Pastor John, there's an interesting pair of passages in the book of Ecclesiastes, specifically Ecclesiastes 519 and 6-2. In those passages, we're told that God is not only the source of material possessions, but He's also the source of the power to enjoy those material possessions if He gives it. So what do you think this means?

How much of delight in creation is a gift from God? Here's the short answer. Yes, we should pray for the ability to rightly enjoy what God has given us to enjoy. And all of truly God-honoring delight in creation is a miraculous gift of God. There is much non-God-honoring delight in creation that's not a miraculous gift of God's grace.

But if any of us delights in creation at all with a heart for God that sees Him as the maker and sees the gift as a taste of the giver, that delight is a gift of grace. And none of us came up with it from our fallen selves. So that's my short answer.

Yes. But to the question, what does Ecclesiastes 519 and 6-2 mean, we got to read them. So let me read them and then just make a brief comment. So here's 519. Everyone 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 a gift of God.

So yes, the gift of possessions and the power to enjoy them is a gift of God. Now here's 6-1 and 2. 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, honor, so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires, yet God does not give him the power to enjoy them, but a stranger enjoys them.

This is vanity and a grievous evil, or a sore affliction, be another translation. Now just a word about Ecclesiastes. Almost everyone agrees, however you interpret this book, almost everyone agrees that one way or the other, the book of Ecclesiastes is meant to expose the emptiness and futility and frustration and final misery of life without God, or as he calls it, life under the sun.

But the writer has a profound view of God's sovereignty and a profound view of God's total involvement in creation, and that we will all give an account someday so that the last verses of the book are, "The end of the matter, all has been heard. Fear God, keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.

For God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil." So the person who asked this question notices rightly that two things are owing to God. One, the measure of wealth that anyone has in all his possessions. Yes, the providence of God governs that.

And two, the power to enjoy it. The situation in verse 19, God has given wealth and the power to enjoy them. The situation in verse two of chapter six, God has given wealth and no power to enjoy it. A stranger enjoys it. So he's asking, "What does this mean?" What this means is that in God's providence, you can miss out on pleasure in more ways than one.

You can be deprived of material things that you want, or you can get them and be deprived of the power to enjoy them because they're snatched away. I read the other day, I think this is a perfect illustration of what he's talking about. I read the other day of a man and his wife who were building a dream home.

They dreamed about it, they planned it, they had designed it. They moved into a trailer beside it to watch it go up. And just when it was finished and they were about to move in, she died of a heart attack. That's Ecclesiastes. And his purpose in pointing out these miseries, the grievous evils of these sore afflictions, as he calls them, is not to make us godless or cynical or hopeless.

His point is to make us despair that meaning and joy can finally be found in this world under the sun. That is, as naturalists, as godless. One man gets rich and gets the ability to enjoy his riches. Another man gets rich and loses his ability to enjoy it. And the lesson for both of them is, don't set your heart on riches.

And so maybe the last thing I should do is read Paul, because Paul just writes like he's read this, right? In 1 Timothy 6, 17, he says, "As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, not to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy.

They are to do good and to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, treasuring up for themselves a good foundation for the future so that they may take hold of that which is truly life." In other words, life with God in the kingdom, not finally life here under the sun.

I think the writer of Ecclesiastes would say, "Amen." Indeed, amen. Thank you, Pastor John. And the weekend is upon us, and one must never head into the weekend without a great book in hand to enjoy. And if you haven't, perhaps you can use this weekend to check out Pastor John's new book titled "Seeing Beauty and Saying Beautifully, the Power of Poetic Effort in the Work of George Herbert, George Whitfield, and C.S.

Lewis." You can download the entire book right now free of charge from our website, DesiringGod.com. Go there, click on the "Books" tab at the top of the page, and look for the title, "Seeing Beauty and Saying Beautifully." We return Monday with Pastor John again. I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

Have a wonderful weekend. 1. See Beauty and Saying Beautifully, the Power of Poetic Effort in the Work of George Herbert, George Whitfield, and C.S. Lewis. See Beauty and Saying Beautifully, the Power of Poetic Effort in the Work of George Herbert, George Whitfield, and C.S. Lewis. See Beauty and Saying Beautifully, the Power of Poetic Effort in the Work of George Herbert, George Whitfield, and C.S.

Lewis. See Beauty and Saying Beautifully, the Power of Poetic Effort in the Work of George Herbert, George Whitfield, and C.S. Lewis.