Ecclesiastes 2
Pleasure, work, wisdom?
If you could do whatever you wanted to do, what would you do?
If money was no obstacle, if power was no obstacle, if you had no restraints at all, what would you do?
If you could have a life of maximum pleasure and minimum pain, what would that look like for you?
Perhaps like King Solomon, a life of no restraints, a life of unending pleasure would be a life of just getting high.
Getting high off alcohol or drugs.
Look at verse 3 with me:
I searched with my heart how to cheer my body with wine
As a teenager and early twenty something, this is how I lived my life.
My life was all geared towards getting high on alcohol every weekend. Any money I earned would be blown at the weekend as I trampled from one pub to another- one club to another in pursuit of getting high, in pursuit of escaping the ordinary grind of work for a while.
This is how many people live their lives today, they live for getting high from one day to the next.
And let us be honest, it is fun, it is satisfying…..for a little while anyway.
It is fun, until it isn’t fun, until you realise that the alcohol is no longer a pleasure, but a need, when you realise that in order to reach those highs again, you need to drink more alcohol, spend more money and suddenly what you sought out as a pleasure becomes a noose around your neck, as you start needing alcohol just to make you feel a little less miserable.
This is the conclusion that King Solomon also came up with when it came to getting high on wine.
Perhaps getting high is not for you, perhaps your work is something that you would find satisfaction in?
Perhaps if you had no restraints in this life, you would build the perfect house, the display homes that you see in the magazines, the 6 bedroom mansion, double garage, heated pool, soccer pitch as a back garden, an outdoor entertainment area.
Perhaps you would have your own chef to cook you meals from different parts of the world. Perhaps you would have servants that would clean your house, and drive you to where ever you wanted to go. But of course you would have your own private Jet, which would fly you to any part of the world at any time. Perhaps you would have Cold play come and put a private concert on for you and your friends at your place.
You can tell I have thought about this a lot.
King Solomon not only dreamt of these things, but he lived them.
Look at verses 4-9 with me:
I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. 5 I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. 6 I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees. 7 I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house. I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. 8 I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines, the delight of the sons of man.
Solomon lived as a king who had no restraint, in fact it tells us in verse 10 that whatever his heart desired, he had, he did, including all sexual pleasures- Solomon wanted for nothing.
And yet unsurprisingly, after Solomon had fulfilled all the desires of his heart, he still wasn’t satisfied.
Look at the conclusion he came up with, in verse 11:
Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.
He described it as vanity, pointless, like chasing after the wind, he concluded despite all the great works, all the pleasure, he had gained nothing.
Solomon used the phrase “chasing after the wind” a lot on this book, because it perfectly describes trying to find eternal satisfaction in these things- you will never find satisfaction- you will always be chasing after it, just like the wind, you can’t catch it, you will always be chasing it.
So often we have heard that when people finally reach what they have been seeking for all of their life, it doesn’t satisfy them.
Like the alcoholic or drug user who are seeking their next high- it never satisfies, they always want a bigger high, or like the billionaire who makes his first billion, they realise that it is not that satisfying, or like the worker who finally achieves their goal, but then realised it didn’t bring as much satisfaction as they thought.
Jim Carrey, an actor who achieved everything he ever dreamed of, once said this:
“I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer.”
Perhaps if you could do whatever you wanted in this life, you would just find satisfaction in knowing things and applying them. Perhaps like Solomon, you would want to live a wise life- always making good decisions.
I would want some of that- wouldn’t you?
Imagine always making good decisions for your kids, imagine your parenting decisions being a shining example to others?
Imagine having such a wealth of knowledge that you are an expert on every topic and people just seek you out to ask you for advice. Imagine governments and powers coming to you and asking, what should we do in this situation?
Well, Solomon actually conceded here, amongst all the vanity of life, that it was better to live a wise life than a foolish life……..but in the end it doesn’t matter whether you are wise or a fool, because in the end both the wise and the foolish die- and so even wise living is pointless.
Look at verse 16 with me:
16 For of the wise as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How the wise dies just like the fool!
And so as Solomon has considered pleasure, as he has considered work, as he has considered wise living, he concluded that all of them were and are pointless, since death gets us all in the end anyway….so then he turns to one thing that surely will be worth living and striving for- something that death doesn’t even interrupt- and that is leaving a legacy for the next generation.
Perhaps this is what you would do, if there were no restraints on your life, you would make sure that you leave a legacy for your loved ones when you eventually die.
That surely gives life meaning- leaving a legacy for the next generation….
What a wonderful thing to live for, and yet Solomon also pops that balloon too.
Look at verses 18 and 19 with me:
18 I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, 19 and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity.
Solomon said that you could work all your life to leave a legacy for the next generation and they could squander it all- what a waste of time- pointless.
You know the average life span of a big company is 40 years.
Those big companies that people pour their life and soul into are gone in 40 years. People may work for a company thinking they are setting a legacy for the future, but the reality is, they will be gone and forgotten in years to come.
Who would have thought the car company Holden would have closed a few years ago?
How long will it be before we forget about Holdens altogther?
Holden who?
Solomon suggests that pleasure, work, wisdom, legacy will not satisfy and then he also suggests that if you want to try and make any sense of it all- you won’t. If you want to find purpose and meaning as you look upon the things of this earth- you won’t- it is all vanity- all pointless.
Thus end-eth the sermon……..
No……..
What can we learn from Ecclesiastes 2?
I am going to suggest 4 things we can take away with us today.
1. Life without God is pointless.
In verse 11 , you will notice that Solomon uses a phrase that he used a lot-
“under the sun”.
Look at verse 11 again with me:
Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.
Solomon had pursued everything under the sun, everything this world had to offer him, and he found it didn’t satisfy and so he knew there must be something better than this world can offer, something that is above the sun, something that is in the heavens, and that is God Himself.
Which brings me to the second point:
2. Only life with God, with Jesus can satisfy both now and eternally.
God, who is life, created us to have life and life to the full- he created us to walk in relationship with him.
And here is the amazing thing about believing the first two points, if you believe that you are empty without God, and if you believe that God and God himself will satisfy you, then you will also enjoy the gifts that God gives us in this life and the next, whether that is the gift of knowledge, or the gift of work, or the gift of enjoying his creation.
Look at verse 24 with me:
24 There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God,
This means that any enjoyment you may have in eating, or pleasure or work is a gift from God any way.
You know, despite what we Presbyterians may portray at times, God created us to enjoy him and enjoy his creation. God wants us to enjoy life.
This is how it was in the beginning, God created Adam and Eve- he wanted them to enjoy all the culinary delights of the garden, he wanted them to enjoy the work he gave them, he even wanted them to enjoy the sight of the creation.
When Eve tasted the fruit from the tree which was forbidden, part of the reason she took it, was because it was pleasing to the eye- it looked good, it looked juicy, it looked divine. God created the garden to look good to the eye.
The only problem was, that Eve, did a Solomon……. she showed no restraint, she didn’t enjoy God’s creation with the loving restraints of God’s rule.
Friends, when we throw God’s loving restraints away from his creation, we can quickly turn those things which God created for us to enjoy into a noose around our necks.
For example, God wanted us to enjoy sex within the boundaries or marriage, as soon as we throw those restraints off, that good gift becomes not so good anymore.
Which brings me to point 3:
3. When you find satisfaction in God, in Jesus, you find Joy in the most mundane and simple tasks.
1 Corinthians 10:31 tells us to do all things for the Glory of God:
Clean the house- for the glory of God
Write a report for the glory of God
Eat a sandwich for the glory of God
Finally, my fourth and last point is this:
4. Your life on this earth is short
Solomon refers to this in verse 3:
I searched with my heart how to cheer my body with wine—my heart still guiding me with wisdom—and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was good for the children of man to do under heaven during the few days of their life.
Solomon compares our life under the sun, like a few days which is longer than what James compared our life too, look at James 4:14 with me:
What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.
James compares our time here under the sun, like a mist that is there in the morning but gone in the afternoon.
With that reality in mind my friends, let us not waste the time we have, chasing after the wind, chasing things that will never satisfy us, but instead let us spend our days looking above the sun, finding our satisfaction in the son- Jesus, so that we may be of more worldly good here under the sun.
Let us pray
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