:07:16.120 | 1.

00:07:17.120 | See Beauty and Saying Beautifully, the Power of Poetic Effort in the Work of George Herbert,

00:07:18.120 | George Whitfield, and C.S. Lewis.

00:07:19.120 | See Beauty and Saying Beautifully, the Power of Poetic Effort in the Work of George Herbert,

00:07:20.120 | George Whitfield, and C.S. Lewis.

00:07:21.120 | See Beauty and Saying Beautifully, the Power of Poetic Effort in the Work of George Herbert,

00:07:22.120 | George Whitfield, and C.S. Lewis.

00:07:23.120 | See Beauty and Saying Beautifully, the Power of Poetic Effort in the Work of George Herbert,

00:07:24.120 | George Whitfield, and C.S. Lewis.

When Enjoying Money and Possessions Is a Work of Grace

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