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Ecclesiastes Ch.2 Vs. 1-11
“Life in the fast lane“
Intro
Vs. 1-2 Mirth is a word we don’t use much any more isn’t it? Webster’s dictionary describes it as, “Social merriment; hilarity; high excitement of pleasurable feelings in company; noisy, gayety; jollity. Mirth differs from joy and cheerfulness, as always implying noise.” Now we begin to see what he plugged into to find the answer to “what made life worth living”. So often we hear people say, “I’m just not happy!” Solomon recognized that having a good time was obviously fun and one likes to do the things that bring pleasure and this will be seen in laughter.
So he answered the question as to “what makes life worth living” with, “Those things that make me laugh, things that bring a smile to my face.” I just do those things to make myself happy. Now I’m not saying that God loves a miserable Christian in fact Paul tells Timothy that “God gives us richly all we need for our enjoyment.” But I mean we all like to laugh don’t we? But have you ever stopped to realize how many of the world’s funny people commit suicide? It seems to me that those really funny people who we have laughed with and at have been the most miserable people on the earth based upon a look at their lives. Freddy Prinze, John Belushi, Lenny Bruce the list goes on and on.
The outcome Solomon says is twofold:
Laughter brings “Madness!”: The word “madness”comes from the root word which means to “make a show”. In other words Solomon is saying that it is only fun while it lasts. Mirth, “What does it accomplish?”
Next Solomon says that the pursuit of pleasure does not really accomplish anything lasting. Solomon became the party animal. In 1 Kings 4:22-23 we are told what Solomon required per day for his parties in the palace. “The daily food requirements for Solomon’s palace were 150 bushels of choice flour and 300 bushels of meal,ten oxen from the fattening pens, twenty pasture–fed cattle, one hundred sheep or goats, as well as deer, gazelles, roebucks, and choice fowl.”It has been estimated that this menu was enough to feed 10,000 people. Man was that ever a rip-roaring party. Now while being the poster boy for the party life he did so with the aim to see what might be good for mankind.
In other words it was not just senseless hedonism it was partying with a purpose! The outcome of such a lifestyle is again found in his summation, “What does it accomplish?” All it ended up doing was wasting resources! Perhaps that is what famed drummer Ringo Star had in mind with the lyrics, “No thank you please it only makes me sneeze, then it makes it hard to find the door!” Man, when I think of the wasted time and resources I spent on the party life, oh to have the time and money back now!
Vs. 3 PARTY: What we consume. Usually this stage starts around the late teens and continues to the early thirties. by then we are quite literally “burned out” on this lifestyle. “Party here party there” you know, but all that happens is that your resources to live this type of lifestyle become depleted. Not to mention that you start desiring lasting relationships with people, at least ones that you can remember the next day.
Vs. 4-6 PROJECTS: Since the party life was a waste, he decided to seek pleasure in accomplishing great things, houses, vineyards, gardens and water pools. But notice all that he built in these verses we see Solomon refers to why he built what he did. It was all for himself! It took him 14 years to build his house, the pools to water his forests, and stalls to keep his horses are still visible today. Solomon was first an alcoholic then he became a workaholic. Pleasure was in accomplishing projects but even that was empty.
Vs. 7-10 POSSESSIONS: Solomon became the first “Material Guy”. He gathered servants to wait on him, he had servants to wait on his servants. This of course brought him fame, (verse 9) he was a jet setting playboy that had anything he wanted! But throughout this he says that he never lost sight of why he was doing this, which was to see if the pursuit of happiness brought true meaning to life. In fact he says in verse 10 that for a time he found enjoyment in having everything he ever wanted and everyone at his beck and call. 30,000 workers were drafted to work on his projects but in the end they resented him for it.
Vs. 11 In the end Solomon describes three ways in which this lifestyle of pleasure as the purpose for life is only temporary:
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“Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done And on the labor in which I had toiled;”: It was temporary in that all it did was feed self and then self had to labor again to feed itself. It was a vicious cycle, the more he spent the more he had to make to spend and thus he was never truly satisfied.
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“indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind”: It was never enough!
Seeking pleasure was fine but once he had it what he had just enjoyed was no longer enough. Simply put Solomon found that enjoyment decreased unless the pleasure increased above what it was!
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“There was no profit under the sun”: It was only for a moment as it only appeals to the self Solomon discovered you could only escape life through happiness and pleasure temporarily.
Folks, is this journey of Solomon speaking to you? Are you finding out that you have been running after things that are temporary instead of things that are eternal? Why not make a change & do what Paul told the Colossians to do in Ch. 3:1-2 “seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.”
Ecclesiastes 2:12-26
“Hating life but afraid to die”
Vs. 12-17 Is wisdom the way in life?
Vs. 18-23 What about work?
Vs. 24-26 Enjoying life in the Son
Intro
Solomon you will recall was searching for the meaning of life, “What makes life worth living”, was his question. Of course his pursuit was “under the sun”, or if you will, apart from a relationship with God. So he naturally concluded that the best place to start answering that question was by pursuing those things that made him happy, “The purpose Du Jour of life is to enjoy it!” was his conclusion.
The question then was “What makes me smile and laugh” (2:12). Interestingly enough Solomon found that this changes in our lives as we grow older. In other words the things that make us happy now, seen in our smiling and laughter, will not be the same in fifteen or twenty years or perhaps seven five years from now. Solomon lists three stages of life that mankind goes through in trying to find enjoyment or purpose in life apart from a relationship with God. Now when I say these three stages of life, many of you came up to me after the teaching wondering how I knew this about you. Some of you thought that one of your friends or relatives told on you. Let me assure you this did not happen. The reason this fits most of our lives is because we humans are always trying to find something to make life worth living until we are found by Jesus.
Vs.4-6 PROJECTS: What we do, as you get into the late twenties and on into your early fifties is you start defining your happiness by what you do, what you accomplish, or in most cases, the lack of what you have accomplished. We even have terms like, “moving up the corporate ladder”, and women have biological clocks to describe this. Sometimes it’s tied to getting more education and degrees. Almost always we use numbers to gauge our success and compare them to others. By our forties or fifties we find that happiness based upon this is a roller coaster ride at best, and the only numbers we see are the hands on the clocks and there are never enough hours in our days, like the above we burn out.
