The Can Opener and the Peaches Text: Ecclesiastes 9:7-9
Introduction: The Gift of Enjoying the Gift
The book of Ecclesiastes is a profound puzzle to the modern mind. Our age is torn between two equally bankrupt philosophies. On one side, you have the frantic hedonist, chasing pleasure as though it were a butterfly, desperately trying to net it before it flutters away. His motto is, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." On the other side, you have the grim stoic or the despairing nihilist, who sees the relentless cycles of life, the sheer futility of it all, and concludes that the only dignified response is a kind of gray, joyless resignation. Both see the vanity, the hebel, the vapor of life under the sun. But one tries to inhale the smoke, and the other simply lets it sting his eyes.
The Preacher, Solomon, confronts both of these dead ends. He has walked further down the road of pleasure than any man in history and found it to be a cul-de-sac. He has stared longer into the abyss of cosmic futility than any nihilist and has not blinked. And his conclusion is neither hedonism nor despair. His conclusion is joy. But it is a particular kind of joy, a profound joy, a joy that can only be received as a gift. It is not a joy that man can generate from within himself by pursuing pleasure or by gritting his teeth against the pain.
The world believes that having the ingredients for happiness is the same thing as happiness. A fat bank account, a beautiful spouse, a cellar full of fine wine, this is what the world pursues. But Solomon tells us that God frequently gives men all these external blessings without giving them the spiritual taste buds to enjoy them. This is a sore affliction. It is like giving a man a thousand cans of delicious peaches but no can opener. He can stack them, polish them, admire the labels, but he cannot taste them. Without Christ, the most a man can do is lick the label, trying to get some flavor from the glue. The great gift of God is not just the can of peaches; it is the can opener. And that can opener is faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ.
This passage before us is one of the clearest expressions of this principle in all of Scripture. It is a command to be joyful, but it is a command predicated on a glorious, liberating fact: God has already acted on our behalf. We are not to be joyful in order to be accepted; we are to be joyful because we have already been accepted.
The Text
Go then, eat your bread in gladness and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has already accepted your works. Let your clothes be white all the time, and let not oil be lacking on your head. See life with the woman whom you love all the days of your vain life, which He has given to you under the sun, all the days of your vanity; for this is your portion in life and in your labor in which you have labored under the sun.
(Ecclesiastes 9:7-9 LSB)
The Foundation of All Joy (v. 7)
The Preacher begins with a command that sounds, on the surface, like simple carpe diem. But it is anchored in something far deeper.
"Go then, eat your bread in gladness and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has already accepted your works." (Ecclesiastes 9:7)
The command is to engage in the most basic, creaturely activities, eating and drinking, with gladness. This is a direct assault on all forms of Gnosticism and false piety that would have us believe spirituality consists in denying the goodness of the material world. God made bread to be eaten and wine to gladden the heart of man (Psalm 104:15). To refuse these gifts with a sour face is not holiness; it is ingratitude. It is to look the Giver in the face and tell Him His gifts are not good enough.
But notice the engine that drives this command. It is the little word "for." This is the foundation upon which all true Christian joy is built. Why can you eat with gladness? Why can you drink with a merry heart? "For God has already accepted your works." This is the gospel in Ecclesiastes. This is justification by faith stated from the perspective of the Old Testament saint.
How could God accept the works of sinful men? He cannot, not in themselves. Our best works are shot through with sin, tainted by pride, and fall desperately short of His perfect standard. If our acceptance were based on our performance, we would never have a single moment of true gladness. Every meal would be choked with anxiety. Every cup would taste of fear. But the Preacher is not telling us to work harder so that God might, one day, accept our works. He says the verdict is already in. The acceptance is a past-tense, completed reality.
This can only be true because God looks upon the works of His people through the lens of the promised Messiah. He accepts our faltering, stumbling works because He has already accepted the perfect, finished work of Jesus Christ on our behalf. When God looks at a believer, He does not see a record of failure; He sees the perfect righteousness of His Son imputed to our account. Therefore, your works, offered in faith, are "accepted in the Beloved" (Eph. 1:6). This is the secret of Christian contentment. The pressure is off. The verdict is in. The Father is pleased. Now, go eat your lunch.
The Garments of Gladness (v. 8)
The Preacher continues with two powerful symbols of a life lived out of this acceptance.
"Let your clothes be white all the time, and let not oil be lacking on your head." (Ecclesiastes 9:8 LSB)
In the ancient world, white garments were festive garments. They were symbols of purity, celebration, and joy. To be clothed in white was to be ready for a wedding, not a funeral. The command here is to live in a perpetual state of readiness for celebration. This does not mean a believer is never sorrowful. We are to weep with those who weep. But it means that underneath all the appropriate sorrows of this life, there is a bedrock of indestructible joy. Our fundamental orientation toward the world is one of festivity, because we know the King is preparing a feast.
Likewise, oil on the head was a sign of gladness, health, and honor. It was the opposite of mourning, when one would put ashes on the head. To let oil be lacking was to present a grim, joyless face to the world. Our Lord rebuked the Pharisees for making a show of their fasting with gloomy faces. He told His disciples, "when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face" (Matthew 6:17). The Christian life is to be characterized by a supernatural buoyancy. We are to be a people whose demeanor advertises the goodness of our God.
These are not commands to put on a fake smile. This is not a call for superficial cheerfulness. This is a call to live out the reality of our justification. Because our sins are forgiven, our true garments are the white robes of Christ's righteousness (Rev. 7:14). Because we have been united to Christ, we have received the anointing of the Holy Spirit, the "oil of gladness" (Heb. 1:9). Our outward life of joy is to be a true reflection of the inward reality of our salvation.
Embracing the Beautiful Vanity (v. 9)
Finally, the Preacher brings this principle into the most intimate of human relationships: marriage.
"See life with the woman whom you love all the days of your vain life, which He has given to you under the sun, all the days of your vanity; for this is your portion in life and in your labor in which you have labored under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 9:9 LSB)
Here we see the paradox of Christian existence in full color. We are to enjoy life, specifically life with our spouse, in the midst of, and as part of, our "vain life." The word is hebel, vapor, breath, transience. He repeats it twice: "all the days of your vain life," "all the days of your vanity." He wants us to get it. Life under the sun is fleeting. It is a puff of smoke. Your marriage, your career, your accomplishments, they are all a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.
And what is our response to this? Despair? No. We are to see that this vain life is a gift. "Which He has given to you." And your wife, this covenant companion, is your "portion" in the midst of it. This is God's gracious provision for our pilgrimage. In a world of hebel, God gives us tangible, solid joys. He gives us the good gift of marriage, a covenantal fortress in a chaotic world. This is where we are to live out the gladness and festivity of the previous verses.
The world does not know what to do with this. The unbeliever looks at the vanity of life and concludes that marriage, too, is just a temporary contract for mutual benefit, to be dissolved when it is no longer convenient. But the believer sees marriage as a picture of a greater reality, the covenant between Christ and His Church. It is a profound mystery. And so, loving your wife, enjoying life with her, is not an escape from reality; it is a deep engagement with it. It is a defiant act of joy in a world shot through with sorrow. It is your portion, your God-assigned slice of happiness in this beautiful, fleeting world.
Conclusion: Joy is a Duty
This passage turns our modern sensibilities on their head. We think of joy as an emotion to be pursued, a feeling to be captured. The Bible presents joy as a duty to be performed. And it is a duty that flows directly from the gospel. Because God has accepted you in Christ, because your sins are washed away, because you are clothed in His righteousness, it is an offense against grace to walk around with a perpetually funereal face.
Your gladness is a weapon. Your merry heart is a declaration of war against the gray despair of the devil's kingdom. When you sit down with your wife, and you eat your bread and drink your wine with a joyful heart, you are not just having dinner. You are preaching a sermon. You are declaring that your God is good, that His gifts are good, and that the forgiveness He offers in His Son is the foundation for enjoying all of it, right here, right now, under the sun.
The world only has cans of peaches. They can't get into them, and so they grow bitter and cynical. But God, in His infinite mercy, has given us not only the peaches, but the can opener of the gospel. The command of the Preacher, therefore, is simple. Stop staring at the can. Open it, and give thanks.