Finding Enjoyment

Chasing the Wind  •  Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented   •  25:42
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Welcome

Good morning everyone, and to anyone watching or listening online, good morning as well! Last week we began a new sermon series on the book of Ecclesiastes. If you were here last week and you’re back this morning, you are one brave person! Reading Ecclesiastes can be tough, so thanks for coming back and sticking with it! This morning we are going to look at the second chapter in the book. The first chapter serves as an introduction to the rest of the book. We hear from “The Teacher” (who is most likely Solomon) and how he pretty much thinks life is meaningless. He points out that so much of what we do day in and day out ultimately leads to nothing. That’s not exactly uplifting, but it is something we have to think about. Today, we are going to see some of how Solomon reaches these thoughts. Solomon wants to know what life is about, what the meaning of it is, so he begins an experiment. He goes through a list of different things the world has to offer in order to find some kind of meaning in life. We are going to work through chapter two with The Teacher and his list in order to see what brings meaning to life.

Prayer

Engage

If I were to tell you that my life motto was “I live for pleasure.” what would you think? What would a life look like if that is what a person based their life around? What kinds of things might a person be pursuing? Would you consider this to be a good or bad way to go about life?
While we might know that only seeking pleasure in life is not great, on the surface it sure sounds good! Doesn’t it? If that is how you lived your life it means that you get to do what you want when you want to.

Tension

A person who lives for pleasure can be called a hedonist. A hedonist is described as “a person who believes that the pursuit of pleasure is the most important thing in life.” While we may not typically use that word in our regular conversations, hedonism has become a huge influence on our lives. We might not call ourselves hedonists, but all of us to some extent have probably lived out of that type of life. We hear people say “Do whatever makes you happy” or “Do what makes you feel good.” and part of us believes that this is the best way to live our life. This is how Solomon lived for a period of time. If there is someone who can explain what it means to be a hedonist, it is Solomon. Solomon turns to all kinds of different things in life in order to try to find enjoyment. In chapter two, we see how he puts hedonism to the test to try to find enjoyment in life. Let’s look at chapter two and find out how this goes for Solomon.

Where Do We Find Enjoyment?

Laughter

Ecclesiastes 2:1–3 NIV
1 I said to myself, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good.” But that also proved to be meaningless. 2 “Laughter,” I said, “is madness. And what does pleasure accomplish?” 3 I tried cheering myself with wine, and embracing folly—my mind still guiding me with wisdom. I wanted to see what was good for people to do under the heavens during the few days of their lives.
Solomon starts off by admitting that he experiment with finding meaning in pleasure didn’t work. In his search for meaning the first thing he turned towards was laughter. If there is something that should make you feel good, it’s laughter isn’t it? Laughter is your body’s physical reaction to enjoyment, isn’t it? We might go to a comedy show, watch a funny movie, funny youtube videos, but even though laughter is enjoyable, it doesn’t provide something that you can build your life around. When I was in high school, (even now if I’m honest), my friends and I would go to new comedy movies, pick out the best lines, and then repeat them to each other almost every single day. While there were times of laughter because of it, our friendships and relationships weren’t deepened as a result of quoting funny movie lines. One pastor, Alistair Begg, points out that laughter is fleeting and doesn’t deal with the heavy matters of life. Now, Solomon isn’t saying that laughter is bad. Could you imagine if laughter was bad, this would be a really depressing Sunday. What Solomon means is that laughter and good times are not a solution to life’s problems. They can be helpful when going through a difficult time, it’s good to laugh with friends when life gets tough. But laughter in and of itself does not solve our issues. It can help briefly, but it does not take away life’s problems.
From there Solomon moved to wine. If laughter doesn’t help, surely having more wine will help solve life’s problems. Solomon is testing something here that many people test out for themselves in their life. When you go through a huge life change, perhaps someone close to you died, you lose your job, your finances aren’t in good shape, whatever it may be, one of the common things people do to cope with it is to turn to different substances. One way that we know this is true is by looking at alcohol sales from last year. One study found that during the week of March 21, 2020, when stay at home orders started going out due to the beginning of Covid, alcohol sales jumped. In that week alone, compared to the previous year, alcohol sales jumped 54%. Online sales of alcohol for that same week jumped 262% compared to the same week of 2019. One of the ways that we dealt with the difficulty of covid was to turn to alcohol. Did it help the situation? It might have made you feel good for a night, but it didn’t solve the problems that we were facing. Wine, like laughter, does not provide meaning to life.
Just like laughter though, Solomon isn’t saying that wine is evil and you can’t drink any.
Ecclesiastes 9:7 NIV
7 Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do.
Wine can be a good thing if enjoyed in the way that God intends. However, it can also be a terrible thing if abused. Not only did Solomon try to find meaning in wine, but even in his food and parties. In 1 Kings 4 we read about what his daily meals were like.
1 Kings 4:22–23 NIV
22 Solomon’s daily provisions were thirty cors of the finest flour and sixty cors of meal, 23 ten head of stall-fed cattle, twenty of pasture-fed cattle and a hundred sheep and goats, as well as deer, gazelles, roebucks and choice fowl.
(A cor is about ten bushels)
That was what Solomon and his group went through in just one day! A few estimates have been done, but most believe that this amount of food would have fed between ten and twenty thousand people! Every day Solomon searched for ultimate meaning by having parties full of food, wine, and laughter. But ultimately, none of that worked for him. He then goes on in verse 4 and continues his list of what he has done to find enjoyment and meaning in life.

Possessions

Ecclesiastes 2:4–11 NIV
4 I undertook great projects: I built houses for myself and planted vineyards. 5 I made gardens and parks and planted all kinds of fruit trees in them. 6 I made reservoirs to water groves of flourishing trees. 7 I bought male and female slaves and had other slaves who were born in my house. I also owned more herds and flocks than anyone in Jerusalem before me. 8 I amassed silver and gold for myself, and the treasure of kings and provinces. I acquired male and female singers, and a harem as well—the delights of a man’s heart. 9 I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me. In all this my wisdom stayed with me. 10 I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my labor, and this was the reward for all my toil. 11 Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.
Solomon pursues many of the same things that we still pursue to find enjoyment and satisfaction in life. He built houses, had vineyards, created huge gardens had more flocks than anyone in Jerusalem before him. He stored up silver and gold and all other kinds of things that we would think would make a person satisfied. He held nothing back in his hedonistic stage. If he wanted it, he got it. Anything that he though would bring pleasure to him he pursued it. He had all of this, yet he says it was all meaningless, a chasing after the wind.
Solomon is our example of how the pursuit of pleasure ultimately leads us to nothing. You will never be as wealthy as Solomon was and be able to purchase whatever you like, you won’t be able to host parties for thousands of people with the finest food and wine. You can try to do this and might succeed in some ways, but after studying Ecclesiastes, why would you want to? If Solomon could not find meaning in pleasure, why do we think that we are so different? The truth is that we are not that different from Solomon. You can pursue all of these material things and pleasures in life, but you will feel just as empty as you did before you had them. They might distract you for a while and provide some kind of entertainment, but your heart will be in the same lost state.

Wisdom

So if possessions and pleasure don’t provide meaning to our lives, what else can we turn to? Solomon turns to wisdom to find meaning and purpose.
Ecclesiastes 2:12–16 NIV
12 Then I turned my thoughts to consider wisdom, and also madness and folly. What more can the king’s successor do than what has already been done? 13 I saw that wisdom is better than folly, just as light is better than darkness. 14 The wise have eyes in their heads, while the fool walks in the darkness; but I came to realize that the same fate overtakes them both. 15 Then I said to myself, “The fate of the fool will overtake me also. What then do I gain by being wise?” I said to myself, “This too is meaningless.” 16 For the wise, like the fool, will not be long remembered; the days have already come when both have been forgotten. Like the fool, the wise too must die!
Solomon almost gives a kind of warning to his son and to us in verse 12. What more can the king’s successor do that what has already been done? Nobody can do anything more than what Solomon already has. He wants his son to learn from his mistakes and to realize that there isn’t anything else to pursue because Solomon has tried it all. He finds out that yes, wisdom is better than foolishness. He compares wisdom to light and folly to darkness. Wisdom is helpful just like light. You can see better and do different things better in light compared to darkness, just as wisdom can help you in different situations compared to folly. But then Solomon has a realization. What happens to the wisest person on earth and the most foolish person on earth? They both die. It’s a little blunt, but ultimately in the grand scheme of life, wisdom and knowledge don’t change the outcome of your life. You won’t become smart enough to outwit death. Whether you are wise or a fool, you too will end up dead.
While this is all pretty depressing writing, it gets worse. If pleasure can’t satisfy, if possessions can’t satisfy, if wisdom can’t provide meaning to our lives, well, what now?

Now What?

Ecclesiastes 2:17–23 NIV
17 So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. 18 I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me. 19 And who knows whether that person will be wise or foolish? Yet they will have control over all the fruit of my toil into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This too is meaningless. 20 So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun. 21 For a person may labor with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then they must leave all they own to another who has not toiled for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune. 22 What do people get for all the toil and anxious striving with which they labor under the sun? 23 All their days their work is grief and pain; even at night their minds do not rest. This too is meaningless.
Even though he had everything, Solomon ends up hating life. What is the point of all of this? What do we gain from our work and the skills we learn in our life? If these are the things you are pursuing in life, then you should pay attention to verse 23. All of the work that you are stressing about and anxious over, all of the things that you want in life but don’t have, all of this stuff that keep you up at night thinking about it over and over again. All of it is meaningless. But this section doesn’t end with Solomon just saying that everything is meaningless.

Contentment in God

Ecclesiastes 2:24–26 NIV
24 A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, 25 for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment? 26 To the person who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.
Solomon concludes that there is nothing better than to eat, drink, and find satisfaction in your work. Solomon is going to say similar things throughout the entire book. Enjoy life, enjoy the relationships that you have, enjoy the food you eat and the job you have. These are good gifts that come from God and are blessings to us. Solomon isn’t saying that you shouldn’t laugh, shouldn’t have a house, shouldn’t have a job or seek wisdom. But what he is trying to get us to see is that they don’t provide ultimate meaning. If you cannot see these things as good gifts that come from God, then you won’t find enjoyment in them. That is what sin does to us. Sin takes these good things in life, relationships, work, food, possessions, and distorts them and twists them. Sin makes us look to these things for satisfaction instead of the good God who gives them to us.

Conclusion

There’s this concept of hedonism that pictures it as a treadmill. Seeking out pleasure in life to make you happy is like running on a treadmill. Yeah, you’re doing something, you’re running and spending a whole lot of your energy, but you aren’t going anywhere. No matter what you seek in life for meaning and purpose, if you look anywhere but to God it’s like running on a treadmill you’re whole life. You’re going to be exhausted, but you aren’t going to get anywhere. Stop looking for these things under the sun to provide satisfaction and meaning to your life, and instead look to God. Pursuing our purpose and relationship with God will give us the contentment that we truly need in our life.

Prayer

Communion

A Puritan sat down to his meal and found that he had only a little bread and some water. His response was to exclaim, “What? All this and Jesus Christ, too!”

Contentment is found when we have a correct perspective on life.248

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