The Pain of Pleasure

Well, we return to our time here in Ecclesiastes as this morning we begin chapter 2.

And as we begin chapter 2, we have not left behind the larger context of chapter 1, especially that programmatic question in verse 3, what prophet has a man from all of his labor in which he toils under the sun?

We're gonna see in our passage even this morning the return of that theme of that programmatic question.

Not only the word toil, not only the phrase under the sun, but specifically the word profit or gain.

What gain is there? What profit is there from all the labor that a man may toil under the sun?

So this morning we're looking at chapter 2 verses 1 through 11. And as I said last week, we're in a section that runs from chapter 1 verse 12 to chapter 2 verse 26.

So this is all together and we'll see more and more of repetition and structure as we advance over the next two weeks, although we'll be broken up by the church retreat.

Let me say, as I also said last week, I think it was during interaction time, if you're feeling somewhat confused or distraught or perhaps even depressed, you're at the right place and be patient with that.

That's actually part of the point. And you see the raw gritty reality of what

Koholet is putting out. And unless we resonate with the things that he's saying, unless we reflect in the way that he's reflecting, we won't be able to see the insight, the wisdom, the gain that there really is in the wisdom and in the good things that God gives to his own.

And so we have to be faithful, even as we're being trained to trace our sorrows.

And that's certainly what the next several weeks will bring about in chapter 2. Last week, we looked at the pursuit of wisdom.

Koholet said, I set my heart, I set myself. It's a synecdoche, a part for the whole.

I set myself. My whole endeavor was to gain wisdom, to have insight. And we called that message the folly of wisdom, the foolishness of wisdom.

This morning, we'll see that Koholet sets his heart after pleasure, sets himself after pleasure.

And the message this morning is titled The Pain of Pleasure. Ecclesiastes chapter 2, beginning in verse 1.

I said in my heart, come now, I will test you with mirth. Therefore, enjoy pleasure.

But surely this also was vanity. I said of laughter, madness and of mirth.

What does it accomplish? I searched in my heart how to gratify my flesh with wine.

While guiding my heart with wisdom and how to lay hold on folly till I might see what was good for the sons of men to do under heaven all the days of their lives.

I made my works great. I built myself houses, planted myself vineyards.

I made myself gardens and orchards. I planted all kinds of fruit trees in them. I made myself water pools from which to water the growing trees of the grove.

I acquired male and female servants and had servants born in my house. Yes, I had greater possessions of herds and flocks than all who were in Jerusalem before me.

I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the special treasures of kings and of the provinces.

I acquired male and female singers, the delights of the sons of men and musical instruments of all kinds.

So I became great and excelled more than all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also, my wisdom remained with me.

Wherever my eyes desired, I did not keep from them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure for my heart rejoiced in all of my labor.

And this was my reward from all of my labor. Then I looked on all the work that my hands had done and on the labor in which

I had toiled. And indeed, all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun.

Well, we introduced a section in verse 12 of chapter one with these words. I, the preacher,

I, Kohelet, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. This is who is speaking.

And as we said, this is somewhat autobiographical. This is Kohelet's testimony.

I mentioned this. A testimony is something that causes us to compare. As we share our testimony, we're inviting the hearer to consider what their life is like, what their experience is like in comparison.

We're going to make comparative questions along the way. Let's look at verse one. I said in my heart, come now,

I will test you with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure. So the first thing that we notice is he's again identifying himself distinctly from his heart.

I said in my heart, or you could literally say I said to myself, I am addressing my heart myself.

I said to my heart, come now, I'm going to test you with mirth. The same way he put his brain, his his wisdom, his insight on the examination table.

Now he's doing that with his heart again. I'm going to test you. I'm going to run some exams across you.

I'm going to test you with mirth. Let's try it this way. If wisdom was bankrupt, if knowledge didn't actually satisfy, then let's throw ourselves into the reckless abandon of pleasure.

I won't withhold anything. Any good thing that I set my eye upon, I will give myself wholly over to it.

And he already tells us here it's a foregone conclusion. As soon as he says that this is the test he's going to run, he gives us the the answer, the outcome.

This also is vanity. It's past tense. I will test you with mirth. This also was vanity.

So he's telling us the conclusion even before he describes the test. Solomon, of course, knew, again, whether he's author or literary device,

Solomon knew firsthand what it was to be tested. That's the verb that was used when the Queen of Sheba came to test his wisdom, to test this divine gift that had been bestowed upon this mighty and wealthy king.

We read in First Kings 10, when the Queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the

Lord, she came to test him with hard questions. And now he's testing what's the meaning of life?

What's the satisfaction of anything that's done under the sun? What does it all amount to?

Can my heart ever be satisfied? I'm going to test it with mirth. I'm going to throw every pleasure in its direction.

And what was the outcome of that vanity? Verses two and three, I said of laughter, madness and of mirth, what does it accomplish?

So he's already spelling out what this test is going to look like. He realizes of laughter itself, of the simplicity of joy or of merriment, it really doesn't bring anything about.

What does merriment accomplish? What does laughter actually give? He realizes it's madness.

It's absurd to think that somehow this could answer or satisfy man is a foregone error.

He said, I searched in my heart how to gratify my flesh with wine. He goes, as it were, to the place of merriment.

He goes to the ancient saloon. He takes his place at the stool. He gives himself over to the pleasure, to pleasures of laughter and of merriment.

He gratifies his flesh with wine. He says, I didn't lose control. I still guided my heart with wisdom and I thought how to lay hold of folly.

That's the folly of merriment, the folly of mirth. Till I might see what was good for the sons of men to do under heaven all the days of their lives.

I think a better translation would be for the few days of their lives. It seems to be making this rhetorical comparison.

And the phrase there in Hebrew is a diminutive. And the idea is just for a brief span, just for a few days.

Again, thinking of James, what is your life? It's a vapor, something brief, something fleeting.

What good is there for the sons of men to do in the short little expanse that they have, in their little bit of time under the sun?

He throws himself to pleasure. He says, as one commentator points out, I became more of a wine connoisseur than a back alley drunk, right?

He didn't lose control. He didn't go on a bender. He says, I guided my heart with wisdom, but I did gratify my flesh with wine.

I gave myself over to the finest things, the finest luxuries. I took the kind of alterations that might gladden my heart.

As scripture says, wine makes a heart merry. Wine can gladden life.

He didn't take it to the extent where we're warned against, where wine becomes a mocker and a brawler that leads us astray.

He says, I guided my heart with wisdom. I just gave my flesh over to every indulgence. This too was the test, and the outcome was vanity.

Think of a collector of a wine cellar. In my mind, and I know that has a great value and you can probably trade and you have all sorts of equity built into that, but in my mind, what good is a wine cellar if you never open up the bottles and taste them?

It's like visiting the older generation's homes and they have all their furniture and plastic, and you realize they lived their whole life and they never experienced the fabric of their sofa.

What's the point of that? Who are you protecting it for? Wasn't it meant to be used and become threadbare and worn over time?

At least you got to enjoy it. What were you saving it for? Why not uncork it? And Solomon says, oh,

I uncorked it. I went through every bottle. I didn't hold back anything. I was looking to see what is good.

Now, here's a little preview of where we're going, not only in the next few chunks of chapter two, but especially in chapter three.

We're going to start to see seeds that are bearing fruit when we bring Ecclesiastes into dialogue with Genesis, especially

Genesis 1 and 2. You see that already in this phrase. He says in our translation, till I might see what was good for the sons of men to do under heaven all the days of their lives.

So notice that I might see, that I might behold what was good for the sons of men.

That would be the sons of Adam, the sons of Adam to see what is good. Adam is man in Hebrew.

Man is Adam. And so see what is good. Doesn't that sound eerily like Genesis 1 and 2?

To behold, to see and declare something as good? That's what Solomon's trying to do. There's going to be a lot more bridges to Genesis 1 and 2 as we work our way toward chapter 2 and 3.

To see what is good draws us back into this creational setting where God gave good things that man could behold and could experience them as good and use them in the ways that God intended.

Solomon, in some ways, Colalette is trying to get back into this. I want to see it to be good.

I want to experience it in its fullness. I won't hold back any fiber of my being from it. I'll make merry with the best of it.

In Genesis, we see God saw it was good and Adam and Eve were able to replicate

God's pleasure and the good things he had given. That was how they experienced his glory and worshipped him in gratitude.

Robert Rayburn, this is excellent. He says, it is not too much to say that Ecclesiastes is something of a commentary on the meaning of the fall reported in Genesis 3.

That's exactly right, especially when we get to Ecclesiastes 3. There we read that because of his sin, man had been separated from the life -sustaining presence of God.

The earth now made subject to the curse. And that man's work, which was once a wonderfully satisfying part of his life, had now become toil.

Looming over his life is the shadow of death. And all of these themes reappear and are emphasized by Ecclesiastes.

If that's not evident just in seeing what is good, look at where we're going in verses 4 and following.

I may, you're going to have this language of making, of building, of planting. That's the verbs that we see in Genesis 1 and 2.

God making, building, planting. I made my works great. I built myself houses, planted myself vineyards.

I made myself gardens and orchards, planted all kinds of fruit trees in them. I made myself water pools from which the water watered the trees of the grove.

And I acquired male and female servants and had servants born in my house. I had greater possessions of herds and flocks than all who were before me in Jerusalem.

And I had great amounts of silver and gold and the treasures of kings of the provinces. And I had male and female singers, the delights of the sons of men, musical instruments of all kinds.

I became great and excelled more than all who were before me in Jerusalem. And my wisdom still remained with me.

There was a 90s commercial. I'm dating myself here. We used to say it in middle school all the time.

But the commercial went like this. It would usually have some guy on the gallows and he's about to face the penalty for whatever his crime was.

And the executioner says, what do you want on your tombstone? And the man in the gallows would say, pepperoni.

And then it would go into tombstone pizza. What do you want on your tombstone? The idea was you pick your toppings. Well, in some ways, that's the question here.

What do you want on your epitaph? What do you want on your tombstone? That's quite literally, as Leo Perdue's excellent article that I was reading in a festschrift.

He mentions how we have several examples of autobiographical statements of what was built, of what was established, of the legacy that was laid down, of the amounts of wealth and stature that were accomplished in all sorts of tomb epitaphs.

What do you want on your tombstone? You want verses four through seven. That is an epitaph to beat all epitaphs.

I made my works great. Look what I built. Look what I made. Look what I had.

Look at what I accomplished. That's what you want on your tombstone. We have not only this testimony, not only this epitaph, not only this great boast, but we have it in this creational language.

Again, I mentioned I made, I built, I planted. These are verbs that are common to Genesis 1 and 2.

We also have little clues like in verse five, the term that we have translated garden.

It's actually a loan word, a very rare loan word that gets translated from the Hebrew pardes through some other lexicographical oddities into paradisos in Greek, paradise.

And so we have this garden paradise. He's recreating Eden with all of the fruit trees, well -watered plants, all that fruition, all of that glory.

We think of Solomon. He spent seven years building the temple. But 13 years building his palace.

Tells you something of his priorities being askew, doesn't it? Almost twice as long to build his palace.

Can you imagine what his palace would have been like in all of its splendor if it had taken 13 years to build?

With endless amounts of cedar, of gold and silver.

Coming in, the silver was more than the stones in Jerusalem, we read. He had the glory.

He was recreating his little Eden on the earth. And what's his conclusion when he threw himself into that kind of pleasure and accomplishment?

It's all vanity. It's all vanity. First Kings 10 tells us about his throne of ivory overlaid with gold ships coming from ports all over the

Mediterranean with precious things, precious stones, precious objects. That's what's being reported in these verses.

He says, I acquired all things, works of great art, works of wonder, musical instruments of all kinds.

It's most likely, this is the most contested part of this passage, most likely a misunderstanding or a mistranslation.

More modern translations will have the word concubine or harem. That seems to be right.

The problem is it's the only place we find this construction in the Old Testament. And so we have to go to lexicons and understand how is some of this language used elsewhere.

And it seems to be the most secure examples are you have this superlative construction that's probably referencing either the most beautiful woman or the most beautiful women among women.

And if we think of Solomon being the figure at hand, we remember he had a harem of 700 wives and 300 concubines dwelling in this palace of absolute luxury.

Truly, he had it all. The whole world sought this man for audience to seek the wisdom that God had put on his heart.

He said this whole time, wisdom was still with me. No king had ever had an earthly advantage quite like this.

He says as much, doesn't he? I became great and excelled more than all who were before me in Jerusalem.

But you know what else is repeated throughout this testimony, throughout this tombstone epitaph? The word myself, it's repeated eight times.

Here is where we depart from Genesis 1 and 2. All that building, all that planting, all those things being established.

He says, I did it for myself. I established for myself.

I built for myself. I planted for myself. I did this all for myself. I set my heart for the merriment of it all.

I sought the pleasure and the gain of it all. And in the end, there was nothing to be gained. Dwayne Garrett, in his commentary, calls this the gospel of selfishness.

I did it my way. This was Frankie Sinatra in Solomon's Rose. I did it my way.

He says, verse 10, whatever my eyes desired, I didn't keep from them. You can imagine over 13 years, anytime you walked down the corridor,

I want this now. I don't like that now. I want something else now. I'd like it to look like this now, the hanging gardens being an ancient wonder of the world.

You can imagine all the wealth streaming in from provinces afar. He says, whatever I wanted,

I got. Whatever I sought my mind to, I built. I didn't keep my eyes from any pleasure.

I didn't withhold my heart from any good thing. And he says, you know what? At the time, my heart was really satisfied.

He says, my heart rejoiced in all of my labor. This was my reward for all of my labor.

But now he's looking back as he's examined all of these things, as he's put it all to the test.

The king in all of his splendor has found all of his splendor to rust and decay away.

Remember coming across this short called Fly Like a King. And it was a picture of a discombobulated and rusted out jet.

I forget that it was a Lear jet, I think, from the mid -60s. And it was the last jet

Elvis Presley bought. And I don't know if he ever even flew on it, because I think he died a few years later.

But it was in this abandoned airport in New Mexico for about 35 years untouched. It was all just corroding and parts were falling off and rusting away.

And this article was trying to sell it. You know, does anyone want to make an offer on this? And as you toured through the cabin, it had gold -plated accessories and lining and red velvet.

And it was a plane built for the king, the king being Presley. I thought, what an example,

Fly Like a King. Here's this jet rusting away. And you think of how

Presley died. What a sad ending for a king. Well, that's Kohelet here. I'm looking at it like I look at that jet.

It's all corroding and rusting away. What good was any of it? All those great projects seem to have a payoff, but that payoff didn't last very long, did it?

Let me ask you, what are your great projects right now? What have you set your heart toward to build?

What are you expecting out of that? We always need to be working. And God gives us good things to enjoy.

And we ought to cast our bread in many waters. Again, this is not a call to passivity or simply folding our hands.

If anything, Ecclesiastes is going to press and challenge that kind of outcome. But we do need to have a completely renewed experience of expectation.

What are the projects that you're working on right now? What are you setting your mind, your heart, your vision, your goal toward that you think is actually going to satisfy or accomplish some meaning in your life?

You too, just like that rusted Learjet, just like the projects in Solomon's Review, will find it to be hopelessly absurd.

Why did I do that? A great film that you'll be hearing a lot throughout this series based on a short novel, a novella by Dennis Johnson called

Train Dreams. It's a really fascinating biopic, as it were, of a man who grew up in the mid -19th century.

And as he becomes old, he watches all the shifts in society and tries to make sense whether he's changed or the world around him has changed.

And one of the great moments that happens toward the beginning of the film is as an elderly man, he's sitting in a,

I believe, a train car looking out the window on this modern concrete suspension bridge.

Looking over the wooden railway that he had poured so many years of his life into and realizing that was no longer going to be used again.

It would slowly just begin to fall apart. And all of that labor, all of that blood and sweat, all of the hope and the loss that the years of labor represented was just going to waste away.

No one would even have any regard for that. It would just be a rubbish heap. And he was already beginning to see that as an old man, as he was transiting along the way.

That's what I think when I think of Kohelet here. He's a passenger in a different direction, surveying all that he had built and saying, what was it all for?

We're going to see this again as we approach the close of chapter two. Where's this all going to go to someone who didn't build it?

Whether he'll be wise or a fool, who knows? But we'll all die alike. So what was the point of that all?

A great poem by Frederick George Scott called Solomon. It's written in 1886. He put it this way.

A double line of columns, white as snow, and vaulted with mosaics rich in flowers, make square this cypress grove where fountains showers from golden basins cool the grass below.

While from that archway strains of music flow, and laughings of fair girls beguile the hours, but brooding like one held by evil powers, the great king heeds not, pacing sad and slow.

His heart hath drained earth pleasures to the least, hath quivered with life's finest ecstasies.

Yet now some power reveals, as in a glass, the soul's unrest and death's dark mysteries, and down the courts the scared slaves watch him pass, reiterating omnia vanitas, all is vanity.

Verse 11. I looked on all the works that my hands had done, on all the labor in which

I had toiled. Indeed, all was vanity, grasping for the wind.

There was no prophet under the sun. Here we return to the main question, the programmatic question of chapter 1, verse 3.

What prophet has a man from all of his labor in which he toils under the sun? The answer begins here, 2 -11.

There was no prophet under the sun. I tried. I did more than anyone could.

I was the greatest of anyone who had come before me. I did it all.

Was there any gain? No. He's observed all the pleasure that he gave his life over to.

He's assessed all the toil and put it on the scale over the balance of that luxury.

Was the toil worth the luxury? That's the question. Was the labor worth the outcome?

He says, was there any profit, any gain, any residual pleasure? He says, no, it's not profit.

It's not gain, not under the sun. And so, again, he's wanting us to learn how the heart responds to these kind of pulls, these kind of desires, these kinds of projects as hopes that somehow pleasure or satisfaction or meaning may come from it.

Zach Eastwine, a tremendous little book published by PNR called Recovering Eden. And in this chapter and in chapter three especially, he is fantastic.

And he puts it this way here. The Bible raises a question through Ecclesiastes 2 that every human being asks, is there a thing in the world that can truly satisfy the heart of a human being?

Is there anything under the sun that can fully satisfy the heart of a human being?

What kind of world are we living in today? A world that's convinced there's all sorts of things under the sun that can satisfy the heart of a human being.

We do it every week. We live for the weekend and we just wash, rinse and repeat.

Come Sunday evening. Live for the weekend every week. Live for pleasure. There is that momentary thrill and pleasure.

What Koholat realizes is there's no gain. There's nothing lasting, nothing that ultimately delivers what it promises.

Throughout this, of course, he's going to see even by the end of chapter two that there is some good, there is some gain.

At the end of it, wisdom is better than folly. To recognize in our limited bounds the good things that God has given is a key to the wisdom that Koholat has discovered.

What he realizes, a partaking of pleasure does not give meaning to existence. Not under the sun.

Partaking in pleasure does not give meaning to existence. Not under the sun. But pleasure, first of all, has no staying power under the sun.

And that's not just what death stomps out. That's just true. Think of any pleasure, any goal that you've accomplished.

Is it still paying dividends to you? Probably not. In fact, the things you once loved probably now are odious to you.

The things that once you gloried in now are tiresome to you. There's no staying power with pleasure.

Soon the fun fades, the limelight loses its luster. There's just no going back.

You can't recreate, though as parents we always try to recreate through nostalgia, that experience of joy.

I try to make every Christmas morning like my Christmas morning. I don't know if that's working for them.

It's not working for me. I can't get back into what that was like, though I may try in vain.

I can't actually capture what was good about that, what was memorable about that.

I'm turning 40 in a few days. I remember I used to talk about my birthday all year when

I was little. I'd be counting down months. Be like, you've got 10 months to go. Stop talking about it.

How long now? Every day. How long now? Now it's like, ah, birthday. I just want to get through that day.

Let's ignore that day. You know, a birthday doesn't have any significance.

There's almost no joy in a birthday. They start to roll by. There's no lasting power, no staying power.

To pursue pleasure as if it could offer that is already to misunderstand life as it really is under the sun.

This pleasure, just like we saw when Eve was tempted, she beheld with her eyes and saw that it was pleasing, saw that it was good.

It seemed to offer something to her. That she wanted. It did not deliver to her the thing that she wanted.

So it is with all forms of pleasure. All pleasure offers us something, but no pleasure under the sun delivers what it promises.

And so on the one hand, the pleasure offers to open our eyes. And the day you eat of it, your eyes will be open.

Pleasure offers to open our eyes, but in reality, it blinds us. It never actually delivers what it promises.

When we set our sight toward pleasure, when we give our heart over to that kind of indulgence, we feel that we're on the cusp of actually finding fulfillment, satisfaction.

This will be the thing that makes it all worthwhile. This will be the thing that completes me, that makes me.

Here's a safe place for me to fix my identity, to hang my hat on. Here's what

I want on my tombstone. It's this desire for pleasure that James says wages war in our members.

It becomes a cutthroat thing, a very bloody and messy thing, a very violent thing. You see that right after Genesis 3, the spread of sin and all of the dysfunction and strife that results from this.

Disordered loves, disordered experiences of pleasure, disproportionate desires for good things to the point where they even replace the giver of good.

Sensual pleasure in this way, pleasure completely disillusions us. It's folly that we keep chasing the pleasure, even though we know it's a diminishing return.

Let me just keep pushing. Let me just keep using. Let me just keep trying. Maybe there's some drop, some vestige that will actually deliver.

And Koholet said, I went to the dregs. I did it all. He was tantalized by everything his eye or his flesh was pulled by.

It never fully arrived. It's a gift. You have in Greek mythology the figure of Tantalus.

It's interesting, that's where our English word tantalize comes from. To be tantalized is to have a strong desire for something that can't be obtained.

And Tantalus, he was a figure throughout Greek mythology. But in Homer's Odyssey, which is very buzzworthy right now in light of a film coming out,

Odysseus finds him in his journey to Hades. And he was punished by the gods, different reasons why, according to different sources.

But the punishment of the gods was he was to stand in a pool of water. But whenever, the water would be right up to his lips.

But whenever he went to take a drink, as he was so desperate for drink, he was so thirsty, the water would instantly recede.

He could never actually sate his thirst. And there was fruit hanging over him. He was so desperately hungry.

It almost was touching his mouth. But as soon as he lunged after it, the winds would blow or the branches would move.

So he could never sate his thirst, never satisfy his hunger, though it was almost on his teeth.

That's the experience of Kohelet. I put my eye to it.

It was at my teeth. I couldn't taste it. I couldn't drink it. It never actually sated me.

It never actually satisfied me. This is what we can call the pain of pleasure, isn't it?

The pain of pleasure. Because there's an irony with pleasure that the more you seek it, the less you enjoy it.

The most obvious example for this would be drug addiction. That experience of pleasure being so profound that it reorients all of your priorities in life.

There's almost no line that's too low that you'd be willing to go, even though the return is so diminished that you actually hate it.

You're in bondage to it. That's just the extreme example of how pleasure under a fallen sun works for us all.

The more we give ourselves over to it, the less we can find of it. It really is a chasing after the wind.

We put more effort, more energy, more time and more commitment into the pleasure. We find less and less coming back at greater and greater cost.

Pleasure in this way destroys souls. Because pleasure is not rightly oriented toward its source.

When pleasure becomes our God, when pleasure becomes an idol in our lives, it takes everything from us.

The one thing it doesn't give us is pleasure. That's the pain of pleasure.

It's absurd. And Kohilet is saying, it was all in vain. It was all in vain.

It doesn't mean buildings don't need to be built or gardens don't need to be built. Gardens aren't something to be enjoyed. God created vegetation and he gave the human mind the ingenuity to plan agriculture and architecture.

All these things have their place, even as God commanded his temple to be built in a certain way. But to give yourself wholly over to build and to plant for yourself, for the meaning, for the fulfillment, that is vanity.

That's chasing after the wind. Under the sun, Kohilet realizes, man can only find the pain of pleasure.

There's no gain. There's nothing secure. There's nothing lasting to pleasure under the sun.

Jesus would put it this way. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?

Or what would a man give in exchange for his soul? Notice that word again, what will it profit?

Jesus has the same conclusion, doesn't he? There's nothing that could be built or planted or established or gained in this world that would actually be a profit worthy in comparison to your soul.

And since your soul is something that corresponds or transcends any of the material gains of this life,

Jesus says there's nothing in this life under the sun that's worth more than your soul. Your being, the core of who you are unto

God, part of you that endures without wasting away as the body must waste away until it's further clothed and reunited once again to the soul.

But there's something about the soul, the indiminishable essence of humanity that is worth more than the world entire.

Jesus says compared to that, there's no profit. There's no profit, not under the sun. Solomon didn't gain the whole world.

But even if he could have, Jesus says, it wouldn't have been a profit to him even then. And I don't think,

Kohelet, I don't think Solomon needed to gain the whole world to realize that conclusion. I had enough of the world under my thumb, he says, to realize even the whole world wouldn't be a profit to me.

Not only do I find its pleasures fleeting as I haunt the corridors of my marbled glory, but I realize that behind me, breathing down my neck, is mortality.

If I can't give myself to pleasure, then pleasure will be taken from me nonetheless.

So we see there's these dimensions to this word profit that are taken up later by Jesus.

The vanity of seeking profit under the sun. What will it profit a man if he gains?

We have this wordplay. What does it gain a man if he gains the whole world? What does it profit a man if he profits the whole world?

And Jesus says, in comparison to the soul, nothing. Because man's going to die.

Even if you could contain it all, it's just for a fleeting moment. What's your life? It's a vapor.

So we think of all of the glory that Solomon encountered, and he's come to the conclusion that Jesus puts forth, there really is no profit, there really is no gain.

Even if I could gain it all, I can't take it with me, but I don't need to take it with me to realize how fleeting and empty it's become.

The things that I thought would satisfy my heart, when I gave my heart over to pleasure, have not been there to deliver the goods.

I'm just as bankrupt and empty. I might as well not have done it at all. We all know this to be true in some sense.

We all know this is the right answer, the Sunday school answer. We might even say this glibly to others that we come across in life, but we don't live consistently with that.

Again, this is part of the challenge of Ecclesiastes. We all have projects. We all have desires for pleasure.

And don't just think of that as good things or good gifts or the latest gadgets. Sometimes pleasure is finding a relationship.

Sometimes pleasure is getting rid of a relationship. Sometimes pleasure is building something.

Sometimes pleasure is destroying something. The point is we all have desires for pleasure, for what in our limited perspective is gain.

And we all estimate that that gain, that that labor is going to actually satisfy.

We live more consistently with what Kohelet is condemning. Rather than we deal with the

Sunday school answer that you can't take it with you, I've never seen a U -Haul behind a funeral hearse. It's like we all have these little statements, but we don't live in that way, do we?

We live as if we can take it with us, as if that next project, that next goal, that next accomplishment really will deliver the goods.

This will give my life meaning. I'll finally be fulfilled and content then. In fact, this is the only reason I haven't been content until now.

Is that not the lie of pleasure? We think

I just need more time. I just need more means. I just need more opportunity.

Kohelet had all of that time and all of those means and all of that opportunity.

And he says, let me spare you the trouble. It won't deliver its vanity.

So we come to this point. We recognize, again, the

Lord Jesus Christ himself asks us to put our soul on a scale on the balance of the whole world.

That's what Kohelet is doing. What's the value of my life? What's the meaning of my life? What's the satisfaction of my life?

Jesus will put it in a different way. Where am I storing up my treasure? Where am I placing my ultimate value?

Where is my heart oriented? What am I setting my eyes, my mind, my heart toward? Is it the next project?

Is it the next accomplishment? Is it the next goal? Or is it something that moths can't destroy? That rust can't consume?

That no thief under the sun can break in and steal? It's only when we begin to question life in this way and the value of the soul, we begin to think in terms beyond the sun, beyond this endless repetition of the vanity and the circularity of life.

Well, let's talk about pleasure. C .S. Lewis, I mention him a lot because he's very helpful.

I think he is the theologian of pleasure. And of course, he wrote a tremendous little book called

The Four Laws, where he distinguishes different kinds of pleasure in his mature work. Later on, he speaks of joy, not only his great testimony surprised by joy, but the way he distinguishes even pleasure from joy.

Pleasure being a fleeting experience of something good in life, but joy being something of substance, a signpost that points us to glory.

C .S. Lewis says, both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective. I think this is very much ingrained with Ecclesiastes.

To consider the good and to consider the evil, to consider wisdom and consider folly. Both of these things are retrospective.

We get to a place in life, we look back and we can see them both. But he says, this is what mortals misunderstand.

They say of some temporary suffering, no future bliss can make up for it.

Now, let's just pause there. Kohelet is saying no promise, no hope of bliss under the sun can make up for it.

But listen to what Lewis is saying. They say of some temporary suffering, no future bliss can make up for it.

But they don't realize that heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into glory.

And of some sinful pleasure, they say, let me just have this. And I'll take the consequences.

They don't realize how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate even the pleasure of the sin.

This is the reality. If we recognize things are right, we realize there's no pleasure that I can accomplish in this life.

If I give my flesh over to it, that won't one day haunt me as something vain, something futile.

There's also no amount of suffering or lack or loss that if I'm fixed on my mind toward glory will help me recognize that one day that glory will work back.

And actually, in this beautiful way, we have the tapestry of the good and the bad in a glorified way.

God will turn ashes into beauty yet. This, again, is going to be a major theme.

What do we do with the so -called carpe diem passages? We have one at the end of chapter two. I mentioned this in the introduction.

The passages that speak of it, basically, it's good that we can eat and drink, that man should be content with this.

This is the good thing under the sun, to eat and to drink and to be satisfied with one's labor. This is a good gift from God.

They call these, scholars call these the carpe diem passages, sort of seize the day, live in the moment idea.

And we're going to find these thematically throughout Ecclesiastes. And the first one we come up against is at the end of our chapter.

So we're not quite there yet. Let me give a little preview of where we're going, because all of these questions and all these issues are flowing toward it.

Craig Bartholomew, very, very helpful in his words. He says, the so -called carpe diem passages in Ecclesiastes are predominantly read as a despairing resort to hedonism, reckless abandon to pleasure or making the best of a bad situation.

Come on, keep your chin up. Don't let life get you down. In my view, this is quite wrong.

Bonhoeffer rightly appeals to these passages in Ecclesiastes in his discussion titled The Right to Bodily Life.

He notes, man is a bodily being and remains so in eternity as well. Bodiliness and human life belong inseparably together.

That's exactly right. And thus the bodilyness, which is willed by God to be the form of existence of man, is entitled to be called an end in itself.

The body is not something that is discarded. Pleasure made for the body is not something arbitrary or pointless.

It is an end in itself because God created the body and the delights for the body. And he saw and declared it good.

It is in the joys of the body that it becomes apparent that the body is an end in itself within natural life.

If the body were only a means to an end, man would have no right to bodily joys. This would have very far reaching consequences for the

Christian appraisal of the body or of dwelling in a home or of food or of clothing or of recreation or of play or of intimacy.

We do find, if we could call it this, a despairing hedonism in Ecclesiastes. We find that right in verses 1 through 11, don't we?

I gave myself over to every pleasure. I didn't withhold anything. This isn't exactly what these

Carpe Diem passages are. Solomon hasn't come to, Koholet hasn't come to the conclusion in this tombstone of verses 4 through 7.

The good thing is to eat and drink and be satisfied in our limitations. Because God is

God and we are but dust. This is a conclusion that comes after he's poured himself into bodily pleasure.

But that doesn't mean that bodily pleasure doesn't have something to say about our corporate life together and our life unto

God. These acts, these embodied acts are a creational good.

To work, to eat, to enjoy the world that God has made is the highest order of being a creature of God.

And so we're not putting these things aside as something vain. Again, I'm just planting seeds for where we're going in chapter 2.

Bartholomew puts it this way, embodied acts such as eating, drinking, working and enjoying the life of one's youth.

These passages evoke the ordinary glory of embodied life as represented by Genesis 1 and 2.

That's exactly right. As I said, Ecclesiastes is in dialogue with Genesis 1 and 2.

The verbs, the symbolism, it's all going in this direction. We're meant to see the ordinary glory of embodied life in eating, in drinking, in working, in human relationship.

All under this ordered appreciation of God, the creator and sustainer of all. Let me just add something to Bartholomew.

He says these passages evoke the ordinary glory of embodied life as represented in Genesis 1 and 2.

Amen. Let me add this. The ordinary glory of embodied life as represented in Genesis 1 and 2 under the sun of Genesis 3.

That's the key. It represents the ordinary glories of embodied life, according to Genesis 1 and 2, under the sun of Genesis 3.

In other words, under the effects of the fall. That's what Solomon is looking at. I'm looking at how we are made, the good things that God bestows, ways that they are good.

And I threw myself into their goodness. I opened myself up wholly to the goodness. I never lost control.

I allowed wisdom to guide me. I gave myself wholly over to it. Why didn't it deliver?

Why was it bad rather than good? It's because he's under the sun of a fallen world, under the curse of toil and fruitlessness, under the misery of being separated and exiled from the presence of God.

C .S. Lewis describes two types of pleasure. He says there is the pleasure that arises from need, the simple satisfactions that are required to survive, like when you're hungry and you can finally eat, that's a pleasure.

When you're thirsty and you can finally drink, that's a pleasure. He says these are pleasures of need. But then he says there's also pleasures of appreciation.

These are not pleasures that are required for survival, but in fact, it's something that's enjoyed quite apart from that, like the beauty of a sunset or enjoying a piece of music.

Lewis goes on in Screwtape Letters to describe God as the ultimate hedonist, because he he sows pleasure and delight into everything that he does.

A good book I'll be pulling from, if I know some of you read and keep up with books I mentioned, The Things of the

Earth by Joe Rigney. Very helpful. And he's written other books on this topic. Very helpful to think about the place of worldly good and gain in the

Christian life. And Ecclesiastes is going to have a lot to say about that. But C .S.

Lewis is very helpful in helping us understand there is an end in pleasure. It's just not an end that can be found under the sun.

There is a point to pleasure. It's just not a point that can be accomplished under the sun. There's a point to eating and drinking and laboring, but we can't overcome or outrun the curse's effect on it all.

Our bodies, like the earth, is groaning, awaiting the fullness of redemption to come. So what we have to do in not only learning how to trace our sorrows in light of living under the sun, but also relearn how to read pleasure, the experience of pleasure.

Lewis wrote in his letters to Malcolm. If I could always be what I aim at being, no pleasure would be too ordinary.

Too usual. From the first taste of the air, when I look out of the window, one's whole cheek becomes a sort of palette down to my soft slippers at bedtime.

That's kind of an embarrassing detail to add, soft slippers at bedtime. I read a book last year by Gary Selby called

Pursuing an Earthy Spirituality, C .S. Lewis and Incarnational Faith, and definitely some bones to spit out in that book.

One of the things I appreciated was this, and Selby recounts, as Lewis learned from his lifelong friend,

Arthur Greaves, even the simplest pleasure received attentively with adoration holds out an opportunity to taste the goodness of God.

For most of his life, he said, my feelings for nature had been too narrowly romantic. I attended almost entirely to what

I thought was awe -inspiring or wild or eerie or above all to distance. In other words, what

Lewis had looked for in his search for inspiration in those early years was the exotic. What he learned from Arthur was the glory of the ordinary.

That's a great description for what Kohelet is looking at in these first 11 verses.

I gave my life to pursue that exotic thing, that glorious thing, that rare thing.

And at the end of it all, I realized the best things are the mundane things.

It wasn't in my hanging gardens. It was in a simple meal. It wasn't in the glorious marble or the stately chariots or treasures from every province.

It was just in that basic eating and drinking and being with companions.

That was the good. It was there all along. It's interesting, isn't it, that Lewis, as brilliant as he was, an

Oxford scholar, but C .S. Lewis had to learn that from a friend. He says, I learned from my friend

Arthur the glory of the ordinary. We have to learn from each other the glory of the ordinary because we're too horse blinded on our latest project and ambition.

We miss all the good, all the in -betweens. Now, I have a lot more to say about pleasure in weeks to come.

Let me leave you with this thought as a contemplation and then we'll close. C .S.

Lewis says, this is an excerpt, humility is the road to pleasure.

I think it would be helpful for all of us to reflect on that. I believe it's true.

I don't know that I fully understand why. So I'd say don't give some cheap or glib answer, but actually meditate on this.

Why is it true that humility is the road to pleasure? If we can answer that question, we'll be in line with chapter two.

Let me give you a little hint of what might be helpful for this thought experiment. Humility is the road to pleasure.

This is Hebrews 11, 24 and following. By faith,

Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, esteeming the reproach of Christ, greater riches than the treasures in Egypt, because he looked to the reward.

Delight or gladness, pleasure comes from God. Man twists and malforms and redirects that pleasure, fashions it into his

God or into his own ambition. David understands rightly when he says, actually doesn't say he prays,

Lord, make me to know joy. Make me to know gladness, Psalm 51, verse 8.

Joy is not something I stumble upon. It's not something I plant or build or establish. It's something the

Lord bestows. That's going to be a lot of what Ecclesiastes is pointing to at the end of the chapter. It's God's gift.

It's God's prerogative to give us pleasure. And so David prays, make me to know that joy, make me to experience that gladness.

Of course, God desires his people to gather with him in joy. We recognize that joy associated with God is an offering of the whole heart,

David says, with the very innards I have, I worship him. All that's within me,

I praise his holy name. It's this joyful offering of the whole heart that is a response to the pleasure of the joy of communing with God.

It's always that way. Lord, bestow on me that pleasure, that joy that opens my heart in a return of adoration and gratitude.

Gratitude, joy, pleasure is always a response to God, a response to seeing and knowing and walking with God, to enjoying the good things of God.

This, too, Koholod has recognized. Let me put it in the words of John Newton in this way.

Savior, since of Zion's city, I through grace a member am, let the world deride or pity.

I will glory in thy name. Fading is the worldlings pleasure. Can I modify a little bit?

Fading is everyone's pleasure under the sun. It's not just the worldlings pleasure. Under the sun, all of our pleasures are fading.

That's part of the point of chapter two, verses one through eleven. All of our pleasures under the sun are fading, but there's a pleasure that doesn't fade and the worldling doesn't know it.

Fading is the worldlings pleasures, all his boasted pomp and show, all his hanging gardens, all his palaces, his grand epitaph.

All of that's fading, all the arrogant and prideful pomp and show, solid joys.

Lasting treasures, none but Zion's children know. What are the solid joys?

What are the lasting treasures? They're not under the sun. But they're on the road of humility.

They stand at the end of it. They're actually found at the at the end of a life lived in the reproach of Christ.

I want to close, but I'm going to close with two points that are not my own. They're just so good. I have to I have to share them.

As I mentioned, this book, Recovering Eden by Zach Eastwine, and he gives two points in light of our passage this morning.

He says, first, even wisdom, along with the proper use of created joys, cannot spare us from what happens under the sun.

That's what he's recognized at the end of chapter one. I can have all this wisdom, but I die like the fool.

I can labor and accomplish it all, but it just goes to the fool. The wise will die just like the fool, even if one wisely turns.

From a life lived in idolatry to a life toward God, life under the sun will not necessarily reward them for it.

Neither the foolish use of sex nor the proper enjoyment of it can save us, just because one chooses not to drink or to drink wisely will not prove to be the answer that the situation under the sun ultimately needs.

Hedonism won't work. Neither will morality. No matter how much better morality is, we will have to look beyond both for true gain.

Neither the wisdom nor the folly of human beings can make the world right again. What's crooked cannot be made straight, not under the sun.

Only a righteousness from heaven will do this. Second, and here's the point we've been emphasizing,

Kohalet wants us to be sad about this. It's like I got a text from a brother on Sunday afternoon last week, and he said, hey, thank you for the sermon.

I'm kind of depressed. I'm like, that's actually a good thing. It means you've been paying attention.

It means you're actually following the argument that Solomon is making. He wants us to feel sad about this.

He wants us to see how far from Eden we have fallen. Life wasn't meant to be this way.

The human experience of joy and of pleasure and of communion with God and with one another, it wasn't meant to be this way.

Work wasn't meant to produce sweat and thorns and thistles that we pull bread rolls from. The world wasn't meant to be crooked in this way.

It wasn't meant to yearn for a justice that's never actually found under the sun. One time it was enough for man and woman to have

God and the good gifts he had given and the good labor and energy he had provided for them. Even if that meant for them there was a tree and fruit from that tree that they were not to partake of.

Now, even though we're surrounded by opportunities for more laughter, for more drink, for more work, for more money, none of it's enough.

None of it is satisfying. And death stomps on it all. Even our marvelous moments of good work or of intimacy with our lover will one day become a memory and then gone forever to the world.

Death did this to us. We did this to us and God let it be.

So he will have to take care of death and all that has flowed from it. And in time he will.

In the time that God promised he will come, a cross will stand, a tomb will empty and death itself will die.

Whatever my eyes desired, I did not keep. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure. My heart rejoiced in all of my labor.

This was my reward from all my labor. But then I looked on all the works that my hands had done on all the labor in which

I had toiled. This was all vanity. Grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun.

How precious is your loving kindness, O God. Therefore, the children of men put their trust under the shadow of your wings.

They're abundantly satisfied with the fullness of your house and you give them drink from the river of your pleasures. With you is the fountain of life.

In your light we see light. You will show me the path of life. In your presence is fullness of joy.

At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. When I read

Psalm 1611, I'm always drawn back to this moment in when it was a night, a

Greek class in 2015, my first year in seminary, and we had this stadium classroom.

So all the seats were down on this angle and there was this young man in the row in front of me and we were cramming for a

Greek exam. And how that worked was you came in at the allotted time with nothing but a pencil and you were given a blank sheet of paper and you had 20 minutes to put on that paper whatever you needed to get through that exam.

And then you were given the exam and you had an hour to complete it. And you're staring at paradigms and trying to cram it into your brain and then regurgitate it onto that paper in 20 minutes.

So I had all these declension endings and personal endings and square stops. And I'm like a madman scribbling all this out so I can have a reference sheet for the exam.

I got it done with maybe 30 seconds to spare and I look down in the row in front of me and this brother is writing over and over again a simple line, at your right hand are pleasures forevermore, at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

He spent all 20 minutes just repeating that line. And I thought, boy, he understands something that I don't.

You will show me the path of life. In your presence is fullness of joy.

At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Let's pray.

Father, thank you for your word. Thank you,

Lord, for a word that's honest with us, honest about our ambitions and desires, honest about the desire for pleasure that wars in our members and causes our members to war with one another.

Lord, we have not because we ask not. We have not, Lord, because we ask amiss to spend it on our pleasure.

We don't have the right pleasure to aim for, Lord, the highest love that orders all love, the priceless treasure beyond all measure.

Lord, forgive me and forgive my brothers and sisters. Lord, we're a lot more like Kohelet seeking to build and accomplish and satisfy his heart with things that never could.

Then we are like David, recognizing where joy and pleasure is really found, where it comes from and where it all returns to, where it's stable and lasting forever.

Lord, forgive me for being more like a worldling with fading pleasures in my target than a child of Zion who knows where solid joy is.

Help us, Lord, to face the challenge of Ecclesiastes in a way that exposes and disarms our idols.

Help us, Lord, even as we look to the church retreat at the end of this week to see in all of their disgusting, paler, the bankruptcy and ugliness of our idolatry,

Lord, that we would look for meaning or pleasure or satisfaction in anything other than you. What a scornful, derisable endeavor.

Lord, forgive us. Help us, Lord. I pray, Lord, as we continue through this challenging book, that you would give us sea legs and teach us wisdom even by your own spirit,

Lord, not just to hear and understand the words, but Lord, to apply them to our lives, that you would show us the path that leads to life and encourage us,

Lord, as we walk on the road of humility that leads to pleasure. Do these things, Lord, for your glory.