Ecclesiastes Part 2 The Meaning of Life

Ecclesiastes 2 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) The Meaning of Life: Part 2: 

When will you be happy? ____________________ 

Chapter 1:12-2:11 
12 I, the Teacher, when king over Israel in Jerusalem, 
13 applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with. 
14 I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind. 
15 What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted. 
16 I said to myself, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me; and my mind has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” 
17 And I applied my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a chasing after wind. 
18 For in much wisdom is much vexation, and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow. 

Chapter 2 
1I said to myself, “Come now, I will make a test of pleasure; enjoy yourself.” But again, this also was vanity. 
2 I said of laughter, “It is mad,” and of pleasure, “What use is it?” 
3 I searched with my mind how to cheer my body with wine—my mind still guiding me with wisdom—and how to lay hold on folly, until I might see what was good for mortals to do under heaven during the few days of their life. 
4 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 also had 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 of the provinces; I got singers, both men and women, and delights of the flesh, and many concubines. 
9 So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem; also my wisdom remained with me. 
10 Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them; I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. 
11 Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and again, all was vanity and a chasing after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun. 

Introduction: The Meaning of Life: Part 2: When will you be happy? 

A few months ago, in the first installment of this series we talked about Ecclesiastes 1:1-11. We talked about how the Jewish people read this book aloud every year and have it in their minds as a perspective of what it is to live with the wisdom of Solomon. We found that Solomon, who wrote the book, or at least the book is about him… is writing about his perspective of life “under the sun” and we are going to find this phrase over and over again in the book of Ecclesiastes. When he uses that phrase, “under the sun,” he is talking about life with no vertical perspective, life without God, there is no God in this picture so when I look at life without God it is “vanity” and he is going to say this word “vanity” over and over again, it means it is meaningless, like a vapor, it’s here and it’s quickly gone, it’s absurd, there are things I just can’t get my arms around. They are “vanity.” Solomon says that it looks like everything is just bad news, all is vanity, under the sun. That’s because Solomon and Solomon’s wisdom isn’t the end of the story, Jesus comes along and says “one who is greater than Solomon is here,” he didn’t have the answers, I do. Jesus says, Solomon couldn’t find meaning under the sun because you have to look beyond the sun. If you will come to Jesus then He will give your life meaning, and there will be purpose, and there is no labor that is in vain, and all of these things that Jesus says.

So Jesus comes and gives us meaning. But Today, here is what we want to explore: Whether JESUS gives your life meaning or not, When will you be happy? What is the thing or things, the person, the goal that you keep telling yourself, when I have [fill in the blank] I’ll be happy. All of us have that, what’s yours? What goes into the blank? Do you think that when you fill in the blank, you’ll be a happy, content, joy-filled person? Right now, sitting in church, in a spiritual mindset, you are thinking, oh I don’t want anything but Jesus, but let’s get away from here for a moment. Imagine it’s Wednesday afternoon and you’ve had a rough day. Your boss is intolerable, your children won’t listen, you have heart-burn, you haven’t slept, everything is going wrong. Fill in the blank now. What do you want to have happen deep down, in your soul is worldly perspective. That is the big question, because I’ll bet if we looked back 5 or 10 years, there was something that you would have put in the blank back then, that now … you actually have, and you’ve moved on and now there’s something else to fill in the blank… This is what most New Year’s Resolutions are. If I can just do this ______ then my life will be better. Then, if you accomplish that thing, the next year there is another thing where you say, if I can just do this _______ then my life will be better. I can tell you that and yet, you are going to keep doing this over and over and over again until you die. This is like a wild-goose chase, without the goose. We think we are going to get there, but we never will, we keep thinking if we fill in the blank then things will be perfect but they never will. So let’s go through this section of Ecclesiastes carefully, starting back in chapter 1 verse 12.

12 I, the Teacher, when king over Israel in Jerusalem, 

Now, we said this last time, who is the teacher or the preacher depending on your translation? Solomon. The name of the book actually means the preacher. So Solomon was the son of David, the King of Israel, he was rich, powerful, he was the wisest man that ever walked the earth, when he asked God for wisdom God gave him wisdom. Solomon was good-looking, he had it all. He had everything. He had everything going for him and he writes this book.

13 applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with. 
14 I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind. 
15 What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted. 
16 I said to myself, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me; and my mind has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” 
17 And I applied my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a chasing after wind. 
18 For in much wisdom is much vexation, and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow. 

 Here’s what Solomon just said, I decided that I would turn my life into one grand experiment. I wanted to know the meaning of life. I wanted to know how I could unlock the key to life, so I decided that my life would be this experiment to try and figure out if I could get my arms around it. So he uses words like I applied my mind to it. This was not some sort of part-time job for Solomon. He went after this with full gusto. He searched it. This was a full-time endeavor. So his conclusion is this: It’s an unhappy business. People are searching for happiness and their not happy. The search for meaning and happiness is so elusive it is like a chasing after the wind. I can’t catch the wind and contain it. There are things that just can’t be straightened out and Lord knows I’ve tried. They are crooked. It couldn’t be straightened out. I tried to straighten out politics, crime, the ills of society, but there was something deeper that I couldn’t unlock in the problem because the problem was deeper than that. The problem was in the spirit. And, he is going to start to explore his own heart in fact he’s going to say, the more I understood the more frustrated I became. For in much wisdom is much vexation, and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow. The more I know, the more I realize I don’t know. So Solomon decides to do this experiment and he’s gonna write about this and he’s going to keep a journal and the wonderful thing about Ecclesiastes is that he is going to chase after so many of the things that you and I would put in the blank… If I could just do [blank] then I would be happy. Well he is going to try out all these fill in the blank options for us. With all his might and power and wealth Solomon is going to try those things and tell us what happens. We can learn by watching what he did. So when we read this we can say if Solomon says this is going to bring me over the edge of a cliff then I can say that I’m not going to do any better, and if Solomon says that this is going to bring me blessing then I think I will try that. By grace, I want to chase the paths that give God’s goodness to me. So he begins to report what he found in his grand experiment. He starts with the conclusion: it’s all vanity. So, specifically here is what he pursued, first pleasure, verse 1 of chapter 2.

Chapter 2 
1I said to myself, “Come now, I will make a test of pleasure; enjoy yourself.” But again, this also was vanity. 

Now, how many of you like pleasure? Dumb question, we all do, we are wired to pursue pleasure. If I am presented with the options of pain or pleasure, I’m going to choose pleasure! I don’t have to think about it. I don’t have to wonder. I don’t have to reason it out, hmmm what should I choose, I am going to choose steak over Lima beans any day, I’m gonna choose Disneyland over Walmart, there’s no question, I’m choosing a nap to a punch in the face, I choose pleasure, that’s just how it works, we are wired to choose pleasure so Solomon says, well this has gotta be one of the answers to life because I look at my heart and if I’m being honest then pleasure is one of the drive-shafts of my heart. God created me to seek this out and it leads us and motivates us to do so much. It leads you to endure a job that you hate because you want the paycheck and you want to purchase pleasure with your paycheck. You say I’m going to go acquire pleasure with what I’ve been given. So Solomon is going to give pleasure a chance. Every time I have done something pleasurable I’ve liked it. So, that maybe is the answer, so now what Solomon is going to do, he’s going to get really specific of how he chased pleasure. Here is where the experiment begins, He can pursue pleasure at a level that no-one in this room can, he has more money, more time, more people at his disposal. This isn’t just my small ways of pursuing pleasure staring at my phone, this is massive what he is going to do: 2 I said of laughter, “It is mad,” and of pleasure, “What use is it?” So here Solomon is saying hey, I noticed something, when I’m laughing, I’m happy. So maybe if I could laugh all the time then that is gonna be the answer, so since he has all the money, he is going to go after comedy. Imagine, we go to places to make us happy, he has the money to bring the places to him, so imagine, he has Conan, letterman, Brian regan, and Jim gaffigan on the payroll so whenever he is feeling low, it is “hey guys tell me something funny.” Maybe he just needed to laugh more, well he tried that, he did that, and he says, it got him nowhere, it is mad… what use is it? so he moved on in verse 3.

3 I searched with my mind how to cheer my body with wine— 

 So he is saying, I’m gonna fulfill every frat boys dream and party and get drunk all the time.

3b my mind still guiding me with wisdom—and how to lay hold on folly, 

 It may be dumb but he is going to binge, maybe it’s folly but maybe it will make it so he is always happy, I want to see if this is good, you know maybe I will say I love this, I’m always happy, I’m always drunk, and some people think that would be the life, every night would be Friday night, if I could just forget work and party, if I could just drink good wine and eat good food all the time, a wine cellar and a brewery in the garage and I could have my friends over and just party all the time, and we think, man life would be good, I would be happy, well he says I tried it and it didn’t work. Now some of you might be saying, I mean well he partied but I mean did he really … party, did he really get into it, if you know what I mean, well make a little note for yourself if you are interested in that 1 Kings 4:22. [his daily requirement of food and wine and things would have fed between 25 and 30 thousand people]. This is a lavish feast every day! He is going after it with gusto every day. This is huge and he goes after it all the time like this and he says, nothing, vanity. He tried laughing all the time, that was stupid, he tried partying all the time, that was a complete waste. So I am going to go after grown-up pursuits, maybe if I do something meaningful. Maybe if I give back to society to the culture. Maybe that’s gonna make me feel better. Verse 4. until I might see what was good for mortals to do under heaven during the few days of their life.

4 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. 

You know, maybe he wanted a house in the mountains to stay cool in the summer, maybe he wanted a place on the beach to go to in the winter, he planted vineyards because he now has a drinking problem from verse 3. He made a park! Who does that, no, he made multiple parks! Gardens! Pools to water to water the forests that he has planted. He doesn’t just landscape his backyard, no he makes his own Yosemite, his own Adirondacks, it’s just him in his perfectly manicured world. Maybe your thinking that your happiness is wholesome because you want to be out in nature more, because you want to plant trees or give back to the community, or build great works! He says these are vanity too. They don’t fulfill you like you think they will. Verse 7:

7 I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house; 

Now, we don’t have slaves of course, but let’s bring this into the 21st century. Would you love to just have someone to do everything that you don’t want to do? A chef, a lawnmower, a personal shopper, a chauffeur, cleaners, you would never clean again, I would just keep doing whatever I do and they would do whatever I want, you would have your own mechanic, your house would constantly be being painted, you would say I don’t want the pool there anymore, take the pool and move it over there. He had thousands of people doing whatever he wanted so that he didn’t have to. Maybe we think that if we just didn’t have to do this one thing then we would be happy. He tried that in his grand experiment with EVERYTHING! What about possessions? Maybe they will make me happy? 

7b I also had great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. 

 Some of you are pet people, maybe if I had another pet then I would be happy. We know from scripture he had peacocks, gorillas, whole herds of cattle, flocks of birds of all types, he could have anything he wanted.

8 I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and of the provinces; 

 He didn’t just put money in the bank, he owned the bank, he owned the country that the bank was in. He was so loaded financially. What would it be like to not have a budget? Bugatti, chump change, to never have to keep track of how much is in your checking account. It’s not a big deal! I’ll take it! Antything I want, maybe that will make me happy? Some of us think, if I was loaded with money then I will be happy, but I’m not, so I’ll play the lottery, then I’ll be happy. If I won the lottery tomorrow oh I would be so happy, interesting. Let’s keep going:

8b I got singers, both men and women, and delights of the flesh, and many concubines. 

I got singers, not, I like that song so I downloaded it on my iPhone, I like those singers, so I got them. I own them. They are in my living room, Harry Connick is at the piano, Coldplay is in the backyard, because they’re too loud, Hillsong is by the pool. I got singers as part of my pursuing pleasure. And many concubines, remember he had 700 concubines, women at his beck and call, apparently super-models, more than the number of people in this room maybe having any woman any time would make him happy. He has anything he wants. And, some of you fill your life with women, you fill your life with images, pornography, and you know, the pleasure is there for a moment then it is empty and it is gone.

9 So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem; also my wisdom remained with me. 

 Right? Well he became enormously popular. Well guess what our culture elevates? people like this, we say oh that must be awesome, we follow Solomon on facebook and twitter, everyone loves him he has 30 thousand people at a feast every day, he has a thousand women, he never does anything he doesn’t want to do. And his wisdom remained with him, what does he mean by that. I think it means God allowed him to keep his wits about him to understand and to journal that all of this just isn’t doing it for him. So be really honest here, now don’t make a mistake, he was sinning. It was an explicit sin to amass yourself multiple wives, you are not supposed to get drunk. Solomon is disobeying commands left and right, and yet his wisdom remained with him so that he could understand that this didn’t bring him happiness. He says,

10 Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them; I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil.

So this is his catch-all statement, in case you are saying, yeah but he didn’t do the thing in my blank, he did it all! You are thinking well my thing is sports, well he owned the team, what about recreation what about hunting, he has all the trophy cases, think about it this way, if you’ve got the money to chase after anything that you think will bring you pleasure then you can try it and that is what he did. And look what he says and my heart found pleasure, and some people get upset about this, the Bible says sex is pleasurable, the Bible says wine is pleasurable. The Bible says money is pleasurable. So he says I found pleasure in all my toil. He says yeah sin is pleasurable but the problem is it is fleeting you get it and it goes, it is like trying to catch the wind. He says, I found pleasure and this is what he says about it. After all this pleasure, there was no reward to keep, just the memory of pleasure. It’s true, have you experimented in this in any way, I was laughing, I was happy, I was drunk, I had some experience and then all you have is the memory of the pleasure and you keep trying to chase after that. Drug users call it chasing the dragon. Most of us call it “the good old days.”

11 Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and again, all was vanity and a chasing after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun. 

I got nothing, this is where he lands. It was fun while it lasted but every time I thought I got there it moved, there was nothing to be gained, a fleeting feeling of pleasure, it was there and then it was gone. He makes hedonism his world-view. Everything he does is in pursuit of pleasure. He can literally stack up one pleasure right after another as long as he wants, he could start one party that would last a week and it would flow right into the next one, it’s no problem he can pay for it all, he can stack everything up back to back, he could finish projects building parks where one finishes on may 1st and the next one finished on may 2nd and so on. He can be constantly feeling pleasure and he still got nothing his heart couldn’t stay happy, he wasn’t satisfied, he was trying to catch the wind, if he could just do blank he could be happy, and he did every blank and it never got him there. Conclusion: The hardest thing to do in response to this scripture is to decide that you actually believe it. If you do, then praise God, and if you don’t then you are spinning your wheels. Will you actually believe that he is telling you the truth, that even if it were possible to stack up one pleasure after another, do you understand that it would cease to be fun, it would begin to be boring and you would be in a prison. It happens to every generation. It’s like each generation gets on a stationary bike thinking that they are going to get somewhere. They pedal and pedal and pedal until they die and fall off and the next generation hops on and does the same thing saying yeah you guys were stupid, we know what we’re doing, we’re actually going to go somewhere on this stationary bike. Pedal Pedal Pedal really hard so since the fall of man every generation is just spinning their wheels, this silly game, people keep thinking if I could just do or be blank then I would be satisfied, like someone or something is the key to the unsatisfied life that you keep chasing... under the sun. So it is a futile pursuit and if you believe that, then you will stop spinning your wheels. Wait a second. Why is life like this? Maybe this is one of the greatest questions that you can ever ask.

Romans chapter 8:20 Why is life like this? 

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself would be set apart from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of child-birth until now. So why is life under the sun futile? Paul says, because God subjected all creation to futility. You can stack up pleasure after pleasure, but in the end, it goes nowhere, and you’ll just be exhausted. Like Solomon, spinning your wheels, and you fall over and die. Every person in this room has the image of God, you were made in the image of God, whether you are a Christian or non-Christian you bear the memory of God within you. And, that is why futility is so disheartening, there is something inside of you saying this is not right! You have an intuition that something has gone really really wrong. Something is not right in this world. Something is not right in me, because God has subjected this world to futility, the world groans! The more you try the more you groan! Why would God do that? Look at verse 20 again, “in hope.” God actually did this in hope that the Creation would be set free and obtain the freedom of the glory of God. God subjects both Christians and non-Christians to futility to SET THEM FREE. God gives people over to their desires! There are times that God says, you know what I’m going to do, I’m going to let you go after what you want most so that when you finally grab the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow so that when you get there it is a let-down and you’ll realize its just grasping at the wind. You find yourself empty. Whether it is sex or fame or money or whatever, when you get there you look at yourself in the mirror and say, what have I done? Am I better? Am I happy? The moment after you become famous is when you want to take an overdose. Nothing changed. It is like a rotten practical joke to get your deepest wish… but God doesn’t play practical jokes, He gives them over to their desires in hope, because he wants them to get to the end and feel a thud in their souls and have something inside of them scream I thought this would make me happy, but I’m still the same, I’m not happy and God is saying that is so hopeful now you can actually be set free and know freedom. God has made a universe were all of your pursuits will end in futility, where you have chased blank, So that you realize that you have placed your hope in all the wrong places. And cry out to god and turn to him in hope and say Jesus set me free! And God says I’ll do that, that’s why I’ve done this, that’s why I made the stationary bike. God doesn’t just do this for the non-Christian, he does it for the Christian too.

AW Tozer says it this way,
“and still he seeks them. And will give to them, both joy and sorrow, that he might detach their affections from this world and attach those affections unto himself.” 

 God doesn't bring sorrow and futility because he is angry with you, there is a difference between punishment and discipline, he does it because he loves you, he wants you to destroy the idols that are destroying you! He loves you enough to destroy your idols. They will never make you happy. He brings us to a place where we want to detach ourselves from futile pursuits and attach ourselves to Him. I can guarantee if you have been chasing things for a while then you are just tired. There is only one thing that will get you there, Jesus. Jesus gives you the invitation in Matthew 11: Come to me if you are laboring and heavy laden, I will give you rest, take my yoke upon you, for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you’ll find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. So it turns out that the reason that you want pleasure so badly is that God wants to set you free so badly. You are going to take a yoke on your life. Everybody wears a yoke. There are two masters, sin which is slavery that will kill you and a yoke that is called Jesus when you put it on, He says there is hope for you. I’ll direct your life and I’ll steer you to freedom.