Sermon for Pentecost 15, September 21, 2025
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom. All who do his precepts have good understanding. Amen.
Ecclesiastes 5:10-20 10Anyone who loves money is never satisfied with money, and anyone who loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. This too is vanishing vapor. 11When goods increase, so do those who eat them. What profit, then, does the owner get, except to see these things with his eyes? 12The worker’s sleep is sweet, whether he eats little or much, but a rich person’s abundant possessions allow him no sleep. 13I have seen a sickening evil under the sun—wealth hoarded by its owner to his own harm, 14or wealth that is lost in a bad investment. Or a man fathers a son, but he has nothing left in his hand to give him. 15As he came out from his mother’s womb, so he will go again, naked as he came. From his hard work he can pick up nothing that he can carry away in his hand. 16This too is a sickening evil: Just as he came, so he will go. So what does he gain, he who works for the wind? 17Besides this, during all his days he eats in darkness, with great frustration, sickness, and anger. 18So then, here is what I have seen to be good: It is beautiful to eat, to drink, and to look for good in all a person’s hard work which he has done under the sun, during the few days of his life that God has given him, for that is his reward. 19Likewise, for everyone to whom God has given wealth and riches, if God has also given him ability to eat from it, to enjoy his reward, and to rejoice in the results of his hard work—this is a gift of God, 20for the man seldom reflects on the days of his life, since God keeps him busy with the joy in his heart. (EHV)
Trust God for contentment with His gifts.
Dear fellow redeemed,
How much is enough? Solomon’s words for us this morning encourage us to ponder how we value the things and riches of this world. In our times, many people fret over the vast riches of the billionaires. Yet, we must conclude that much of the fretting is really little more than covetousness. But, going back to Solomon’s point, he wrote this advice for his readers to spare them from the idolatry of wealth. The wisest man ever to live writes here to encourage the people God calls into His kingdom to Trust God for contentment with His gifts.
Solomon had greater wealth at his disposal than likely any other person ever. As a young man, Solomon inherited his kingdom from his father, King David. David had left him a Kingdom of Israel at the height of its power with great wealth already in hand. Then, as Solomon became known for the great wisdom God had given him, all the surrounding kingdoms submitted to his authority as they sought his wisdom and protection. They brought immense tribute into the kingdom of Israel, so much so that it is recorded in 1 Kings that because gold was so plentiful, silver was considered of little value, likely not worth more than gravel for the streets. (1 Kings 10:21)
Solomon also gained peace with the surrounding kingdoms through the foolishness of multiple, forbidden marriages. He united with seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines in an attempt at maintaining peace with nations, cities, and peoples who had long opposed Israel. Consequently, to the eyes of the world, Solomon seemed to have everything any man could ever desire: power, peace, riches, finery like no other, and all the beautiful women he might ever desire. However, all those illicit relationships took Solomon further away from the Lord and eventually led to the destruction of his kingdom.
Most scholars speculate that Solomon wrote this book as an old man looking back at his life. The book seems to be the musings of someone mourning the nearing of the end of his life, not because he would no longer have possession of all that stuff, but he had come to realize how little value it actually contained. Solomon had possessed goods and riches far beyond what he could ever use, but in the grave, he would have no more than the poorest pauper. That really is his warning.
We might look at our lives and see the vicious circle we often find ourselves in. The small farmer struggles to make a living, so he adds land in the hope of making more money. Yet, that brings the need for bigger machinery which often leads to the need for more land to pay for the machinery. Before too long, he also finds that he needs more help, which brings more cost to the operation.
The same thing happens with yields and high prices. When yields are good, more bins are needed. When prices are high, what can we expect? Land costs rise. The costs of inputs soon escalate as suppliers take a greater share of the pie. Taxes increase and as we are seeing currently, pretty soon, times are just as hard or harder than when my grandfather farmed a mere hundred acres or so with his little tractor and tiny equipment.
Does that mean the people of my grandparents’ day were happier? I’m not convinced, because life in this world always seems this way no matter what business, occupation, or people involved. No matter what we treasure, we all want just a little more. Low level workers plead for higher wages. When their wages do go up, so do the prices of the goods they need to buy to live. When lower-level workers get a raise, those above them on the pay scale expect that they too should receive a comparable increase, and therefore, the price of goods rise, sometimes exponentially. Our economies are structured with the expectation of a certain amount of inflation. Too much increase and discontent rises, but without some inflation people feel underpaid. How is anyone to balance such things wisely?
This is the dilemma Solomon addresses. He looked at life and recognized that people generally are chasing a myth. No one can have everything he wants in this world. And, when we do have much, we are immediately beset by those who want to have a part of it. So, we all end up like a hamster running in a wheel, trying to get ahead, but really never going anywhere.
Sure, we can do things that look like we are gaining on others. The wealthy pile up savings, but then they have to invest that money or it doesn’t grow, and we all want our money to grow. The poor person looks at the wealthy and says he should pay more, but at the end of the day, we all go into the grave empty-handed. Solomon lamented, “This too is a sickening evil: Just as he came, so he will go.” Elsewhere, Solomon lamented that even a wise man must leave his vast wealth to someone who might squander it foolishly.
On the other hand, when faced with the loss of all he possessed, Job declared, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will return. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. May the name of the Lord be blessed.” (Job 1:21) In his own way, Solomon is teaching us to live with that same faith, that in all things we Trust God for contentment with His gifts.
So what does this all mean for you and me. First, we all must admit, in other words confess, the guilt of our dissatisfaction with something in this life, whether that be our pay, our savings account, the work we have to do, our health, our spouse, or children, our neighbors, or government, or anything else. Whenever we are not content with what God has given us, we are sinning against the very God who provides everything we need for this life, and for the next. Martin Luther explained very well how we should live each day when he wrote:
I believe that God has made me and all creatures; that He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and still preserves them; that He richly and daily provides me with food and clothing, home and family, property and goods, and all that I need to support this body and life; that He protects me from all danger, guards and keeps me from all evil; and all this purely out of fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in me; for all which I am duty bound to thank and praise, to serve and obey Him. This is most certainly true. (Explanation of the 1st Article)
Now, to be fair, Solomon isn’t telling us, in this text, not to save money for the future. He isn’t telling us to be bad businessmen. He certainly isn’t telling us not to work or do a good job. Instead, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Solomon is teaching us to enjoy God’s blessings while He gives them, to be faithful stewards of the blessings God gives, to be content with whatever God gives us, while at the same time not putting our hopes and dreams for the future in the stuff of this life, but also to recognize that being satisfied with what is sent our way is also a gift of God granted to us by faith. No one knows what the future holds in the short term, but in the long range, we all will leave this life with no material goods. What we will have, or it is God’s desire that we have, is the faith in Jesus that will give us everlasting life in the glories of heaven as we Trust God for contentment with His gifts.
As I said, we all must confess our sins and shortcomings in this area. Yet, confession alone would not be sufficient to save us. That’s why God’s Son, Jesus, entered this world to be our contentment and why the Holy Spirit works faith in our hearts to know Jesus and believe in His love for us. You see, Jesus didn’t sit silently by in our discontentment. Instead, the Prince of Heaven, owner and authority of all that is, left His throne at His Father’s side to be born, not in a palace but in a lowly manger. To live as a Man, not with riches and the finer things in life, but to walk this earth as a pauper with no place to call His own, and not even a bed of His own in which to lay His head to rest.
Though the Man Jesus possessed no earthly goods, thousands came to Him for healing, restoration, and even ate out of His hand a bountiful feast from five loaves of bread and three small fish. Yet, all His time on earth, Jesus lived for you and me without complaint about His neighbors, or the authorities that demanded taxes, without worry about where He might next find a meal even while fasting forty days and nights in the wilderness. Because He was living for us, so that we can be counted righteous and holy before God, Jesus lived perfectly content with the job His Father in heaven gave Him, which was to live in poverty for us, to suffer the humiliation of false accusations in a mock trial, and to take the beatings, abuse, and death that our idolatrous discontentment had earned.
Late in his life as St Paul sat in a prison cell waiting to be executed for preaching the Good News about Jesus, he wrote, “I have learned to be content in any circumstances in which I find myself.” (Philippians 4:11) Paul had experienced the highs and lows of life in this world, but what changed his outlook was the faith the Holy Spirit had worked in him so that he believed God is taking care of everything for us and whatever we might have to face or endure or suffer, right along with the good things and joys that truly do come to us in this life—all are gifts from God, given to us to further His plan for us and our neighbors. Just as St. James wrote in his epistle: “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” (James. 1:17 NIVO)
Furthermore, with the Holy Spirit working the faith in us to believe in Jesus as our Savior, we can have confidence in this, that Jesus will never abandon us to the troubles and trials the devil brings our way, because it is Jesus’ plan to take us home to be with Him eternally in heaven. There, we will never again have any suffering, pain, despair, or dissatisfaction, because “God himself will be with them, and he will be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain, because the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:3-4)
Dear friends, this is our sure and certain hope, that our God will provide all things for us exactly as He deems we need. Sometimes, that will include the sorrows and pains of this world. Always, it includes His love and the ability to see His goodness in every part of our lives, so that we wholeheartedly believe Solomon’s God-given observation: “So then, here is what I have seen to be good: It is beautiful to eat, to drink, and to look for good in all a person’s hard work which he has done under the sun, during the few days of his life that God has given him, for that is his reward.” Trust God for contentment with His gifts. Amen.
May the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit, both soul and body, be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it. Amen.