Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Am I Allowed to Enjoy My Life? | The Writings | Ecclesiastes 9

Episode Date: August 5, 2024

Can a serious Christian enjoy their life? With all of the suffering in the world, should I feel guilty for having a nice meal or going on vacation? Does being somber and serious make you more spiritual? In today's episode, Keith looks at Ecclesiastes 9, reminding us that God is the ultimate Giver who commands us to enjoy His gifts. Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Ecclesiastes 9

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. All I want to do in our time together today is to try to answer one question. Can a serious Christian enjoy their life in this world? I don't mean a half-hearted Christian. I don't mean the kind of Christian that's got one foot in God's kingdom and one foot in the world. I mean a Christian that loves Jesus, a gospel-believing, Bible-reading Christian.

Can they enjoy their life in this sinful world? that is full of idols and temptations and even opposition to their faith. Sometimes when you listen to Jesus or read about lives of people in the Bible, or sometimes when you listen to sermons, you get the unmistakable impression that if you're really living for Jesus, you might not be able to have any fun. If you're really living for Jesus, it's going to be hard, and you're going to be serving poor people and giving all your money away

and reading your Bible and praying and telling people about Jesus all day long. And if you're not doing those things, then maybe you're not really a serious Christian. Maybe you're not even a Christian at all. Unless you feel the weight of the question, you're never going to understand how your non-religious friends feel because a lot of people are afraid

that following Jesus means settling for a lesser life. They're not used to doing what someone tells them to do, even if that person's God. They want to have fun. They want to do their thing. They don't think that getting up early on Sunday to attend services or going to a Bible study or serving in the church

sounds all that enticing. Maybe you think that they should do all those things, but the reality is they don't want to do them. Their anthem is the line in the Billy Joel song, I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, because the sinners are much more fun. Unless you feel the weight of this question, you'll never really understand yourself.

See, I want to enjoy my life. I want to have fun. So can a serious Christian enjoy a good meal, or do I always have to feel a little bit guilty about it? Can I be a serious Christian, enjoy a nice bottle of wine, or a vacation, or build a career, or watch my kids play sports, or watch a football game on TV while eating junk food? We really want the answer to be yes, but we're always wondering if we were really serious about our faith, maybe we'd more like Mother Teresa, and spend all that time serving the poor, reading my Bible, or giving the money that we spent on the nice meal to the church or to missionaries or to build wells across the world? with so much brokenness in the world, with so many people who are hurting, with so many people who don't know Jesus, how can I enjoy my life in this world? As long as we're walking around

with this low level of guilt for wanting to enjoy life, as long as we're unsure about how to deal with the good things in life, our lives aren't going to be very attractive, because guilty people who don't enjoy life aren't very good advertisements for Christianity. It only makes sense that if we want to attract people to Jesus, our lives must be attractive. If the gospel, If the gospel isn't working for you, by all means, don't share it. Well, we're in a series on Ecclesiastes here on 10-minute Bible Talks, and we've seen it's a pretty hard-hitting book that makes us rethink life, rethink what we're living for, rethink what will really make us happy.

And as we've gone through of Ecclesiastes, I think it's reasonable to wonder if it's okay to enjoy your life in this world. In fact, if you haven't ever struggled with that question, then I doubt you've really wrestled with what Ecclesiastes is teaching. and I doubt you've really wrestled with what Jesus taught. Because what Ecclesiastes has told us is that life is meaningless, that it's elusive, that it's short, that it's temporary, that soon you'll die.

But if all that's true, how do I enjoy my life? Let's do a little thought experiment. Maybe you're a football fan, maybe you're a Kansas City Chiefs fan, and you're really excited that Patrick Mahomes has won all these Super Bowls, and you're like, hey, man, wow, this is so exciting. The Chiefs won the Super Bowl again. and your friend looks at you and says, does it really matter if the chiefs won the Super Bowl

given how much suffering is happening in the world? Or maybe you got into the college of your dreams and you share that with your friend and they look at you and say, well, that seems trivial in light of the recent tragedy. Or maybe you got a promotion at work or you have to do some cool stuff on vacation. And you share that with a friend and they say,

don't you know you're going to die soon? Or maybe you remodeled your house and you liked the way it turned out and your friend says, it's all going to burn. It's just like we're caught in the middle. How should we think about enjoying our life? Is that okay? Look, Ecclesiastes says life is hard to figure out.

And you can say the same thing about the book of Ecclesiastes itself. While saying that all of life is elusive and meaningless and a vapor, it also says that we should enjoy our life in this world. Here's Ecclesiastes chapter 9. So I reflected on all this and concluded that the righteous of the, the wise and what they do are in God's hands. But no one knows whether love or hate awaits them. The same destiny ultimately awaits everyone, whether righteous or wicked, good or bad, ceremonially clean or unclean, religious or irreligious. Good people receive the same treatment as sinners and people who make promises to God are treated like people who don't. This is the evil in everything

that happens under the sun. The same destiny overtakes all. The heart of people. people, moreover, are full of evil, and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterward they join the dead. This passage in Ecclesiastes is saying, pay attention, because there's only one thing that is really certain, and that is that death comes for everybody. No matter who you are or what you've done, if we're going to heed the teaching of Ecclesiastes, if we're going to live our life backwards, we need to come to terms with the righteous and the wicked, good people and bad people, the nice and the nasty, the believers, the and the unbeliever, the honest truth-teller and the lying deceiver, they all die. Death takes the good

along with the bad. And where is the justice in that? To some extent, it doesn't make sense to us. If you expect good people to get a fair deal in this world, then you're going to be sorely disappointed. This is not the way the world works. Why should the drug dealer and the mass murderer receive the same as the upright? Under the sun, it doesn't make any sense. Ecclesiastes does not say it doesn't make sense. It just says it doesn't make sense to us. The truth is our life is in God's hands. God comes to us in Jesus and says, trust me with all this. Walk with me, love me, put your hand in my hand. Stop trying to understand everything. Stop trying to control everything. Stop trying to tie up all the loose ends. Stop striving for wealth and health and happiness. But then the

author takes an unexpected turn. In light of your impending death, here's what Ecclesiastes 9 also says, we just pick up where we left off. It says, go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do. Always be clothed in white, and always anoint your head with oil. Enjoy life with your wife whom you love all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun, all your meaningless days, for this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun. See, the first word, word there was go. We're not just told to eat your food with joy, but go. Seize the day. In other words, go set yourself about it. Pursue joy. God takes pleasure and your pleasure. All the good things in

your life are a gift from God, not so that you'll worship them, but so that you will enjoy them and give thanks to him. So can a serious Christian enjoy their life in this world? Well, the book of Ecclesiastes says yes. In fact, it's exactly what it calls us to do. But how does all that makes sense. Well, it makes sense when we remember that God created the world. God made sports and beaches and sex and massages and work and music and film and campfires and sushi and wine and mountains and libraries. And then he stepped back and he says it's all good. A good God made a good world. See, God chose to make a world that is physical. That's delightful, that's beautiful, that's interesting. Why did he do that? Well, he made it for us to enjoy.

Yes, the world and its beauty is a manifestation of God's beauty and God's wisdom and God's power, but it's also a gift for us. God intends for us to enjoy it. But some of you don't believe that. Some of you are suspicious of good things in this world, and you think enjoying them is unspiritual or maybe even sinful. But the book of James says, don't be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters.

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of Heavenly Lights. Yes, it's true that sin entered a good world and messed everything up, but the things that God made are still good. Yes, it's true that we can misuse them, but the good gifts haven't changed. Only we have. You see, there are two ways to ruin our relationship with God who gives us good gifts. The first is to ignore him and focus entirely on his gifts. That's what the Bible calls idolatry. And it happens when we worship the gift instead of the giver. The second way to ruin our relationship with the God who gives good gifts is to ignore the

gift and focus entirely on the giver. What would you think about it, child, who opened every Christmas present, only to toss it aside and say, well, thanks mom and dad, but really all I want is you? Wouldn't the parents throw up their hand and say, look, I'm glad you love us, but you know what? You're impossible to shop for. If the first temptation ignores the God who gives, the second refuses to let him be the God who gives. See, that's rejecting God too. God gave us this physical world, a beautiful world to enjoy. Every good gift is from him. So if we take God's gifts and turn them over in our hands suspiciously looking for the trap, then I'm not really enjoying the gifts the way I ought to be. If you love God, you will enjoy his gifts. See, God uses different tools to make us homesick for heaven,

to make us look forward to being with him. One of those tools are death and sickness and uncertainty, disaster, sorrow, grief. All of those are means that God uses to dislodge us from seeking security here. But God also uses the good gifts he gives us to make us desire heaven. His gifts are meant to make us homesick, to want to be with him precisely because the gifts he's given us are so good that we can't even imagine how good he must be. Worship the giver, not the gift, but enjoy the gifts that the giver has given you.

Amen.