Ecclesiastes 2:26

For God giveth to a man that is good in His sight.

True goodness

I. He who is good before God is good.

1. A man may be good in his own esteem, and yet not be really so. The way in which we sometimes mistake ourselves is altogether pitiable.

2. A man may be good in the estimate of society, and yet not be really so. Dr. Bushnell relates how he was much struck by the remark of an elderly gentleman touching hero-worship: “From the moment of my leaving college to this present hour I have been gradually losing my respect for great names.”

3. A man may be accepted as good by the Church, and yet not be really so. The diamond fields of South Africa produce large numbers of diamonds whose yellow colour lessens immensely the value of the gem, and rogues have hit on an ingenious method for the falsification of these jewels; they are put into some chemical solution, and for a while after the bath the yellow diamond appears perfectly white, deceiving the very elect. Character also is capable of falsification; we may appear to ourselves and to others brighter and costlier than we intrinsically are.

4. But they who are good before God are good. He who has the testimony that he pleases God needs no more.

II. Who is thus good before God? Who is this man, this woman, this child? The goodness that is good before God is the goodness that God inspires, and that He maintains in our heart and life by His Holy Spirit. Whatever is truly good is made so by its motive, its principle, its aim; and he who is truly good acts from the purest motive, obeys the loftiest rule, aspires to the supremest end. Well then, the purest motive is the love of God; the loftiest rule is the will of God; the supremest end is the glory of God. In a word, the essence of goodness is godliness; and where there is no godliness there is no goodness in the deep scriptural signification of that word. But the goodness that comes from God, that lives through Him, that gives, acts, suffers, hopes for His name’s sake--that is goodness indeed. (W. L. Watkinson.)

Wisdom, and knowledge, and joy.--

Joy in religion

I wish to call your attention to the last gift here mentioned--joy. To have goodness is by many supposed to inherit grief in proportion. The bestowment of wisdom and knowledge is considered to carry with it the addition of many troubles. The text tells us that God gives to those who have found favour in His sight “wisdom and knowledge”--“joy,” or the sense of enjoyment, the pleasant appreciation of the delights of true wisdom and knowledge, is added to counteract and enliven the weariness and depression which ever accompany the possession of great learning. Joy comes after, not before, wisdom and knowledge--as we have it in the text. It is the rapturous outcome of acquired wisdom--the balance given, the beauty bestowed, the relish awarded to dissipate the despondent gloom which is too often the result of mental activity. Now, what is true in secular things is clearly and even more true in spiritual matters. When Christ is made to us wisdom and true knowledge He gives the soul joy--His joy; and the real Christian not only rejoices in the Lord, but he will rejoice in every good thing which the Lord his God hath given unto him. He will have a joyous, buoyant, glad nature, exulting in God’s favour, and opening his mouth to sing and laugh and be merry; and in this and other ways he will strive to show forth his Lord’s praises before the world. There are some who are wont to urge that the Christian believer must necessarily, from the condition of things, be a shrinking, grave, and even melancholy being; that in bearing, and cast of countenance, and conduct he must be the very reverse of a joyous, light-hearted, laughter-loving creature of the world. With his own sins, past and present, to mourn over, the ever-recurring shortcomings of duty, the never-ending slips of temper, the coldness of feeling and the too slow approach of the new life to the fixed standard of that perfection which is the Father’s in heaven, how can that man, it is often asked, be otherwise than tearful in word and look? Truly this is all wrong, producing results of a most painful kind, and life runs with slow, unvaried, saddening sound, till all presented to the eye or ear fills the lone soul with misery, and grief, and fear. I believe that this is a true picture of some who, being morbidly and ghastly grief-struck by some deep and immedieable wound, are ever looking with melancholy eyes upon the night side of things until the sense of present evils never ceases to annoy them. Fretful, feverish, gloomy, excusing nothing and accusing every one, the tired brain never gets relief from the heavy heart. Now this ought not so to be in the Christian character, and when they exist the most strenuous exertions ought to be made, the most determined efforts of the will, to get rid of them. He who made us made us capable of joy. It is a holy necessity of man’s nature. If God had meant us to be always grave, and serious, and down-looking, lie might have constituted us so that we could have been nothing else: lie would not have chosen as the emblem and image of His chiefest blessing, even the blessing of redeeming love, the glad symbol of the festive scene, that His Son would give us “beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.” The truly Christian mind, filled with the love of the Saviour, will sanctify everything lawful by the presence of a holy, kindly feeling, and will derive benefit from such allowance, consciously or unconsciously. But the indulgence of our susceptibilities to pleasurable impressions is itself an end which, in due mode and measure, Christian men may seek and the happy God of love not disapprove. God giveth joy. He not only re-bestows the gift in Christ, but He made us originally susceptible of the keenest enjoyment. The gift is to be cherished; the susceptibility is to be encouraged and strengthened; but it is most important that a cheerful and chastened exercise of the gift should vindicate the joyfulness of saints, and present a safe and suitable example to the world. One of the strongest prejudices felt against religion is because of its supposed gloomy character. Those who are destitute of a religious spirit can find little or no enjoyment in religious occupation, and are naturally disposed to think that others must be like themselves. It has been too often the fault or the misfortune of Christians to confirm this erroneous impression; and it behoves them, by every lawful method, to endeavour to remove it. If we are Christ’s, let us pray and strive that our religion may be one of sunshine--a religion of happiness, a rejoicing religion. (G. H. Conner, M. A.)

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