The Answer Under the Sun Text: Ecclesiastes 10:19
Introduction: The Scandal of Earthly Joy
There are certain verses in Scripture that are designed to make the pious squirm. They are stumbling blocks for the Pharisees and appear to be proof texts for the libertine. Our text today is one of those verses. It sounds like it could be the motto of a Wall Street hedge fund, or the tagline for a beer commercial. "A feast is made for laughter, wine makes life merry, and money is the answer for everything."
The modern evangelical, particularly one steeped in the higher-life, quasi-gnostic spirituality that has infected so much of the American church, does not know what to do with a verse like this. His instinct is to spiritualize it, to allegorize it, or to explain it away as the cynical ramblings of a backslidden Solomon whom we are supposed to listen to as a negative example. But this is to fundamentally misunderstand the robust, earthy, creation-affirming wisdom of the entire Bible, and of Ecclesiastes in particular.
The Preacher, Qoheleth, is not a nihilist. He is a realist. He is a God-fearing realist who has been tasked with showing us how to live in this world, the world "under the sun," a world that is shot through with vanity, with futility, with a glorious and maddening cyclical nature. And his answer, repeated over and over, is not to escape the world, but to receive it as a gift from God. The key to life under the sun is to fear God and keep His commandments, and as a direct result of that, to enjoy the simple, creaturely gifts He gives us: your work, your spouse, your bread, your wine. This verse is not the Preacher's moment of cynical despair; it is a piece of hard-headed, practical wisdom for how God's world actually works.
We must understand that the Bible is not a book for ethereal spirits who happen to be temporarily trapped in bodies. It is a book for embodied souls. God made matter and called it good. He made our mouths to taste and our bellies to be full and our hearts to be glad. This verse is a threefold cord of created goodness, and to misunderstand it is to misunderstand the goodness of the Creator Himself.
The Text
Men prepare bread for laughter, and wine makes life glad, and money is the answer to everything.
(Ecclesiastes 10:19 LSB)
A Feast for Laughter
We begin with the first clause:
"Men prepare bread for laughter..." (Ecclesiastes 10:19a)
Notice the purpose statement. A feast, represented here by bread, is not made simply for fuel. We do not eat merely to continue our metabolic processes. That is the logic of the laboratory, not the logic of the family table. God designed feasting for laughter. He designed it for fellowship, for community, for joy. The breaking of bread is a relational act. This is a direct assault on two opposing errors: the error of the glutton and the error of the ascetic.
The glutton eats for himself. His purpose is base satiation. His god is his belly. There is no laughter in true gluttony, only the grim determination of the addict. The feast is not for fellowship; the fellowship is just an obstacle to get around on the way to the food. But the ascetic, the spiritualizing gnostic, is just as bad. He sees the body and its appetites as a distraction, or worse, as inherently sinful. He eats his gray gruel out of grim necessity, despising the very gift God has given him. He is too spiritual for laughter around a dinner table.
The Bible condemns both. It presents a third way: the way of grateful, joyful reception. A feast is a cultural achievement. It takes work, planning, and preparation. And the goal of that work is the cementing of bonds through shared laughter. Think of the great feasts of Scripture: Abraham's feast for the three visitors, the Passover feast, the celebration for the prodigal son. These were moments of high communion, both with God and with men. God commands His people to feast. He is not a cosmic killjoy. He is the author of joy, and one of the primary theaters for that joy is a table laden with good food, surrounded by good company.
Wine for Gladness
The second clause builds on the first, elevating the joy.
"...and wine makes life glad..." (Ecclesiastes 10:19b LSB)
If the first clause made the ascetic uncomfortable, this one sends him running for the door. The Bible is unflinchingly positive about the proper use of wine. It is a gift from God, we are told elsewhere, that "makes glad the heart of man" (Psalm 104:15). Jesus did not turn water into grape juice at Cana; He made the good stuff, and plenty of it. Wine is a symbol of blessing, of abundance, and of joy throughout the Scriptures.
Of course, the Bible is equally unflinching in its condemnation of drunkenness. The abuse of a good gift does not make the gift evil. Food is good, but gluttony is a sin. Sex is good, but fornication is a sin. Speech is good, but slander is a sin. And wine is good, but drunkenness is a sin. The pietistic impulse that led to the disastrous experiment of Prohibition was a well-intentioned but profoundly unbiblical rejection of a created good. It is an attempt to be more spiritual than God, which is never a good idea.
The Preacher here states a simple fact of God's created order. Wine has an effect. It gladdens. It loosens the tongue, it warms the heart, it elevates the spirit. This is by divine design. A feast with bread is for laughter, but the addition of wine is for making life itself glad. It is a foretaste of the gladness of the ultimate feast, the marriage supper of the Lamb, where we will drink it anew with Christ in His kingdom.
Money for Everything
Now we come to the clause that causes the most trouble.
"...and money is the answer to everything." (Ecclesiastes 10:19c LSB)
Is the Preacher, after these affirmations of created goodness, suddenly lapsing into crass materialism? Is he saying that money can buy happiness, solve your spiritual problems, or get you into heaven? Not at all. We must read this with the same earthy realism as the first two clauses. We must read it in context of life "under the sun."
How do you get the bread for the feast? How do you obtain the wine that makes glad? In the ordinary providence of God and the ordinary workings of an economy, you buy them. Money is the mechanism of transaction. It is the universal medium of exchange. In that strictly practical, earthly sense, money "answers" the practical problems of life. If your roof is leaking, a sermon on contentment is good, but you also need to pay a roofer. If your child is hungry, a prayer is essential, but you also need to go to the store and buy groceries. Money is the answer to the practical question, "How will I obtain these things?"
This is not a statement of ultimate reality, but of practical reality. The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil (1 Tim. 6:10), but money itself is simply a tool. It is a tool for dominion, a tool for exercising stewardship, a tool for blessing others, and a tool for facilitating the feasts that are made for laughter. It is a powerful tool, and therefore a dangerous one, but it is a tool nonetheless. To deny the practical utility of money is to be an impractical fool. The Preacher is no fool. He is simply stating how the world God made actually functions. Money answers all things in the horizontal, under-the-sun realm of commerce and provision.
The Gospel Can Opener
So how do we tie this all together? The world believes these things. The unbeliever pursues feasts, wine, and money with a desperate passion. What is the difference for the Christian?
The difference is what I have called the can opener. God often gives the ungodly many blessings. He gives them cans and cans of peaches: wealth, food, drink, worldly success. But He withholds the can opener. He withholds the ability to truly enjoy them. They have the feast, but not the laughter. They have the wine, but not the gladness. They have the money, but it does not truly "answer" the deep ache of their soul. Their pursuit of these things is a chasing after the wind, because they are seeking ultimate satisfaction in penultimate things.
The gift of God, the great gift of Ecclesiastes, is the can opener. And that can opener is justification by faith alone. The Preacher tells us this just one chapter earlier: "Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already accepted your works" (Ecclesiastes 9:7). Why can we have laughter with our bread? Why can our hearts be truly glad with our wine? Why can we use money as a tool without it becoming our master? Because our standing before God is settled. Our works, all of them, have been accepted in the beloved Son. We are not eating and drinking to earn God's favor. We are eating and drinking because we already have it.
The Christian can and should be the most joy-filled person on the planet. He is the only one who has the right to be. He is the only one who can look at the good gifts of creation, bread, wine, and money, and see them not as ends in themselves, but as signposts pointing to the Giver. The feast points to the marriage supper of the Lamb. The wine points to the shed blood of Christ, the source of all true gladness. And the money is a tool to be used for the advancement of a kingdom that cannot be bought.
So yes, a feast is for laughter. Wine is for gladness. Money is the practical answer for things under the sun. But Christ is the ultimate answer for everything, both under the sun and above it. He is the bread of life, the true vine, and His blood is the currency that purchased our redemption. Because He is the answer to everything, we are now free, truly free, to enjoy all these other good things for what they are: gifts from a Father who loves to see His children laugh.