The Gift of the Can Opener Text: Ecclesiastes 8:14-15
Introduction: Two Ways to Go Mad
There are two ways a man can go mad in this world. The first is to become a nihilist, to look at the apparent chaos and injustice of life under the sun and conclude that it is all a meaningless, cosmic joke. The second way to go mad is to become a utopian, to believe that you, with your five-year plans and your political machinations, can iron out all the wrinkles and straighten all the crooked lines that God has made.
The Preacher in Ecclesiastes confronts us with the raw data that produces both kinds of madness. He doesn't sugarcoat it. He forces us to look at the maddening reality of a fallen world, a world where the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer. He holds up a mirror to the vanity, the vapor, the hebel, of it all. And just when the nihilist is about to say, "See? I told you so," and just when the utopian is about to say, "This is precisely the problem I intend to fix," the Preacher pivots. He does not offer a detailed explanation for every injustice, nor does he hand us a blueprint for building heaven on earth. Instead, he commands us to have a party.
This is profoundly offensive to both the despairing and the proud. The despairing man says, "How can you feast when the world is on fire?" The proud man says, "How can you feast when there is so much work to be done?" But the man of faith understands. The man of faith knows that the world belongs to God, that the injustices are temporary, and that the feast is an act of war. It is an act of defiance against the gray, grim meaninglessness of the secularist. It is an act of humble submission against the arrogant presumption of the statist. To eat your bread with joy is to confess that God is God, and you are not. And in this world, that is the beginning of all sanity.
The Preacher is not telling us to ignore the problem. He is telling us how to live in the middle of it. He is teaching us that because God is sovereign over the vanity, we are free to enjoy the gifts He gives within it. Only the Christian can truly enjoy the vanity, because only the Christian knows the one who is in charge of it all.
The Text
There is vanity which is done on the earth, that is, there are righteous men to whom it happens according to the works of the wicked. On the other hand, there are wicked men to whom it happens according to the works of the righteous. I say that this too is vanity.
So I laud gladness, for there is nothing good for a man under the sun except to eat and to drink and to be merry, and this will join with him in his labor throughout the days of his life which God has given him under the sun.
(Ecclesiastes 8:14-15 LSB)
The Staggering Contradiction (v. 14)
The Preacher begins by stating the problem in the starkest terms imaginable.
"There is vanity which is done on the earth, that is, there are righteous men to whom it happens according to the works of the wicked. On the other hand, there are wicked men to whom it happens according to the works of the righteous. I say that this too is vanity." (Ecclesiastes 8:14)
This is the problem of evil in a nutshell. This is the verse that keeps unbelievers up at night, crafting their arguments against God. This is the experience that tempts believers to doubt. The righteous man, who fears God and keeps His commandments, gets what the wicked man deserves: ruin, sickness, poverty, and grief. The wicked man, who blasphemes God and grinds the faces of the poor, gets what the righteous man is promised: prosperity, health, long life, and ease.
The Preacher does not flinch. He calls this what it is: vanity. Hebel. A puff of smoke. A chasing after the wind. It is an enigma, a frustrating contradiction that you cannot resolve by your own logic. If you try to build a system of meaning based solely on what you can see "under the sun," this verse will wreck you. It will lead you to conclude that either God is not good, or He is not in control, or He does not exist. The entire book of Job is an extended meditation on this very problem.
And notice, the Preacher says this is "done on the earth." This is observable reality. This is not some rare, freak occurrence. This is the ordinary course of life in a fallen world. We all see it. We see the godly widow lose her house while the corrupt politician builds a new one. We see the honest businessman go bankrupt while the cheat thrives. If your theology has no category for this, then your theology is a brittle thing, and the first encounter with real life will shatter it.
This vanity is a severe mercy from God. It is designed to frustrate our attempts to find ultimate meaning and justice in this life. It is meant to drive us out of ourselves and our own understanding. It forces us to either despair or to look up. It is God's way of reminding us that the whole story has not yet been told. The books are not yet closed. The final judgment has not yet fallen. This world is not the final accounting. To think that it is, is to chase the wind.
The Commendation of Joy (v. 15)
Now, what is the logical conclusion to this maddening state of affairs? For the atheist, it is "eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die." It is a hedonism born of despair. But for the Preacher, the conclusion is startlingly similar in form, but entirely different in substance.
"So I laud gladness, for there is nothing good for a man under the sun except to eat and to drink and to be merry, and this will join with him in his labor throughout the days of his life which God has given him under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 8:15)
The word "so" is crucial. It is a direct response to the vanity described in the previous verse. Because things are so topsy-turvy, because you cannot make ultimate sense of it all, therefore, you should praise gladness. You should gratefully receive the simple, creaturely joys that God provides. This is not a retreat from reality; it is the only sane way to engage with it.
This is one of the great refrains of Ecclesiastes. We see it in chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 5, and here again. This is not the advice of a man who has given up. This is the conclusion of a man who has seen everything and has learned to trust God in the midst of it. The joy he commends is not a shallow escapism. It is a rugged, battle-hardened joy. It is the joy of a soldier who can eat his rations with gusto, even in the trenches, because he trusts his commanding officer.
Notice the elements: eating, drinking, and being merry. These are the basic, fundamental gifts of life. God did not have to make food taste good. He did not have to give wine the ability to gladden the heart of man. He did these things because He is a good and generous Creator. To refuse these gifts, or to partake of them with a sour, complaining spirit, is to insult the Giver. It is to act as though you know better than God how the world ought to be run.
And this gladness is to "join with him in his labor." This is not a call to idleness. This is a call to joyful work. Your labor itself is a gift from God, even though it is toilsome. The ability to work, to create, to build, and then to sit down to a meal with a glass of wine and a cheerful heart at the end of the day, this is your portion. This is your inheritance from God in this life. It is not everything, but it is something, and it is a good something.
The Gift of God
The key to understanding all of this is realizing that the ability to enjoy these things is itself a gift from God. The world is full of miserable rich people. They have thousands of cans of peaches, but no can opener. They have the finest foods, but no appetite. They have endless amusements, but no joy. Why? Because they have not received the gift of enjoyment from God.
The Preacher says these days of life are those "which God has given him under the sun." Your very life, your work, your food, your drink, and your ability to be merry in them, are all direct gifts from a sovereign God. The unbeliever cannot truly be merry. He can be distracted, he can be amused, he can be intoxicated, but he cannot have deep, settled gladness, because he knows, deep down, that his world is a meaningless accident and the grave is the end of the story. His laughter is the whistling of a man walking past a graveyard.
But the believer's joy is different. It is profound because it is rooted in the character of God. We can enjoy the here and now precisely because we know it is not the end. We can savor the appetizer because we know the feast is coming. We can laugh in the face of vanity because we know that God has "made every thing beautiful in his time" (Eccl. 3:11).
The Gospel Under the Sun
How can we, who are sinners, who are part of the problem, truly enjoy anything without guilt? How can we feast when we know we deserve famine? The answer is found in the repeated phrase from the Preacher, "for God has already approved what you do" (Eccl. 9:7).
This is the gospel in Ecclesiastes. For those who are in Christ, our works, our eating, our drinking, our labor, our very lives are accepted by God. Not because they are perfect in themselves, they are not. But because we are united by faith to the only truly righteous man, Jesus Christ. He is the righteous one to whom it happened according to the works of the wicked. He took the ultimate curse, the ultimate injustice, on the cross. He who knew no sin was made to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.
Because He drank the cup of God's wrath, we are free to drink our cup of wine with a merry heart. Because He is the bread of life broken for us, we are free to eat our bread with joy. Our acceptance is not based on our performance. It is based on His. Therefore, we are liberated from the mad task of trying to justify ourselves. We are free from the need to make sense of every providence. We are free to simply receive the gifts of our Father.
So when you see the wicked prosper, do not envy him. He is licking the label on the can of peaches. He has the form of blessing without the substance. When you, as a righteous man, suffer, do not despair. Your Father is sovereign, and He is working all things for your good. Your light and momentary affliction is preparing for you an eternal weight of glory.
Therefore, go. Go to your work. Go to your table. Pour a glass of wine. Thank God for it. Thank Him for your food, for your family, for your labor, however toilsome. Praise gladness. This is not burying your head in the sand. This is an act of robust faith. It is how you fight. It is how you trust. It is how you live as a sane man in a mad world, all to the glory of God.