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The Pursuit of Happiness | Ecclesiastes-2 (9-10-2023 Mark Evans)
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Solomon is exploring the pursuit of pleasure in the book of Ecclesiastes. He acknowledges that all people seek happiness and pleasure, but questions whether this pursuit actually brings lasting joy. He experiments with indulging in various pleasures, such as wine and laughter, and finds that they ultimately amount to nothing. Solomon challenges the idea that pleasure-seeking is the highest good and questions whether it truly leads to fulfillment. He urges readers to evaluate the emptiness of pleasure and consider where true joy can be found. If you have your Bible, do make your way to the book of Ecclesiastes as we continue our sermon series through this wonderful book. And we come today to chapter 2, and we'll be covering the chapter in its entirety. But to get us going, I'll just read the first 11 verses of Ecclesiastes chapter 2. And these are the words of the God who was, who is, and who is to come. I said to my heart, come now, I will test you with pleasure. Enjoy yourself. But behold, this also was vanity. I said of laughter, it is mad, and of pleasure, what use is it? I searched 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 is good for the children of man to do under heaven during the few days of their life. I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. I made myself gardens and parks and planted them in all kinds of fruit trees. I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees. I bought male and female slaves and had slaves who were born in my house. I had also a great many possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasures of kings and provinces. I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines, the delight of the sons of man. So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me, and 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. 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." And the grass withers and the flower fades. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we praise You. Here we are as children of dust, here today and gone tomorrow, and our place knows us no more. And so we pray, Father, that Your Word would do its work in our hearts, that it would edify us, that it would stir us up to lift our eyes upward to You, the God in whom alone are pleasures evermore. In His name we pray. Amen. Amen. You may be seated. All men seek for happiness. All men seek for happiness. That is the bold claim of the great Blaise Pascal, who was certainly not the first to argue that all people in all times, in all cultures, of all races have one thing in common. We all seek after happiness. Pascal would argue that even the simple things that you did this morning, whether it was brushing your teeth or buckling your seatbelt, were at least in a small measure aimed at your personal happiness. Pascal put it this way, quote, happiness is why some men go to war and why some men avoid war. This is the motive of every man, even of those who hang themselves. Indeed, this pursuit of pleasure is so basic, it's enshrined in our Declaration of Independence, our inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Once again, this is hardly unique to our founding fathers. The pursuit of pleasure goes all the way back to ancient Greece, as Aristotle mused over what makes for the good and the happy life. It seems to be simply hardwired into us that we will seek for pleasure. And it is to this pursuit of pleasure that we come to this morning in the book of Ecclesiastes. But our task this morning is not so much to ask, do we seek for pleasure? That much is basically assumed. Our goal goes even deeper than that. Indeed, Solomon is going to ask us to evaluate pleasure, to place it on the scales of life and see, does this pleasure seeking actually amount to anything? Or is it just all in vain? Because just a reminder as to where we are in Ecclesiastes. We left off last week, the simple truth that everything is vanity. Some of you pointed out that in your particular Bible translation, you had the word meaningless instead of the word vanity. And that's an understandable move by translators because today when we say that a person is vain, we tend to mean that they are self-absorbed or self-preoccupied. And that's not quite how Solomon intends the word. So we reviewed this Hebrew word hevel, H-E-B-E-L, connotes more like a mist or a vapor, something that is fleeting, something that is ephemeral. You can get the Latin word vanitas, which just means empty. And so last week, Solomon showed us how all of creation and therefore all of life is subjected to a kind of futility, a kind of empty repetition. So this morning, Solomon continues this tour de force of vanity but with even greater precision because this morning he zeroes in on the things that we find unquestionably good, things like pleasure and productivity, work and wisdom, all in order to expose their emptiness. And so that said, I also made the case last week that Ecclesiastes may sound like a message of despair and hopelessness, but counterintuitively, it is actually a message of profound joy because it humbles man. And once humbled, it positions man to be able to see the vapors for what they truly are. And it positions us to see where true, real, substantive joy is to be found. But before you stampede ahead to the joy, first comes Solomon's cross-examination of three things. And so we're going to walk through this chapter and we're going to look at his test of pleasure, of work, and thirdly, of wisdom, three things that on the surface seem to be unassailably good. And so let's find out. Firstly, this look at the pursuit of pleasure. You see there in verse 1, Solomon invites us on his test, this evaluation of pleasure. And you see the controlling posture for this pursuit of pleasure in verse 1, it's found in that phrase, enjoy yourself. In other words, whatever it is that you think will give you pleasure, then go for it, indulge in it. Should Solomon answer the catechism question, what is man's chief end? At this point, Solomon would say, man's chief end is to glorify himself and to enjoy himself in every way possible. And of course, it's not all that hard to hear the modern man applaud Solomon's attitude, is it? We have similar mantras today when we say things like, follow your heart or be true to yourself. Whatever it is that affirms you, then indulge in it. It is acceptable. And you see in verse 3, he chooses this instrument that many choose as a pathway to immediate pleasure, that of alcohol. He says he cheers his body with wine. And Solomon seems to be taking Paul's advice from 1 Corinthians, that if Christ is not raised, then let's eat and drink and be merry because tomorrow we die, and that's it. And so in a word, we're witnessing a kind of hedonism. A hedonism, simply put, is the pursuit of pleasure as an end in itself, seeking pleasure for the sake of pleasure, to gratify one's desires being the highest good that you could obtain to. Now, kids, I could explain hedonism this way. Imagine you are playing a game and a grown-up comes up to you and asks you, kid, why are you playing this game? And you would say, because it is fun. And the grown-up says, well, why are you having fun? And you might pause for a minute and go, what a silly grown-up thing to ask. Having fun is the point of having fun. You have fun simply in order to enjoy the fun. There's nothing beyond having fun. And in some ways, this is the attitude that Solomon is having us consider, pleasure as an end in itself. And, of course, we don't need to limit this indulgence to alcohol alone, right? This would include various kinds of pleasure. And you see there in verse 2, Solomon mentions imbibing laughter as a vehicle of joy. And so, we could easily extrapolate out this experiment and you could think of all the pleasures that we have in our modern day, our endless appetite, for instance, for amusement and entertainment, the binge-watching of various media, the average American today now nearly logging 30 hours per week of screen time in search of pleasure. You could think of our gluttony over comfort foods. You could think of our so-called retail shopping or shopping therapy, as it's sometimes called, this lust for the consumption of goods. Or perhaps above all, you would see it in our behemoth qualities and quantities of sexual indulgences, whether it be pornography, lust, fornication, and so on and so forth. But such pursuits of pleasure can also be quite refined and quite sophisticated. You could think of the pursuit of pleasure in the academic realm, athletic pleasure, artistic pleasure. These can be very polished pursuits. You can imagine C.S. Lewis prior to his conversion reading and enjoying a Boethius or a Dante, something that would be torture to most of us, but to him, this was true pleasure. And so the point is, whether it's the homeless man drinking malt liquor or whether it's the elite entrepreneur sipping Napa Valley's finest, it really matters not. Because you see at the end of verse 2, Solomon's diagnostic is this question, quote, what use is it? Stack up all this pleasure, what does it amount to? Does the pursuit of happiness as an end in itself actually bring about the happiness? Can we get to pleasure, grab it, wrestle it to the ground and hold on to it with any kind of lasting permanence? Or are we just grasping at the wind? Now most of us have neither the capacity nor the ability nor the funds to actually live out a fully hedonistic pursuit of pleasure, right? Our bank account would prohibit us. And that's one of the benefits of Ecclesiastes as wisdom literature. Solomon runs ahead of us and he does the experiment on our behalf and he shows us here are the dead end roads. And so while we may not engage in unrestrained hedonism, is it not the case that we quietly whisper to ourselves that all things being equal, wouldn't it be nice to have just a little bit more? Maybe just a little bit bigger or better home. Maybe just a little bit more in the bank account. Maybe just a little bit more to eat or to drink, just a little bit more gratification, a little bit more indulgence. Indeed, the world's mantra and our fallen flesh daily preach to us, enjoy the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. The world declares, enjoy yourself and as Scripture says, deny yourself, take up your cross and follow the Lord Jesus Christ. For Christ as the greater Solomon was tested by even greater pleasures than he was. You remember Satan's temptation to the Lord Jesus Christ, how front loaded it was with pleasure that Satan came to Christ and told him, you can have all the kingdoms of the world and you can have them right now and you don't need to endure the pain of the cross. You can have all the pleasure you're seeking for. All you need to do is bow down and to worship me. And our Lord Jesus showed us that pleasure is never a final end in itself, that he endured all things for the sake of true joy, for the joy that was set before him, the joy of the God in whose presence are pleasures evermore. Well, Solomon continues on with this pleasure scavenger hunt, but instead of the fleeting pleasures of wine and laughter, now he sets his sights higher and he channels productivity as a means to pleasure. So you can scan verses four through eight and see how he's now turning to getting things done. And this section reads like he's kind of building another Garden of Eden 2.0. He doesn't build a home. We see he builds houses. He doesn't build a vineyard. He builds vineyards, gardens, parks, pools for irrigation. He multiplies his estates with workers and flocks. He accumulates the wealth of silver and gold. Obviously, you know, Spotify back then, but he has one better. He gets male and female singers to come and sing for him, live music at the snap of a finger, right from soprano to bass. He's got it. And so, verse nine, he gives himself this honest performance review of his productivity and he declares, quote, I became great, I surpassed all who were before me. And most importantly, he says, when I reflect back over my work, when I'm in the recliner and I'm looking out and I'm surveying my estate and surveying what my hands have done. Verse 10, he says, my heart found pleasure in all my toil. And this was my reward for my toil. Indeed, most of us are not going to build a Fortune 500 company. We're not going to sit in the C suite one day, but you can surely appreciate what he's saying. You, too, enjoy the reward of a job well done. You, too, enjoy setting a goal and then obtaining that goal, the satisfaction of setting out to do something and accomplishing it, the pleasures of productivity and the drive of ambition and the greatness that it yields. But now it's time to score the test. Remember, the opening verse, Solomon said, I'm running an experiment on pleasure. What benefit is it? So, verse 11, he comes down off of his dopamine high, he grades this test of pleasure, and you see the score there given once again in verse 11 is that of vanity, striving after the wind, nothing to be gained under the sun. There's a now famous interview with the great quarterback Tom Brady, who is simply known as the GOAT, which stands for the greatest of all time. And this interviewer is asking Brady and simply asking him, Tom, what does it feel like? You are the greatest of all time, surpassing all before you and anyone who's going to come after you. What's it like? And Brady has this rare moment of clarity because all he could muster to say was, quote, there's got to be more than this. This can't be all that it's cracked up to be. And the interviewer, taken aback, asked, well, what then is the answer? And all Brady could say was, I wish I knew. I wish I knew. And for now, this is right where the preacher parks us. We're meant to be shaking our heads in this kind of dumbfounded daze that all the pleasures that man thinks will surely deliver happiness, whether it's at the bottom of a bottle or at the top of success, have in fact failed to deliver true joy. And so goes the pursuit of pleasure, full of promise, empty of answers. But as a good scientist, Solomon now moves on to experiment number two. He has eliminated pleasure, but there's still so much more to go. So next hypothesis, verse 12, he turns to these two poles of wisdom and of folly. And it seems like we're finally gaining ground because verse 13, Solomon gives us this positive test result because you see, he says there, oh, there is more gain in wisdom than in folly, more gain in light than in darkness. The wise person has eyes in his head. The fool walks around in darkness and the imagery is great, right? You have this image of a fool stumbling around in the dark, unaware of his direction, tripping over himself. Scripture is full of descriptions of the blinding effects of sin and folly. But the wise man, he can see the path and he can follow the path. And so Solomon can finally appraise something as advantageous, namely wisdom. Indeed, this is where many a moralist and humanist may land, right? They might say, forget self-indulgence, forget seeking pleasure. Real pleasure is found in a virtuous and upright life. One thinks of the rise of Jordan Peterson, took the world by storm simply by saying, seek moral responsibility. You think of the average man who simply expresses it as, quote, be a good person. And yet, while Solomon can say that wisdom is better, something gives him pause, something gives him reserve. He can't say it's an unqualified good because there's something that imposes itself upon wisdom and cuts her off. You hear it in verse 14, he says, and yet I perceived the same event happens to all of them. So I said in my heart, what happens to the fool is going to happen to me. Why have I been so very wise? Now, at this point, we might say, Solomon, quit being so demanding, quit being so restless and rigorous in your evaluations. But we need to see it's actually a very wise question to evaluate wisdom, right? The simple man is not asking himself this question because, remember, we are in search of something that is, quote, not in vain, something of permanent quality. And so wisdom, while good, is still subject to this event, this enemy, this great equalizer, that whether you're very wise or very foolish, it really doesn't matter. This bell tolls for you. And so verses 16 and 17 unfold for us that this event is, of course, the event of death. The death is no respecter of persons, the death comes for the wise or for the fool, that, as Proverbs says, shall is never satisfied. It has an endless appetite. As Hebrews says, it is appointed to a man to die once. And one of death's great skills is that it wipes you out of memory. It makes as though as though you and I were never actually here. Now, the great novelist Leo Tolstoy was haunted by these thoughts, and he mused over them and he asked himself, quote, What will come of my whole life? Why should I live? Why should I wish for anything or do anything? Because is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy? And so Solomon says time to grade this test, test number two of wisdom, and though wisdom is commended, though it's better than folly, he comes to the conclusion in verse 17 that no amount of wisdom can outmaneuver death. And so it, too, is rendered as vanity. And now Solomon grows to hate life itself. But as an undeterred detective, he now proceeds to his third experiment for our consideration today, the test of toil. As in our day, we have workaholism, toxic workplaces, job insecurity, work-life balance issues. This is a test that probably doesn't need much explaining. You see him take up that word there, toil, in verse 18, by which he means labor, work. But work tends with the exhaustion that work brings along with it. And once again, you get his diagnosis up front. Verse 18, the preacher says, I hated my toil. And he gives us two reasons why he hated his toil. First, he says, because I have to leave my work to the man who will come after me. And who knows? Maybe he'll be wise. Maybe he'll be a fool. So you see, the problem is not that Solomon couldn't go and do profitable work. The problem is, where does it go when I die? Everything that I worked so hard to build, it's going to go to someone who did not work for it. There's this problem of succession. And of course, you may know that for Solomon, this proved to be all too true. We know of Solomon's greatness in building the kingdom, in building God's temple. And yet his immediate successor and his son, King Rehoboam, lost, we could call it, ten twelfths of what Solomon worked so hard to build. And the kingdom was split. And the wonderful, beautiful temple that Solomon built was razed to the ground, completely destroyed. We know this cycle well, don't we? We all know stories of the person who rises up out of utter poverty against all odds, and he wants nothing more than to give his children the life and the privileges that he never had, only to then see his children squander it all away. History is full of the cycle of rags to riches, back again to rags. But Solomon has a second reason for his despair. Not only is the fruit of his labor spoiled, but the labor itself is spoiled. Verse 23, you hear this echo of Eden and the curse of thorns and thistles brought upon Adam with these simple words in verse 23, quote, work is a vexation. And then you see the anxiety that work induces in verse 23, that even in the night, in other words, God's appointed time for rest, even in the night, the heart does not rest. I will remember from the days of corporate America that when deadlines were approaching, when performance reviews were coming up, when the quota is not being reached, when customers are unhappy, when the boss or the board are unhappy, it wasn't too long before you started to see dark circles forming underneath everyone's eyes because no one was sleeping. You couldn't rest. You couldn't stop. And even if you did stop, there'd be this voice inside of everyone's head saying, get back to work. Why are you resting? You ought to be working. Of course, that voice tucked you into bed at night for a restless night of sleep. And so we're reminded that while we are, of course, to work hard, to work with excellence, that whatever our hand finds us to do, we should do it with all of our might. But there's a great difference, of course, between giving it your all versus giving all of yourself into and over to your work. As Proverbs says, do not toil to accumulate wealth. Be wise enough to desist. The moment you set your eyes on money, it will sprout wings and it will fly away. And so Solomon concludes this threefold test of pleasure, wisdom and work, and they're all rendered guilty of striving after the wind. And when we look inside of Solomon's soul at this point, what's a little unique is that we start to see his hopelessness emerge. You could glance at verse 20 and see that he uses that word there, despair. It's this word of utter hopelessness and desperation. Believe it or not, that Hebrew word for despair is actually the same word that Job uses when Job describes himself as a man of despair. Now, that's rather interesting, isn't it? Could you imagine Job and Solomon sit down for a conversation to swap their sorrows? And Job says, I'll start. Let me tell you about my sorrow. My children are all dead. I've got boils covering me from head to toe. My wife tells me to curse God and just die. Solomon says, I hear you, brother. I can sympathize. Let me tell you about my despair. I've accumulated vast sums of wealth and treasure, and I only have a limited time to enjoy them. And I'm not sure where they're going to go when I die. We're probably restraining Job from attacking Solomon at this point. We say, Solomon, enough with the melodrama. Quit being so out of touch with reality. These are first world problems, if there ever were. But let us be reminded of the perspective that Ecclesiastes is having us adopt. This wisdom literature is saying, look through life under the sun and ask the hard question. What does it all amount to? In the final analysis, all your pleasure, all your toil, what profit is there actually in it? And so in that qualified sense, Solomon might just well turn to Job and say, I hear you, your suffering is acute. It is very painful. It's heavy. It's more than mine, but it's for a short season and God redeems it in the end. But what I'm talking about, Job, is a lifetime jail sentence of a kind of toiling that is always marked by vexation. And in the end, no matter what you do or how well you do it or how hard you try, it profits nothing. It is blown away by the wind. And so I said at the very beginning, Ecclesiastes is not a message of despair or hopelessness. And it probably fair at this point to say, well, prove it right, because it seems that despair is all that we're left with. We need to see that Solomon has actually set us up for profound joy because he has stripped down to the very bone our most precious pursuits and our daily occupations. He has shown us that pleasure for pleasure's sake will never satisfy. He has demonstrated that all the wisdom in the world cannot overcome death, and he has shown us that if we pour ourselves into our work, eventually that work will be poured out and it will be lost forever. But he's not done because now all that remains is true joy. And you see, verse 24, he finally reaches a kind of conclusion. He says this in verse 24, there is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. Now, this is not what we might expect him to say after all, he just masterfully proved that things like these eating and drinking are vain and empty. He just proved that toil is a vexation. I would expect him to say, give up on those things. Don't look for any kind of joy in those things. And yet right here, he says, find enjoyment in these things, things as simple as eating and drinking. One of the things that I love about Ecclesiastes is that it is a death blow to a kind of Gnostic or ascetic approach to the Christian life. What is a Gnostic approach? Well, a Gnostic approach would be the simple idea that all earthly pleasures, all earthly things are inherently evil and to be avoided. So material things like food, drink, laughter, music, sex, sports, money, entertainment, these things and things like them are bad and therefore are to be avoided. And so far, it would be easy to misunderstand Solomon as saying that, well, since everything in the world is vain, just withdraw from the world, become a hermit, become a kind of spiritual monk and seek for a higher spiritual plane above all these earthly things. It would be a kind of hyper spiritual approach to the Christian life. And if you've grown up in church at all, no doubt you have encountered some kind of hyper spirituality that is very suspicious of anything earthly. But let us have Scripture correct us and refine us here at once again, verse 24, there is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. Notice that the joy is in the things of creation, in the toil, despite the headache of the nine to five in eating and drinking. This would mean joy in a good steak, joy in a good cup of coffee, joy in a good glass of wine with good friends, having good laughter. Solomon says there's nothing better than that. Now, if you were to stop talking at this point, we still might be a little confused. Right. We hear him say, find enjoyment in these things. But I know for me, I would still ask, well, Solomon, how am I supposed to do that? How would I find joy in these things if they're all vain and subject to meaninglessness? And so we see Solomon answers and his answer is nothing less than the gift of God. It is nothing less than the grace of God. It is nothing less than the gift from the God in whose presence is the fullness of joy. Verse 24 continues, and he says this, enjoy these things, eating and drinking, for it is from the hand of God. Verse 25, for apart from God, who can do something as simple as eating and drinking? Who can have enjoyment in these things apart from God? For to the one who pleases God, God gives wisdom and knowledge and joy. But to the sinner, he gives the business of gathering and collecting only to give to the one who pleases God. As Solomon simply saying, there are two and only two kinds of people under the sun, those who are in right covenant with God and those who are not those with whom God is well pleased and those with whom God is not well pleased. And he says, for those with whom he is not pleased, the sinner who is not in Christ, we see is lost. That is to be without God's favor. It is the worst of times. It is a life of vexation. It is a cog in the machine. It is as the psalmist says to the crooked. God makes himself seem torturous. And God assigns to them this busy work, gathering and collecting only to one day hand it over to the righteous, a transfer that happens in this lifetime at times, a transfer that will certainly happen in the life to come. Then, as Revelation says, the wealth of the nations will be brought into the kingdom of God in the last day and to Jesus Christ will go all honor, wealth, wisdom and might. And so if you're here this morning and not a Christian, you should be asking, well, what then is it to please God? What does it mean to be well pleasing to God? I trust you've seen this morning that one thing is clear. Man's striving amounts to nothing. God's giving amounts to everything that you're striving, your work, your so-called attempts at righteousness are not pleasing to God. What is pleasing is simply receiving, receiving the gift of God, receiving the grace of God. That is the Lord Jesus Christ, for he alone is the only one worthy to pay for sinners sins. He is the only one worthy to hang upon the cross. And it is through Christ and Christ alone that man is pleasing to God to simply trust and obey him. This is pleasing to our God, because as we are in covenant with God, only then do we rightly relate to anything else. And so to the one whom God has is pleased with comes this joy directly from the hand of the father. You see there in that verse, not only does God give the gift, our daily bread, for example, but God gives our ability to enjoy that gift as a rather to looking at the things of the world that we look to him, the giver of joy. Every single instance of joy is meant to draw us to him, to find our deepest satisfaction in him. That not only is our God not against pleasure, it is in him that we have the fullness of pleasure, even in something as simple as eating and drinking. Oh, well, to close, I would say this truth was captured so well in that great film, Chariots of Fire, that film that compared two of Britain's greatest runners, the one pleasing to God, the other not pleasing to God, the one in Christ, the one not in Christ and that first runner, the one not in Christ. You see throughout the film that he ran and he ran hard and he ran fast. Well, it's clear was that he was running to outrun his demons, he was running to give himself glory, he was running for the pursuit of self-pleasure, he ran and he ran and he ran and he never once ran into joy. He was striving after the wind and you compare that to the other runner, the one in Jesus Christ, Eric Liddell, who honored God and all that he did, who knew the joy of Jesus Christ, who sought to please God and all that he did. And so when he was asked, Eric, why do you run? He had that wonder, wonderful, simple answer when he said, I run because when I run, I feel God's pleasure, that is the joy of Jesus Christ under the sun. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we praise you, you are the God and whose presence is indeed the fullness of joy. That you would give to us sinners this great joy of whether eating or drinking, that whatever it is that we do, we might glorify you. In our daily occupations, in our toil under the sun, knowing that ultimately it is not all in vain, for you are the God above who has redeemed us in Jesus Christ, who has given us a purpose beyond the grave because your beloved son accomplished all the work that you gave him to do, that death could not hold him down, that you have raised him up, that he is seated at your right hand and that we, though still sinners, have already died, that we have already raised with Jesus Christ and our life is hidden in him. And so we pray we would know more and more of the joy of Jesus Christ that would come out our lives in something as simple as eating and drinking. In his name we pray. Amen.
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