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Reading Ecclesiastes 2:1-11 where the Preacher tests his heart to experience gladness, and finds there is no satisfaction with that either. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
We think of Ecclesiastes as a depressing book, and indeed it is, but it's not like the preacher here invests himself in only sad things. He also invests himself in happiness and isn't satisfied when we understand the text.
This is When We Understand the Text, a daily Bible commentary to help encourage your time in the Word. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday we feature New Testament study, an Old Testament book on Thursday, and our Q &A on Friday.
Now here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study of the book of Ecclesiastes. This week we're in chapter 2. If you want to open up your Bible and join with me there, or if you are driving, I'll just read it to you.
Don't try to read along with me. I'm in the Legacy Standard Bible. This is the Word of the Lord, reading through about the first 11 verses here, speaking through the preacher, the author, of the book of Ecclesiastes.
I said in my heart, come now, I will test you with gladness, so that you shall see good things. And behold, it too was vanity. I said of laughter, it is madness, and of gladness, what does it do? I explored with my heart how to stimulate my body with wine, while my heart was guiding me wisely, and how to seize simple-minded folly, until I could see where is this good for the sons of men in what they do under heaven the few days of their lives.
I made my works great. I built houses for myself. I planted vineyards for myself. I made for myself gardens and parks, and I planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. I bought male and female slaves, and I had home-born slaves.
Also, I possessed flocks and herds larger than all who preceded me in Jerusalem. Also, I collected for myself silver and gold, and the treasure of kings and provinces. I provided for myself male and female singers, and the pleasures of the sons of men, many concubines.
Then I became great, and increased more than all who preceded me in Jerusalem. My wisdom also stood by me. All that my eyes asked for, I did not refuse them. I did not withhold my heart from any gladness, for my heart was glad because of all my labor, and this was my reward.
For all my labor. Thus, I turned to all my works, which my hands had done, and the labor which I had labored to do, and behold, all was vanity, and striving after wind, and there was no advantage under the sun.
Now, this again was written a thousand years before Christ, so we're reading text here that is 3 ,000 years old, and as I was going through some of this, how much did you hear that you thought, wow, that sounds just like today?
So much truth given to that statement that we see over and over again in the book of Ecclesiastes. What has been done is what will be done again, and there is nothing new under the sun. So, we come back to the start of chapter 2, and the preacher here, of course, we know is Solomon, but I'm gonna refer to him as the preacher.
That's the way he's referred to at the start of the book. So, the preacher says in his heart, come now, I will test you with gladness, so that you shall see good things, and behold, it too was vanity.
Now, one of the things that this says to us here at the start of chapter 2 is that the preacher also wanted to be elated with life. This is not just a depressing book in the sense that all the preacher experienced was sadness and depression.
Here, he says, I gave it to myself to go experience gladness. I wanted to get the best out of life, all the stuff that people pursue to be happy and elated. I'm gonna go experience those things for myself, so that I might tell you, did I find worth in that?
If you remember back to last week and how we finished up, at the end of chapter 1, the preacher says, I gave my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and simple-minded folly. I came to know that this also is striving after wind, because in much wisdom, there is much vexation, and whoever increases knowledge increases pain.
And this is exactly contrast with the philosophers that would come centuries later claiming that happiness is the meaning of life, and we gain more happiness the more we know. So, if you increase knowledge, you increase your happiness.
Well, before all of them, Solomon said, nope, I did that already. In much wisdom, there's much vexation, and whoever increases knowledge increases pain. So, he threw that in the face of the philosophers centuries before they came philosophizing that happiness is the meaning of life.
But, just so you don't get the impression here, well, I mean, see, his problem was, is he just went through life depressed. If he went through life happy, then he would have understood the meaning of life, because here at the beginning of chapter 2, it says, I said in my heart, now, let's experience some gladness.
Let's see if that's the meaning of life. Let's see if we can find it there. Come now, I will test you with gladness, so that you shall see good things. And we're going to read about that, what the result of that test was in the next 10 verses that come, but he goes ahead and summarizes it for us right at the beginning of the first verse.
So, it's kind of like a leading statement into the rest of what's coming. Behold, it too was vanity. It was worthless. There wasn't meaning and purpose in it. I did not find fulfillment in it. Sure, he experienced some great emotions, probably decided, I certainly liked life better happy than I liked life sad, but it was still vain.
There was still emptiness to it. It was still nothing. This too was vanity. Okay, well, what was it that you did that resulted in this, this conclusion of vanity? And then he gives us details there, verses 2 through 11.
I said of laughter, it is madness and of gladness. What does it do? So, in other words, he gave himself over to do things that would make him laugh. What kinds of things do we do to make us laugh? We might listen to comedians.
I find most stand-up comedians to be really obnoxious, completely unbearable, like 99 out of 100 of them. There was this, this period of time, it was just a couple of years ago, when Amazon was, they were, they were like investing tons and tons of money into stand-up comedy specials.
I don't know why they were doing this, but I was seeing ads constantly all over social media. Even the stuff that I would watch through my own streaming programming, it would be on YouTube and everywhere else.
There were these constant ads for these stand-up comic shows that you could watch on Amazon, and you would think that in the ads, they would pick the funniest jokes to try to draw you in. They were all awful.
I don't ever remember laughing at a single one of those jokes. In fact, I was just supremely annoyed that they were giving me yet another unfunny clip to try to draw me into the comedy specials they were throwing out there on Amazon.
So, you know, that might be one of those things that we pursue to experience a little bit of laughter. We want to be entertained. We'll watch comedy specials. We will watch movies, TV shows, situational comedies, right?
Sitcoms is what we call them. You might listen to comedy tracks or podcasts that are supposed to be funny or things like that. Whatever you give yourself to, to enjoy some laughter, funny friends, a good book, a funny comic book.
It's not really a comic book. It's just a book that's funny. Anyway, so I said of laughter, it's madness. This preacher gives himself over to experience laughter, and he got nothing out of it. It's just like I carried on like a fool, and that's what these stand-up comics look like.
They're just carrying on like fools. There are modern day jesters of the time and of gladness. What does it do? So laughter was madness. Gladness was. Yeah, nothing. I was glad. But, you know, how is my life more meaningful than when I was depressed?
Verse three, I explored with my heart how to stimulate my body with wine. While my heart was guiding me wisely, it's kind of an interesting addition there. But it's so the preacher is telling us he experienced drunkenness.
We're not not really to the point of drunkenness, but how one's heart is made merry by consuming just enough alcohol. And yet he says there, while my heart was guiding me wisely. So that leads us to understand he wasn't giving himself over to drunkenness.
He wasn't giving himself over to a state that he was out of his mind and out of control of his faculties. He was still holding on to his wisdom, but experiencing enough fermented drink that he got a little bit of a buzz.
That he could experience gladness of heart, how to seize simple minded folly, like he pushed into the point. This is almost right into just abject foolishness until I could see where is this good for the sons of men in what they do under heaven the few days of their lives.
There are many who give themselves over to drunkenness, and that's the way they they go through life that way. So the preacher here is like, I'm going to give myself into just enough of that so I can experience the feeling of what many of the sons of men will give themselves over to completely and experience for the rest of the days of their lives.
He said in verse four, I made my works great. I built houses for myself. I planted vineyards for myself. And we see this in American or Western world culture, right? We all want the house, that house right there on that street, living in that neighborhood, living in this town, in this city, in this state.
If I could just have that, I would have everything that I need to have. Where's Solomon living in the rich, the richest empire in the world at that time? And he's built his house larger than the house of God.
Are you aware of that with regards to Solomon? So he was entrusted to build the house of God. He built it on top of Mount Moriah. It's the highest place there in Jerusalem next to the house of God, which is a little bit lower in elevation.
But Solomon builds his own house and he builds it larger than the house of God. So he is living in the richest empire right next door to God, right next door to the place where God dwells with his people.
That's where Solomon lives. What better house could there have been on earth than that? He gave himself to have a big house. I built houses and here it says houses. So he's also talking about vacation homes.
I have my house next door to God and then I've got my vacation places that I like to go to, which were probably in some of the most beautiful settings that you've ever seen. Surely, you know, this is Solomon.
I planted vineyards for myself, which vineyards are always lovely, always large, full of of beautiful vegetation plant life. I made for myself gardens and parks and I planted in them all kinds of fruit trees like he's created for himself his own Garden of Eden.
That's really the picture that we're being painted here. I gave myself paradise. So when we go back to the start of chapter two, I said in my heart, come now, I will test you with gladness so that you shall see good things.
What sort of gladness? What sort of good things did he experience? He recreated the Garden of Eden. And he still found in that nothing, and behold, it, too, was vanity. Now, you might be thinking to yourself, well, hang on a second, because the Garden of Eden, I mean, that really was that was paradise.
That's what we're getting back to. That is what God is recreating through the person and work of Christ. When the scripture says he's reconciling all things to himself through Christ, we read at the end of the book, the last three chapters of Revelation reflect the first three chapters of the Bible.
So we're getting back to paradise. That's that's what it is that we want. So how could it be worth nothing if Solomon recreates that paradise for himself and all he finds in it is vanity? Well, because he's not in pursuit of God, he's in pursuit of his own satisfaction.
That was Adam and Eve's error. That they were not in pursuit of God, they wanted for themselves, they just wanted what they didn't have, the thing that God said we could not have. That's what we want.
And if we get that thing, then we'll be satisfied. So they did not find themselves satisfied with God. They had to have the thing that God told them not to take from, right, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
For in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die. Adam and Eve wanted something other than God, they were not satisfied with God. With the preacher here, it's the same thing. He recreates Eden for himself.
But what did Adam and Eve have in Eden? They had God to walk with in the cool of the day. Solomon doesn't have that. Nor is that where his mind and his heart are. That's not what his heart is after. He's after pleasures in his own flesh.
And even in a veritable paradise, he only finds vanity. He does not find meaning and purpose. I made for myself pools of water from which to water a forest of growing trees. I could have kept going there because that was another another verse, just kind of painting this picture for us of the Eden that Solomon made for himself.
Verse seven, I bought male and female slaves. So he's got male slaves. He's got female slaves so that he would have next part of the sentence, homeborn slaves. So I've got slaves and I'm creating families of slaves.
These are all people who serve me. I don't even have to do this work. I can have somebody else do this work for me. Also, I possessed flocks and herds larger than all who preceded me in Jerusalem. All of this here is possession, male and female slaves, and I have homeborn slaves.
I own people. I own the largest flocks that there are to own. How how much power does a person feel if they've got people in their possession? If they got all these animals in their possession, Solomon, the preacher here gaining more power than anybody in Jerusalem had ever experienced before him.
Also, I collected for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. Yeah, here we go. Now we're getting to the riches, getting to the good stuff, right? The luxury that everybody is going for more money.
I provided for myself male and female singers. We have more access to more music than any generation before us has ever had. You know, back in the in the 40s and 50s, when young people wanted to go listen to music, where did they go?
They either had to go listen to where live bands were playing or they had to go down to like the dance halls or the soda shops and listen to jukeboxes. Well, then shortly after that, you could buy record albums.
Then, you know, then that turned into eight tracks, cassette tapes, CDs. Now we've got MP3s and the more portable music has become, the more widely spread it is and the more accessible it is. So we've got libraries of songs.
You you have a an unlimited library of songs that you can get to on your computer or whatever device that you're using to listen to. This podcast through you can use that to listen to unlimited music.
We've got male and female singers, even in greater abundance than Solomon had. And what do you get from all of that music? You get a lot of worthless nonsense. That's what you get from a lot of that music, especially, you know, pop.
What's what's popular out there? It's just full of nonsense, full of utter depravity. On top of that, boasting in oneself, pursuing sex and drugs and violence all sung about in these songs. Well, here, Solomon had the best of the best male and female singers.
No satisfaction in that he experienced that three thousand years before we got to where we are. He didn't find satisfaction in it, nor do we. And then he goes on to say, I experienced the pleasures of the sons of men.
You know what he's talking about here? Sex. Many concubines. I experienced the pleasures of the sons of men, many concubines, all the women I could have wanted. And Solomon did indeed have lots of women, 700 wives, 300 concubines.
Then I became great and increased more than all who preceded me in Jerusalem. My wisdom also stood by me. So on top of all these things he has, he's even got the greatest wisdom that anyone has ever had.
All that my eyes asked for, I did not refuse them. I did not withhold my heart from any gladness, for my heart was glad because of all my labor. And this was my reward for all my labor. So he does find pleasure in it.
And I talked about that in the introduction of the book of Ecclesiastes. There are going to be occasions in this book where the preacher does find pleasure in the things that he invests himself in. But ultimately, what does he think of that pleasure?
It's just vanity. It's either emptiness, it's for nothing, or it's just for myself, which is nothing. And verse 11, thus I turn to all my works, which my hands had done and the labor which I had labored to do.
And behold, all was vanity. It was striving after wind, and there was no advantage under the sun. There are people in this world today who gain wealth and prestige and power. They gain everything that a person can gain in the Western world wealth that can be attained in our modern day.
And they're not satisfied with it. I hear story after story after story of those who have achieved and gain greatness, and they're still not satisfied with it. Listen to an interview with Tom Brady after he wins another Super Bowl and he gets asked, what are you going to do next?
And he says, time to start preparing for next year. I need the next Super Bowl ring. Are you happy with this one? Nope. Got to have another one. One more Super Bowls than any quarterback has ever won in the NFL.
And he's still not happy with it. Still not satisfied. I've listened to movie stars who have gained box office fame and more money than I will ever see in my lifetime. And they are asked in these interviews, what do you not have yet?
And they will point blank tell you happiness. I'm still not happy. And you've heard stories of rock stars and pop singers who in the height of their success with all the money that they have, sex, drugs and rock and roll still even enjoying their youth.
And yet they die young, sometimes even deliberately committing suicide. It's not even an accidental suicide like they overdose on drugs. They just take their own lives. Why? Because they have attained the highest achievement that one can gain in their field and they know they're not happy with it.
There's nothing beyond this. And life is meaningless, and so they end it. What's missing? Jesus Christ. You can attain everything that there is to gain in this world, but if you do not have Christ, you have nothing.
In Jesus Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, as Paul says in Colossians chapter two. So what do we need to set our minds and our hearts on gaining? Christ. And then you have everything.
You have the meaning of life. You have the purpose of life, and you have eternal life forevermore with God in glory. We have fellowship with God now through faith in Jesus Christ. We have the promise of fellowship with God forever.
Heavenly Father, help us to look to the things of heaven and not to the things of this earth. We've been talking about that earlier this week on the podcast, Reading Through 2 Corinthians. Here we're reminded of that even as we come to the book of Ecclesiastes.
What do we have to gain in this world? Nothing. Help us gain Christ and help us to live according to Christ and his righteousness today. It's in his name that we pray.
Amen. You can find a complete list of videos, books, devotionals, and other resources online at www .tt .com. Thanks for listening.