You’re Alive! Act Like It - Ecclesiastes 9:2-10:1 Series

Clothes and Refreshment

8 Let your clothes be white all the time, and never let oil be lacking on your head.

White clothes were hard to keep white in that culture, and so they were reserved mostly for times of festivity. They were party clothes. In our culture this would be like saying, “Put on your tuxedos and evening gowns and dance the night away.” Or for some of you maybe it’s cowboy boots and a giant belt buckle – however you dress up for a party. And if at this point you are picturing the kind of party where people are getting drunk and there is revelry and immorality, you need to perform a factory reset on your understanding of what partying is. God invented partying. Partying is for celebrating and remembering and enjoying God through the enjoyment of His people and His gifts. The world is not interested in that so they invented a perverse counterfeit that ignores God and abuses His gifts. Any partying that leaves you with less delight in God at the end, and less interested in the Scriptures, and less excited about heaven, and less desire to be around the saints is perverted counterfeit partying and should absolutely be avoided at all cost. Godly partying will do nothing but increase your delight in God and His Word and His people.

So put on your party clothes, and put some oil on your head. Oil on the head was for refreshment. That is how they got “freshened up.” It also served the function of perfume or cologne. We do little things to our bodies to make them feel refreshed, and we put on clothes that make us feel good, and as long as those things don’t get out of balance in your priorities, they are approved by God.

Some people think that true religion means you walk around looking like you are about to die. The Pharisees used to do that. They would fast, and while they fasted they would forgo things like putting oil on their head so they looked haggard and disheveled, because they thought that is what really spiritual people look like.

“Look how religious I am – I look like a corpse.”

That’s wrong. Enjoy good food and nice clothes that you can afford. And work especially hard at enjoying people.

Marriage

9 Enjoy life with the wife you love all the days of your fleeting life, which has been given to you under the sun, all your fleeting days. For that is your portion in life and in your struggle under the sun.

So much of the enjoyment of life that God intends for us comes through relationships. Do those relationships cause us pain? Yes, all love relationships cause pain. And the more you love, the sharper the pain. The pain is sharper, but the joy is deeper too.

“But it’s not worth it. I’d rather go without that joy just so I can avoid all the pain.”

Maybe you have weighed it out and you have come to the conclusion that love relationships just are not worth the heartache. If that is how you feel, God says, “You are wrong.” We have our ideas of what would make us happiest, and what the best path to joy is, and God has His ideas about the best path to joy for us. Which one are we going to follow – ours or God’s? It depends on who we trust more. If we trust ourselves, we will go with what seems right to us. If we trust God, we will go with what He says is best. And what God says is best is to do the hard work of maintaining relationships, and deal with the heartache and pain involved, so that we can know the joy of profound love.