How to Experience Biblical Contentment (Ecclesiastes

Do you want to understand contentment in the Bible? We experience biblical contentment primarily through our relationships with Christ. Secondarily, it comes from simple things like eating, drinking, and finding joy in our labor. But biblical contentment does not come from riches and possessions.

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00:00 How to Experience Biblical Contentment
14:35 Lesson One: Hoarding is a threat to contentment.
23:32 Lesson Two: We can be content by remembering we take nothing with us.
35:30 Lesson Three: We can’t have godliness without contentment.
40:56 Lesson Four: Biblical contentment does (Part One) not come from wealth and possessions.
43:52 Lesson Four: Biblical contentment does (Part Two) come from simple things.

How Can We Experience Biblical Contentment?

Paul provides the answer in 1 Timothy 6:7:

1 Timothy 6:7 for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world.

This is a staggeringly powerful verse about contentment. Knowing that we come into this life with nothing and leave with nothing should significantly affect our ability to be content.

Whenever our contentment is threatened because we covet something, we should meditate on the reality that we can’t take it with us! Whatever we covet will lose value in our sight, and it is hard to covet something with little value!

Biblical Contentment Does not Come from Wealth and Possessions

We’re talking about being content by focusing on the next life. In the following verses, Solomon describes a rich man who doesn’t focus on the next life, leaving him completely miserable:

Ecclesiastes 5:17 Moreover, all his days he eats in darkness in much vexation and sickness and anger.

Could there be a more depressing description of someone’s life? He spends his days vexated, sick, and angry. How miserable! His wealth didn’t make him content.

It says, “he eats in darkness.” This is physical darkness, but it is a metaphor for his gloomy life, and especially his spiritual darkness. The light of the Gospel has not shined on him. He doesn’t know Jesus, who said:

John 8:12 I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me WILL NOT WALK IN DARKNESS, BUT WILL HAVE THE LIGHT OF LIFE.

This looks to where true contentment comes from: relationship with Christ:

Hebrews 13:5 Keep your life free from love of money, and BE CONTENT WITH WHAT YOU HAVE, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

We’re told we should be content because we will always have Christ. Christ alone is enough for us to be content.

Biblical Contentment Does Come from Simple Things

Now we get to see something fascinating about biblical contentment:

Ecclesiastes 5:18 Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of his life that God has given him, for this is his lot.

This stands in contrast to what Solomon said earlier. In verse 13, he said he had seen a grievous evil. Now, he says he has seen two things that are “good and fitting,” and they’re both simple.

First, eating and drinking: this life is not about extravagance, luxury, and lavishness but about enjoying simple pleasures. I believe this is why the people in Malawi seemed joyful and content. They enjoyed simple things, like eating and drinking.
Second, finding joy in our labor. We spend much of our lives working; it is a blessing when we find it pleasurable.

The next verse shows something similar:

Ecclesiastes 5:19 Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil; this is the gift of God.

It is important to notice that “the gift of God” is NOT wealth and possessions. Instead, the gift of God is three things:

Having the power to enjoy wealth and possessions God has given us
Accepting our lot in life (which is a simple definition of biblical contentment)
Enjoying our work, as the previous verse said.
Having these means being very blessed, and God is the only One who can give them to us: they are His gift to us. Look at one more blessing:

Ecclesiastes 5:20 For he ...

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