Ecclesiastes 2:1-11

Ecclesiastes chapter 2. I want to read the first 11 verses text and study this evening. I said in my heart, go to now, I will prove thee with mirth. Therefore enjoy pleasure, and behold this also is vanity. I said of laughter it is mad. and amirth what doeth it? I sought in my heart to give myself unto wine, yet acquainting my heart with wisdom. And they lay hold on folly, so I might see what was that good for the sons of man, which they should do unto the heaven all the days of their life. I made great works. I made me great works. I builted me houses. I planted me vineyards. I made me gardens and orchards. And I planted trees in them of all kinds of fruits. I made me pools of water to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees. I got me servants and maidens. Had servants born to my house. I also had great possessions of great and small cattle above all that were in Jerusalem before me. I gathered me also silver and gold and the particular treasure of kings and of provinces. I got me men singers and women singers and the delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments and that of all sorts. So I was great and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me. And whatsoever my eyes desired, I kept not from them. I withheld not my heart from any joy. My heart rejoiced in all my labor, and this was my portion of all my labor. Then I looked on a lot. all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labor that I had labor to do, and behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun. May God read to us. God bless them us is sacred and holy word this evening. In North Africa, the natives of a very easy way in which they capture monkeys. They will take some type of. of gourd bore a hole in it just small enough for the monkey get his hand in it. Then they’ll put nuts in the gourd and then they tie the gourd up to a tree. And at night the monkey will come along, smell the food, put his hand in the gourd to get it. The only problem is when he grabs a fist full of nuts he can’t get his hand back out. And he’s too foolish to let go. So when you get there in the morning he’s still in there he’s still trying to get the nuts out with his hand and he can’t do it. And so you capture the monkey. I’m afraid there are multitudes of human beings have a little more sense than the monkey. When it comes to the things of this life, people are so attached to their pleasures that they never seem to get out of them what they desire. And they try, but they doesn’t seem to be able to do it. There’s no true satisfaction. Each individual seeks pleasure in his or her own way. There could be pleasure sought in sexual pursuits and sports and hobbies and finances and wealth and fame and art and music and a whole group of things. We could even get on the dark side with drink and drugs and things of that nature. But Solomon knows that whatever path you choose regarding pleasure is not going to bring satisfaction. And he describes his own case history here. It tells us it’s all a dead end. Like the monkey, you can fish around all you want in the gourd of pleasure, but you’ll never extract what you’re desperately seeking. The problem with pleasure, is what I’m going to talk about this evening. Now, you can pursue the pleasure of a good time. And we see that in the first three verses here. When he talks about, I said in my heart, go to now, I will prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure, and behold this also is vanity. I said of laughter, it is mad, and of mirth, what doeth it it? I sought at my heart to give myself unto wine. yet acquainting mine heart with wisdom, lay hold on folly, so I might see what was that good for the sons of men, which they should do under the heaven all the days of their life. Now, you can give yourself to having a good time in this life, many people do. Since knowledge, human knowledge, did not have help him led to grief as we saw the last verse of chapter one, Solomon decides to test pleasure. Where knowledge fails, maybe pleasure will satisfy. Can the joys of sense give you lasting satisfaction? Many people evidently think so. There was a gentleman’s quarterly once in June of 1987. to read an article about the things that gentlemen should do before the age of 30. Now, many of these things as Christians we would have whore. But one was, you know, they have sex 1248 times with 19 different women. Commenting on this, Robert Ingram noted that the significant point is that the publication not only advocates and endorses the pursuit of pleasure, but also speaks of it in terms of otteness or more. moral imperative. A man ought to do this. He needs to do this. Solomon says here, he gives himself to three things. Laughter, pleasure, and wine. In other words, he tries the party scene. Now, fun and frolic are obvious avenues of pleasure-seeking. Have you ever been in a party where you laugh so hard your facial muscles hurt, or maybe your side was splitting? And yet eventually, even though the jokes or the The comments may continue on. They don’t seem funny anymore. After a period, they lose their appeal. Fun, even good, clean fun, will wane after a period of time. Pleasure should be taken here in a widest sense. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. All the toys, all the things that men choose to pursue in this life. But it’s sort of like the Israelites in the wilderness who loathe the man after a period of time and they said, give us meat to eat. God says, okay, I’ll give you meat to eat. She sends us the quails. He says, but you’re not going to eat it just one day. Not two days. You’re going to eat it until you’re so sick of it. You can’t eat it anymore. And so you can imagine in the first couple of days they were happy. But after that, it was like, oh no, I don’t eat this. It was like, okay, pursue it. Get what you want. What your craving was? Does it make you happy? Nope. There’s nothing lasting there. About that. Solomon also pursued wine to see if it brought satisfaction. He tells us how he did this. In verse 3, he gave himself to it. Now, that’s where he always talked about a moderate use. If you read Proverbs, he talks several places there about a moderate use of wine. You know, don’t look at the cup when it’s red and sparkling and so forth. And he says, who has redness of eyes and so forth, those that dwell long at the drink? But here, he states that his wisdom allowed him to keep some degree of control over the use of the wine didn’t get stone cold drunk. He wasn’t as staggering about as if he didn’t know what he was doing. But he gave himself to wine above and beyond what we’d call the human boundary of the Christian. You know, what he would think would be reasonable. The Bible doesn’t condemn alcohol, but it certainly tells us to curtail it and be careful in its use. Well, I don’t necessarily recommend did you drink. I can’t tell you it’s forbidden, but be careful because it is a mocker. It can lead us astray very quickly if we’re not very careful. One writer put it this way. He went over into enemies’ territory not as a desert, but a spy, to discover the nakedness of the land when he gave himself to drink. But Solomon knew ahead of time that wine is a mawker. He is told that to us in Proverbs chapter 20. He forgot what we read in the Psalm tonight, Psalm 4. Thou has put gladness in my heart more than the time that their wine increased. Think about that in a minute. He’s saying, your relationship with God is more pleasurable, more enjoyable, than having an abundance of wine produced. He forgot. He wrote that, I guess. You need to remember that promise about blind being a mocker and he forgot what his dad wrote in Psalm 4. So, the whole idea, well, let’s party. He says it didn’t satisfy me. You can pursue it, but it’s not going to do anything. Your short pleasure experiment will end in futility. It doesn’t take long for someone who pursues good times to realize that this well of fun is empty. It runs dry rather quickly. I like what Proverbs 1413 says. In the midst of wrath, the heart is sorrowful. Excuse me. In the midst of wrath, the heart is sorrowful. And the end of mirth is heaviness. Laughter has its place. After all, we get to chapter 3 is. because there’s a time to laugh. But to do endless rounds of laughter is not wise. What’s it all worth? The serious thinking person will find it crazy to laugh and have a good time when death and eternity is staring them in the face the whole time. It’s like partying while you’re on a ship that’s sinking. Belchazzar, you’ll recall. was having a drunken party when the Medes and the Persians were outside the walls and beginning to breach them, even though he had the message on the wall that was written by the finger of God, thou art weighed in the balances and found oneing and thy kingdom is divided between the Medes and the Persians. In 1960s, the newspapers cared a story about a pathetic shop owner who sold used books and periodicals. articles. The man originally had graduated from an elite university and was a playboy for several years, dabbled in drugs and activities of the new left, which, of course, was a radical organization. He achieved success in business, and he even became a, he got in a profession where he had to distinguish profession. Soon he gave up a profession. all up to sell used books. Now, but you had 50 years of age, he looks back on all his past pleasures and accomplishments as total futility. The man’s experiences led him to two conclusions. One, that unrestrained sensualism produces more pain than pleasure, that hard work is sheer foolishness, death awaits, why wear yourself out? And this is why wear yourself out? And this is why He decided to operate a business that took very little effort on his part. Few demands were placed upon him. Unkept in appearance, he thinks of life as a meaningless existence and a process which will eventually lead to his extinction. In the quest for happiness and satisfaction, each individual seeks pleasure in their own field, in their own way, You may spare no efforts as you chase after pleasure, but in the end, you’ll have to confess that Solomon is right. You can pursue the pleasure of a good time. You can pursue the pleasure of accomplishment. Let’s look at verses four to six here. They made me great works. I built me houses. I planted me vineyards. I made me gardens and orchards. I planted trees and them. I planted trees and and all kinds of fruits. I made me pools of water to water there with the wood that bringeth forth trees. Now, when we look under Solomon’s accomplishments here, he talks about his construction work, his palaces. Now the account of Solomon’s achievements in First King’s, puts more emphasis on the temple than his own house. But rightly so, because it is the premier building that he was engaged in. And yet there’s an ample sample and evidence that he indulged himself well in this splendor of building his own palace. It took him 13 years to build his own palace, a little over twice. as much as it took to build the temple. Among the edifices he constructed was his palace in Jerusalem, the palace of the forest of Lebanon, the hall of pillars, the hall of judgment, a palace for his Egyptian wife, Pharaoh’s daughter, fortifications around Jerusalem at Hazor and Megetto and Gieser, whole cities. like Gieser, Lower Beth, Horan, Megetto, Bias, Tadmore, and storage cities for his chariots and his Calgary. He built all these things. He was busy. He also built, or made, we should say, spectacular gardens. You know, some of the ancient royalty had such spectacular gardens that they were wonders of the world. So he talks about his vineyards and his orchards and his gardens here. In a land that did not have any major rivers like the Nau or the Tigris or Euphrates, he had to make pools of water so that he could have some type of aqueduct reservoir to bring the water into the area to water the various gardens and the trees of the trees of the his apple trees or his fruit trees he had planted. This was a land that didn’t have always adequate rainfall. So he came up with a plan to water it. Save the water when it did rain and, you know, get water maybe from the mountains or something, and bring it all the way down and bring it in. And so you can imagine what an achievement this was, what a spectacular. garden he had created. Now, young people often give themselves to good times. But as you get older, you start looking about accomplishments. What can I accomplish that’s of a lasting value in this life that I can make my mark? That other people will remember what I’ve done. And so we see he pursues this angle too. Maybe, you know, you know, build him. art gallery. Maybe you write great literature. Maybe you, you know, build a hospital wing. Maybe you have a magnificent home that you’ve built. Maybe, you know, you do come up with some kind of world record in something. Just so your names in the record book, just so you’re remembered. It’s a noble pursuit, but will it bring lasting satisfaction? Solomon reveals this. He was going to reveal his conclusion. moment. No doubt you and I have desired to do something lasting. One of the reasons why people write is to have something that goes beyond their own generation, beyond what they’re doing, so that it has more permanence to it. I don’t know that we could match the scale here of Solomon’s projects. Yet like him, we want to do something worthwhile, something that great accomplishment. So you can pursue the pleasure of accomplishments here, but the bottom line is, and we’ll see that in a moment, doesn’t lead to anything but vanity. The third thing he says here is you can pursue the pleasure of personal wealth. Let’s look at verses seven and eight. I got me servants and maidens and had servants born in my house. Also I had great possessions of great and small cats. above all that were in Jerusalem before me. I gathered me silver and gold, the particular treasure of kings and of the provinces. I get me men singers and women singers and the delights of the sons of men as musical instruments and that of all sorts. Now he had a multitude of servants. They have to understand those days a lot of slaves were made up of lands that were captured in war. They would get thousands of people that they would enslave at that time. So the Israelites were not normally allowed to keep one of their own as a slave for more than seven years. You had to release them after that period of time. So these may have been foreigners that could be kept for an indefinite period of time. Solomon had countless slaves to tend to his construction work and his gardens and his orchards and things of this nature. A new generation of slaves would be produced by the present generation because he had slaves born in his house. They would marry, and they would have children and those children would be slaves too. A vast multitude of slaves displayed a person’s personal wealth because they would be looked upon as possessions. Now today, we don’t have slavery as such, but if you were running a great business, you may employ like 10,000 workers. And you can imagine they’re working night and day and guess what they’re doing? They’re making you money the whole time. They’re making your, you’re increasing your wealth. He had vast herds. He had large animals. such as horses and cattle and ox and yet smaller ones like sheep and goats and so forth. He maintained these enormous herds of livestock. The picture of unparalleled possession here, and possessions, sort of like Job’s wealth that you read about him in the first chapter of Joe. All that, he was the wealthiest man in these because he had all these things, servants and cattle and sheep and So forth. And so did Solomon here. And then he talks about his material riches. There were immense treasures of silver and gold that he he heaped up that flowed into his vaults from all quarters. Some of them were like taxes that he levied on lands that he had conquered and so forth. There was so much silver available at this time that it became as common as stones. So nobody made anything. out of silver. Not even, no cups of silver or anything like that. No silver wear out of silver. They made everything out of gold. Salman had an annual take of gold of 6666 talents, almost 25 tons of gold per year that he gathered in. He had some peculiar treasure, which would be a wealth of any kind. Here it might be jewels of some sort. Ivory, rare spices, or rare fabrics or something. something of this nature that only the most rich could possibly possess. Now today, you may have huge stockholdings. You may have a land that is used for oil exploration, something of this nature. Or you may be hoarding gold and silver or maybe jewelry of some sort you collect. He had personal singers, he tells us here. He was charmed by the most delightful voices. Men and women singers, all playing, you know, wind or string instruments of some sort to entertain him. The point is he owned these people. You know, the President of the United States will have dinners at the White House, and they often will have, like, some type of entertainment come in. They’ll ask some country Western singer or some contemporary singer to come in and entertain the guests. But can you imagine owning such talent? You can’t sleep one night, three o’clock in the morning, say, hey, get him in here. You know, my favorite country Westerns, or get him in here and let him sing some songs to me for a couple of hours, and then I’ll get tired of a bit. you imagine that. I mean, this is what we’re talking about here. So you can pursue personal pleasure and this personal wealth is one of the areas you could pursue. Fourthly and lastly, the problem you find with pleasure. And he takes that up in verses 9 through 11. So I was great and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remain with me, and whatsoever my eyes desired I kept not from them. I withheld not my heart from any joy, for my heart rejoiced in all my labor, and this was my portion of all my labor. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and all the labor I had labored to do, and behold, all was vexation, or always vanity. and vexation of spirit and there was no profit under the sun. Oh man, pleasure doesn’t satisfy long, does it? When you live for pleasure, you get disappointed in the end. He was sort of covetous. He said, whatever my heart desired, I got, or I talked, or I did. Your heart may rejoice for a period of time, but eventually it all wanes. Pleasure satisfies only during the act and And the key is you have to do repetition of the act. You have to keep doing it. One drink, one sexual fling, one contest, one, one project accomplished, one wild party. None of these things, nor all of them together, can be enough to bring lasting satisfaction. So you end up repeating them. The quest for pleasure is like eating potato chips. Can you eat just one potato chip? You open that bag of potato chips. chips and they spell pretty good. If you stop after one potato chip, you must have an iron wheel. I mean, you start into the potato chips, and the next thing, you know, the bags empty. Because the chips are good and you keep eating them. So one bite leads to another. The first has no lasting impact, and you could reflect on the taste of the first one, but it’s much easier. You just go ahead and start, grab another potato chip. I need it. Far from comforting you, each act of pleasure leaves you thirsty for the next. It’s an endless cycle. Let me pursue this pleasure. Let me pursue that pleasure. Maybe next time, I’ll do something better. I’ll get barbecue potato chips. It’ll be a little different. It’ll be better. Maybe sour cream and chives, you know, on my chips next time. One of the wealthy celebrities of our generation, have this to acknowledge. My attention span is short. Probably my least favorite thing to do is to maintain the status quo. Instead of being content when everything is going fine, I start getting impatient and irritable. For me, the important thing is the getting getting, not to have it. That was by Donald Trump, who is now the president of the United States. Pleasure doesn’t satisfy long. There’s no profit in your pleasure, as he says here in verse 11. There’s no profit under the sun. The pursuit of pleasure results in boredom or frustration. If you obtain the pleasure you want, you get boredom of it. If you can’t obtain the pleasure you want, you get frustrated. So when pleasure, snares are carefully examined, Solomon says, it’s not going to work. It doesn’t help. If you build your life on pleasures, it’s sand. It’s not going to be a good foundation for your life. There’s no permanence to it. And the continual diet of pleasure proves boring, if not eventually, nauseating. You know, ice cream’s a nice treat. But if you had to eat it, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day for a month. I think maybe you get to the point and I say, I don’t know if I want to eat ice cream today or not. Poor monkey who grabs hold of the nuts becomes entrapped in the gourd and gets captured. It’s a dead end. Solomon says choosing the path of pleasure for satisfaction life is also a dead end. You get entrapped by it. it. Pleasure promises more than it can deliver. As someone said, its advertising agency is better than its manufacturing arm. Remember what the Psalmist said. We read it. Thou hast put gladness in my heart more than the time that their corn and their wine increased. Now, when we think of time of harvest, and we think of time when the grapes are coming in, the vintage, these are times of celebration. People are all excited because look what how much abundance we have and we have all these feasts that are associated with these things. If you look back, some people had in certain lands, they had Octoberfest. We have something like that here, but Germany or something like that, they’re really big on some of these things. They have Octoberfest. Why? Harvest is done. Gather all the stuff in. And it’s exciting. But the psalmist tells us that knowing and fellowshiping with God provides a far superior joy than the natural man experiences in the time of abundance during a harvest or a great vintage. The comfort of God’s spirit, the sense of reconciliation with God through Jesus Christ is greater than any kind of earth joy or pleasure. There is a peace unspeakable that passes all understanding which you have even in the midst of any suffering or trouble that you might have in this life. In Christ, there is a pleasure like in none others. The question is, do you know him? Have you placed your faith in him for salvation from sin? Because the bottom line, really is. That is where true satisfaction is to be found. Well, let us close the next to the night.