Ecclesiastes 2:2-11

As some of you will know, Malcolm Mugridge was one of the most famous journalist personalities of the last century.

!

That's success.

Furnished with a little money and even a little fame, even the elderly, if they care to, may partake in trendy diversions.

That's pleasure.

It might happen once in a while that something I said or wrote sufficiently heated for me to persuade myself that it represented a serious impact on our time.

That's fulfillment.

Yet I say to you, and I beg you to believe me, multiply these tiny triumphs by a million and add them all together, and they are nothing, less than nothing, measured against one sip of that living water Jesus Christ offers.

To the spiritually thirsty, irrespective of who or what they are.

Now that's precisely the lesson that we're going to learn today.

In the language of scripture, in the language of the prophet Jeremiah, the lesson is here to turn from drinking of idolatry's broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

To the Lord, Jeremiah 2.13, the fountain of living water.

For in the language of our Savior itself, it is to drink from him the water that quenches our thirst forever.

A spring welling up unto eternal life.

However, before we get to that living water that God offers to us in Christ, we first must walk through this waterless wilderness of coalesced testing of pleasure.

Recently, my wife and I were watching the BBC's superb rendition of Dickens' Little Dorrit.

As many of you know, Dickens had quite a knack for naming people and places within his novels.

I think of some of the people, the characters.

There's Jeremiah Flintwich, Mr. Chocum Child, Uriah Heap, Volumina Deadlock, great name for an elders meeting.

Volumina Deadlock.

And then, of course, Ebenezer Scrooge.

And then you think of some of the places he created.

The Curiosity Shop, Bleak House, Crooks, Bottle Shop.

Well, here in proper Dickensian form, the person, I won't call him Koalef is the Hebrew name, but I'll call him King Solomon.

King Solomon.

That's the person.

He takes us to a place.

And the place he's going to take us to, I'll call the Hollow House of Hedonism.

The Hollow House of Hedonism.

See, this house is filled.

It's filled with wine.

It's filled with women, with garden, with gold, with songs and servants.

But it's hollow.

It's hollow when it comes to satisfying our deepest needs.

Now, within the House of Hedonism, there are many rooms.

Now, King Solomon is going to show us four of them here in our text in Ecclesiastes 2, 1 through 11.

He'll show us the private pub.

He'll take us then to the garden, to the treasury, and finally to the bedroom.

So first we come to what's called the private pub.

Now, I know pub stands for public, and so private pub is seemingly a contradictory phrase.

But as I attempted to think of a place in our society that offers what Solomon first tested,

pub, I thought, fits best.

It's private, however, because it's in his own house.

And it seems to be for his soul entertainments.

So look with me at verses 1 through 3 of Ecclesiastes 2.

And then I'm also going to jump to the middle of verse 8 as well.

I'm reordering things just a bit in this first room because we find these pleasures,

these three pleasures I'll talk about in a minute, in the pub.

So the pleasures of laughter he finds, the pleasures of alcohol, and the pleasures of music.

I said in my heart, verses 1 through 3,

Come now, I will test you with pleasure, enjoy yourself.

But behold, this also was havel, vanity.

I said of laughter, it is mad, of pleasure.

What use is it?

I search with my heart to cheer my body with wine,

my heart still guiding me with wisdom.

And how to lay hold of folly,

so I might see what was good for the children of man to do under heaven

during the few days of his life.

And then if you go to the middle of verse 8, 8b, it reads,

I got or I acquired singers, both men and women.

Now we're later going to revisit the results of his pleasure experiment,

these verses that are in here.

Behold, this was vanity, or what use was it?

We'll do that once we've gone through, once we've traveled through the four rooms.

So for now, we're in the private pub,

and here Solomon is enjoying laughter and alcohol and music.

First, he had the best music of the day, seemingly on a daily basis.

In verse 7, he begins his list of household possessions.

He says this, I bought male and female slaves and so on.

And then in verse 8, he says, I got singers.

You sort of wonder, did he just buy singers like he would a slave?

Or did he just hire singers for special occasions?

Well, based on the context, my sense is they simply served in his house like his servants did

and his concubines did.

But whatever the case, when he wanted music, he got it.

This is kind of the ancient version of the radio with one station available, choral music.

However, unlike today's radio, it was, of course, it was live music.

It was very expensive music and slightly exotic.

It was exotic because if you remember from the Old Testament, in the temple choir, only men sang.

And here is Solomon having both men and women.

This rare musical experience, this rare musical pleasure in those days was not so rare for the pleasure preacher.

And then alongside the music was the alcohol with his heart still guiding him with wisdom.

That is with a certain mindful self control or objective indulgence, if that makes sense.

He tests wine.

He tests wine to see if it will cheer him enough to forget the few days.

In other words, to forget his life, to forget to find some happiness through wine in the happy hour of his life.

And with, of course, the wine comes laughter, which is touched on in verse two.

Like the fool in Proverbs who laughs while he is unwittingly playing with fire.

Solomon's private pub is alive with frivolity.

Another song is sung.

Another round is served.

Another joke is told.

We close the door.

And there's nothing more to see or hear or smell, but the blur of a body lifting another glass.

The subtle sound of bronze echoing in the air.

And the faint residue of doom walking about the room.

Onward and outward, we move to the next room.

For the next place, we come to a garden.

From the pub to a garden.

We open these cedar French doors out of the private pub into the most beautiful garden east of Eden.

Look at verses four through seven.

Look at Solomon's amazing architectural and agricultural achievements.

He says, starting in verse four, I made great works.

I built houses and I planted vineyards for myself.

I made myself gardens and parks and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees.

I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees.

And then to keep all this going, he needed to employ a massive workforce.

So I bought male and female slaves.

I had slaves who were born in my house.

I also had great possessions of herds and flocks more than anyone who had been before me in Jerusalem.

The commentator Derek Kidner writes here that Solomon has created a secular garden of Eden.

Where there are no forbidden fruits.

And secular is the right term because God and God's command for the man to cultivate creation is nowhere found here in Ecclesiastes.

But Solomon is actually doing all that Adam was supposed to do.

The verbs that are used here to plant, to water, to make the same exact verbs you'd find in Hebrew in Genesis 2.

As are the nouns.

The nouns like garden, all the fruits of the trees.

Same as Genesis.

So Genesis is being echoed here in Ecclesiastes 2.

But it's as if its nouns and its verbs, they bounce off the proud preacher.

I, he says, not God or God through me, but I made great works.

I build houses.

I plant vineyards.

I made myself gardens and parks.

I planted fruit trees.

I made myself pools.

I planted some trees.

I planted some trees.

I planted some trees.

I planted some trees.

I planted some trees.

I planted some trees.

I planted some trees.

I planted some trees.

I planted some trees.

I planted some trees.

I planted some trees.

I planted some trees.

I planted some trees.

I planted some trees.

I planted some trees.

I planted some trees.

I planted some trees.

I planted some trees.

I planted some trees.

!

I planted some trees.

Out of this rock.

Well, here in Ecclesiastes 2, 4 through 7,

we see a self-made man who's not only in a sense made himself,

he's made so much more around him.

Like God, and with God-like control and creativity,

he's created this little ideal world within the fallen world.

It's really like lifestyles of the rich and famous on steroids.

But again, there's no time to stop here.

In this room, he's moving us along.

No time to gawk or even to covet what he has or what he's done.

We're being moved along not only by the author,

but by the photographer from Better Homes and Gardens.

He wants to be certain to outdo the guy from Architectural Digest last month.

So Solomon's servants take us away.

And they take us back into the house, down this narrow stairway,

deep beneath the wine cellar, past the reporter from Forbes magazine,

and through this huge iron door into the treasury.

The treasury.

But how does Solomon afford all this stuff?

The houses, the vineyards, the pool, the parks, the servants, the singers, and so on?

Well, the answer is found here.

Verse 8,

I also gathered for myself silver and gold, the treasure of kings and provinces.

Now that's just an understatement if you know anything about the life of Solomon.

Or if you've read about Solomon in 1 Kings 10, for example,

where we read about his incredible wealth that was obtained through taxes and through tributes,

things that were given to him, and through trade.

I'll read just a few verses from 1 Kings 10.

Now the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was 666 talents.

So how much is that?

Well, it's 25 tons of gold.

In other words, it's a staggering fortune.

In American currency, it's hundreds of millions of dollars,

maybe even a billion dollars a year he was bringing in.

Then read on.

So here's a sampling of what he did with all this gold.

King Solomon made 200 large shields of beaten gold.

600 shekels of gold went into each shield.

The king also made an ivory throne.

Great thing to do.

Ivory is expensive too, isn't it?

An ivory throne.

And then what did he do?

He overlaid the whole thing with gold.

So to sum up, if you read 1 Kings 10,

money was not an issue.

Money was not an issue for Solomon.

Whatever he wanted, he got.

He had the Chateau in Switzerland,

the beach house in the Bahamas,

the penthouse in Paris.

He was the primary stockholder of BP and Ford.

He had that Rupert Murdoch snap of the finger to him.

He had Steve Jobs' business genius to him.

And most importantly, he had the Midas touch.

Everything he touched turned to gold.

Gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold.

Thirteen times in 1 Kings 10, gold is mentioned.

But gold is cold.

It can't embrace you.

It can't touch you.

It can't make love to you.

And so Solomon dialogued with himself.

Might the pleasures of the human body,

might that be the answer?

Let me see if women can quench this strange melancholy

that still exists, that's not satiated by money

and the stuff that money can buy.

Now get this, as the book of 1 Kings transitions

from Solomon's wealth in chapter 10

to Solomon's women in chapter 11,

so too does Ecclesiastes 2.8.

It transitions in that last verse,

I also gathered for myself many concubines

for the light of the children of Adam,

of man.

A man's heart is how it might be translated.

John Donne wrote to Solomon here

that he hides none of his sins.

Solomon preaches himself

and he pours out his soul in that book of Ecclesiastes.

That's true, but it is a tragic,

it's a tragic tale that he tells.

The compromise of the covenant

is what led to his spiritual downfall

in the divided kingdom,

which is perhaps why it is listed last

among his pleasure experiences.

In other words, for emphasis.

Now the Hebrew word here for concubines,

it comes from the same word for breasts.

It's why some translators think

we should actually translate it breasts.

He had many breasts,

or he had abundant breasts.

And however you translate it,

it's a crude reference.

It's a crude reference to women

who are used as pleasure objects,

for sexual pleasure.

Now while the king might have married

for political reasons,

for military stability,

that's not the stress that's given here.

Sex is the stress.

Sexual immorality is the stress.

Solomon was anti-Genesis

as much as he was anti-Jesus.

That is, he was against God's command

from the beginning

that it should be one man

and one woman for life.

But our culture is the same, isn't it?

It's anti-Genesis.

It's anti-Jesus.

Sadly, this bedroom scene here

isn't anything we haven't seen before.

While our sex-crazed culture,

we gasp at some of the sex scandals

that make the news.

We don't gasp at a lot of other things.

We don't gasp about teenage promiscuity

or best-selling books about erotic bondage.

We don't gasp about the hundred billion,

I have to look at the number,

hundred billion dollar porn industry.

We don't gasp at easy divorce

due to acceptable, inevitable adultery.

And now we don't even gasp

at homosexual behavior.

Conventional morality has been shelved.

Biblical ethics are labeled outdated

or expired or even worse,

danger, poison.

And what Woody Allen said to the media

about the sexual relationship

with the adopted teenage daughter of his wife,

the heart wants what the heart wants.

It's become our slogan more and more.

We've listened to the seductive sounds

of the sirens to borrow from Homer's Odyssey.

We've sacrificed our souls

on the altar of sexual idolatry.

For what Solomon gives just one line to,

our culture gives 10,000 libraries to.

Solomon's private bedchamber

is now open to public view.

And nobody blushes anymore.

Nobody blushes.

Christian, let's blush.

And let's turn our eyes away.

Let's leave it all behind.

Leave behind this pub and this garden

and the treasury and the bedroom

of this hollow house.

This hollow house of hedonism.

Let's escape for our lives

and not look back.

It's time to flee vanity.

It's time to flee vanity fair.

And it's time to run over

the delectable mountains

through the wicked gates

into the celestial city.

So listen, Solomon's pleasure test

was an absolute failure.

And he admits as much

in verses 1 and 2 and 9 through 11.

And if you look at those verses,

just notice the word in the ESV,

behold.

I love that they translate it.

Behold.

I said in my heart,

now come,

I will test you with pleasure.

Enjoy yourself.

But behold.

Behold what?

Well, this was also vanity.

Like smoke rising up in the air.

Nothing of consequence.

I said it.

Laughter is mad.

If pleasure,

what use is it?

And then we have the same bitter disillusionment

put differently in summary form

in verses 9 through 11.

So I became great

and I surpassed all who were before me

in Jerusalem.

Also my wisdom remained with me.

And whatever my eyes,

outward delights,

desired,

I did not keep from them.

My heart inward delivers

from no pleasure.

Then I considered all that my hands have done.

All the toil that I expended

in doing it.

And behold.

Behold what?

All this vanity

and a striving after the wind.

Nothing was to be gained

under the sun.

In the popular sitcom cartoon,

The Simpsons,

Homer Simpson,

in one of the episodes,

he says to his boss,

Mr. Burns,

Mr. Burns,

you're the richest man I know.

To which Burns replies,

Yes,

but I'd trade it all in for more.

Well that is not how Solomon feels

the morning after.

The morning after his

years long pleasure party.

Instead you've got to hear him humming

those honest lines

from the rock band

Nine Inch Nails.

What have I become?

My sweetest friend.

Everyone I know

goes away in the end.

You could have it all.

You could have it all.

My empire.

My empire of dirt.

At the beginning

and the end of our text,

King Solomon stamps

empire of dirt

across everything in between.

The wine and the women,

empire of dirt.

The gardens and the gold,

empire of dirt.

The songs and the servants,

empire of dirt.

You can have it all.

But why?

Why?

What went wrong

with his pleasure

and possessions experiment

that in the end

he'd call it profitless?

Well,

two reasons he gives

for failure

in this pleasure experiment.

And first is this.

putting self first

ironically fails

to satisfy self.

Putting self first

ironically fails

to satisfy self.

And second,

putting pleasure first

ironically fails

to give pleasure.

The first failure

breaks the second commandment

you should love others

as much as you love yourself.

The second failure

breaks the first

and greatest commandment

you should love God

with all your heart

and your mind

and your soul

and your strength.

So first I want to talk

about this issue

of self.

Self.

I've already noted

in verses 4-7

how much Solomon

spoke about himself.

But further notice

how self just

saturates this section

of scripture.

The word I

along with me

and my and myself

they just dominate

these verses.

The word I

is used 18 times

in this little section

of scripture.

The word my

13 times.

Me

4 times.

Myself.

4 times.

Even the word

yourself.

Enjoy yourself.

It's Solomon

talking to himself.

It's a lot of

self-focus.

And it's not just

the language

it's also the focus

of the accomplishments.

The list is all

self-serving.

It's not philanthropic.

That is on behalf

of other people.

He doesn't mention

anything about

building public parks

so the populace

can enjoy it.

He says this

I build houses

houses.

And I built

gardens or

vineyards for

myself.

For myself.

The sole purpose

of doing it.

But here it's all

artistically intentional

what he's doing.

He's written this

for us to see

what he saw

and what he

experienced.

He boasts in

his achievements.

He boasts in

his enjoyments

because he's

underscoring

ironically

their inadequacy.

And it's brilliant.

I think the

literary artistry

here is awesome

but so is the

practical point.

We all know

that self-centeredness

and self-indulgence

never satisfies

long.

Right?

Why is that the

case?

Well it's common

grace.

It's the way

God has designed

us.

You can call it

the pleasure

paradox.

If we answer

the Westminster

Shorter's

Catechism's

first question

what is the

chief end

of man

by saying

man's chief

end is to

glorify himself

and enjoy

himself as

much as

possible.

We'll always

discover that

those earthly

pleasures that

we grasp so

tightly in our

hands it's as

if like sand

they eventually

fall through our

fingers.

You see

pleasure has a

way of promising

more than it

can actually

produce.

David Hubbard

says this

that its

advertising agency

is better than

its manufacturing

department.

The one

drink, the

one sexual

fling, the

one contest

won, one

project accomplished,

one wild

party, none

of these or

all of them

put together

can bring any

human being

satisfaction.

The sin of

selfishness, it

actually won't

satisfy and

neither will the

other sin, the

sin of idolatry.

Putting pleasure

first ironically

fails to give

us the pleasure

that we're

looking for.

Rabbi Harold

Kushner wrote a

book on

Ecclesiastes and

it was titled

When All You

Ever Wanted

Wasn't

Enough.

Well, I don't

think it's the

best summary of

the whole book.

It's a great

summary of this

section of

Ecclesiastes.

When all you

ever wanted

isn't enough.

Why isn't it

enough?

It isn't

enough if God

isn't first.

John Wesley

put it this way,

there is no

happiness, true

lasting happiness

outside of God.

Listen, many of

the pleasures

that are

mentioned here,

such as

laughing,

planting vineyards,

drinking wine,

creating,

maintaining a

garden, are

all pleasures

you'll find

commended in

the Bible.

In fact, in the

wisdom literature

of the Bible,

which I teach

for a living,

I think especially

in the book of

Proverbs and

Job, you'll

find that

pleasures and

possessions in

fact can be

rewards of

righteousness.

Even throughout

Ecclesiastes,

pleasure is

constantly

commended, as

we'll find out

tonight.

So what's the

problem then?

What's the

problem with the

pleasures that

are listed here

in 2, 1

through 11?

Well, the

problem is that

some of these

pleasures are

immoral, and

that all of

them are

idolatrous.

All of them

are idolatrous.

I'm the Lord

your God who

brought you out

of the land of

Egypt, out of

the house of

slavery, therefore

you shall have

no other gods

before me.

Solomon put

pleasure, put

pleasures before

the Lord God,

before the

worship of the

Lord God.

So then here,

the lesson of

course, is that

when God comes

first, when we

worship the

divine, then

genuine human

satisfaction follows.

That's the way

it works.

Christ satiates

the soul.

It's a good

way.

He brings that

water we talked

about at the

beginning of the

sermon.

He satiates the

soul.

In the book of

Philippians, Paul

commands Christians,

I think it's four

times, to rejoice

in the Lord, rejoice

in the Lord, rejoice

in the Lord, rejoice

in the Lord.

Why?

Well, we can

rejoice because

Jesus, as Paul puts

it earlier in

Philippians 2, in

humility, counted

others more

significant than

himself.

He counted

others more

than significant

than himself.

So much so that

he made himself

nothing.

Taking the form

of a servant,

being born in

the likeness of

men and being

found in human

form, he humbled

himself by becoming

obedient to the

point of death, even

death on a cross.

You see, Jesus,

King Jesus, not

King Solomon, but

King Jesus, is the

epitome of

selflessness, not

selfishness.

For our sake, for

our salvation, he

denied the desires

of the flesh.

He denied the

desires of the

eyes and pride in

possessions.

Also, Jesus is the

epitome of putting

God the Father

first.

When Jesus was

tempted by Satan

and later by his

own disciple, by

Peter, to take the

crown before the

cross, to take the

crown instead of the

cross, he wouldn't

bow the knee to

this idol of

temporary power, of

worldly pleasures.

Rather, as Hebrew

puts it, it's for the

joy that was set

before him.

It's such an

interesting phrase.

For the joy set

before him, he

endured the cross.

You see, our Lord,

who taught us to

deny ourselves, to

pick up our

crosses, he didn't

do so because he

was some sort of

cosmic killjoy.

Rather, because he's

the one who knows

the way to the

pleasures of God.

In the presence of

God, there is

fullness of joy, the

psalmist tells us.

At his right hand

are pleasures

forevermore.

He alone knows

how and where to

enter into the

Father's joy.

For what does it

profit a man to

gain the whole

world and forfeit

his life?

Nothing.

Vanity.

The hollow house

of hedonism is

hollow.

But what does it

profit a man or a

woman or a child

to lose his life

for Jesus' sake

and for the sake

of the kingdom?

He answers

everything.

Everything.

Blessed are

happy are the

poor in spirit

for theirs is the

kingdom of heaven.

Doesn't get any

bigger than that.

Blessed are those

who mourn for they

shall be comforted.

Blessed are the

meek for they

shall inherit not a

big house like

Solomon's.

They shall inherit

all.

They shall inherit

the earth.

Blessed are those

who hunger and

thirst for righteousness

for they shall be

satisfied.

Satisfied.

My brothers and

sisters, let us

flee.

We're tempted

every day, aren't

we, to flee.

We're tempted to

live in this house

of hedonism.

But let us flee the

house of hedonism

into the hallowed

presence of our

soul-satisfying God.

Let's pray.