Joy to the World – Seeking Joy

Transcript

JRS 37
12/10/2023
Joy to the World – Seeking Joy
Ecclesiastes 2:1-11
Jesse Randolph

After winning the third of his six Super Bowl Championships with the New England Patriots, Tom Brady was interviewed on 60 Minutes and was asked how he was taking it all in. And Brady responded this way, he said, “Why do I have three Super Bowl rings and still think there is something greater out there for me? I mean, maybe a lot of people would say, hey man, this is what it is. I reached my goal, my dream, my life. Me, I think, it's got to be more than this. I mean, this isn't, this can't be what it is all cracked up to be.” Then the interviewer asked Brady a follow-up question, the interviewer asked him, “Well, what's the answer?” Brady could only say this, “I wish I knew; I wish I knew.” Those are the words of Tom Brady, world champion many times over, world class athlete, worldwide celebrity with movie star looks and staggering wealth and at least at that time a super model wife. And he finds himself there sullen and despairing, wondering openly about the meaning and purpose of it all.

Well Tom Brady, or as he is known, Tom Terrific, isn't alone. Rather he stands in this long line of many who over the course of history have had unrivaled fame and profound acclaim, many who chased after all forms of happiness and pleasure and joy that this world has to offer, only to discover that what they were chasing after was a mirage, a dead end, a door that opened to nowhere. This has been true not only of famous athletes, the Tom Bradys and the Wilt Chamberlains and the Joe Namaths of the world, but it has been true of infamous military and political figures of the world: the Herods and the Napoleans and the Bill Clintons of the world. And this has been especially true of various poets and authors and literary folk and philosophers throughout history, men who professed to have a love of wisdom and men who the world assumed to be wise when in reality their disastrous lives and their train-wreck track records prove that they were, in fact, fools. We actually don't have to go that far back in history to see this phenomenon playing out. Rather, we can keep it within the past few hundred years or so in this so-called post-enlightenment era with the rise of Darwinian evolutionary thought and secular humanism, a phase of world history which has been marked by the rise of the so-called intellectual class, that crop of secular worldly humanistic, atheistic thinkers and writers whose thoughts and writings have influenced the current generation profoundly. These were individuals who thought they had the world figured out. These were individuals who thought they had the world on a string, they had natural born, God-given intelligence, they had education, they had degrees, they had material possessions, they had wealth, they had comforts, they had experiences that went far beyond that of the common man. They were the creme of the crop, the upper crust. These are the ones who we would assume experienced the greatest amounts of happiness and pleasure and joy in their lives, when in fact the opposite is true.

I'm going to give you three examples here, we'll start with the French political philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, (I just wanted to say something French this morning), a man whose thoughts were profoundly influential on the French Revolution. He coined the phrase, eat the rich. Rousseau was deeply insecure and by all accounts was a rabid egomaniac. In fact, as a way to cover up his insecurity, he is known to have said things like this. “I would leave this life with apprehension if I knew a better man than me.” Or “My consolation lies in my self-esteem.” Or here is another one, “I rejoice in myself.” Well, Rousseau's egotistical streak was not lost on his contemporaries. One of them described him as deceitful, vain as Satan, ungrateful, cruel, hypocritical and full of malice. Another called him a monster of vanity and vileness. Upon Rousseau's death one of his lovers said this of him, she said, “He was ugly enough to frighten me and love did not make him more attractive. But he was a pathetic figure and I treated him with gentleness and kindness. He was an interesting madman.” In other words, though he was influential and renowned and carried a certain amount of prestige, Rousseau was a hopelessly lost soul.

Then we come upon Leo Tolstoy, the famed Russian author who penned, of course, War and Peace and many other great works. If Rousseau's ego was at a 9, Tolstoy's ego was off the charts, it was immeasurable. As a young man Tolstoy was known to say things like this, “I have not yet met a single man who is morally as good as I.” Or he said this, “Read a work on the literary characterization of genius today and this awoke me to the conviction that I am a remarkable man.” I mean, with an attitude like that it won't surprise you to learn that Tolstoy's contemporaries thought him as being unapproachable and aloof. And not only that, Tolstoy's whole life was marked by moral compromise and failure. He had enslaved peasants who he referred to as swine. He gambled away significant portions of his wealth. He was wildly promiscuous, both before and after being married, contracting multiple STDs which he passed along to the woman who would become his wife. He not only loathed, by the way, the institution of marriage, it was well chronicled that he loathed his wife, he hated her. The world thought of Tolstoy as a brilliant writer and thinker, and that he was, but in reality, at his core he was a selfish, cold, cruel man.

The last one I'll mention is Ernest Hemingway. Born into a Christian home, this man, who would write such works as For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Farewell to Arms, The Old Man and the Sea, rejected his parents' Christian faith at a very early age. And Hemingway's mother, this devout and godly woman named Grace, saw the way that her wayward son's life was likely to go and so when he was in his early 20s, she wrote him this letter with great concern where she said this. “Unless you, my son Ernest, come to yourself, cease your lazy loafing and pleasure seeking, stop trading on your handsome face and neglecting your duties to God and your Savior, Jesus Christ, there is nothing before you but bankruptcy. You have overdrawn.” Well, notwithstanding her heartfelt plea with her son, Grace's letter did not lead to remorse or to repentance for young Hemingway. Instead, her letter provoked in Hemingway an intense hatred of his mother, a hatred he carried with him to the grave. And as the decades rolled on, notwithstanding his proven literary output and notwithstanding his unquestioned impact on culture, and notwithstanding the great wealth he amassed, in private Hemingway was a tortured and miserable man. As each of the wives in his four failed marriages would testify to, he was a liar, a drunkard and full of rage. It all came bubbling to the surface for Hemingway on July 2, 1961, when as one of his biographer's notes, “He got hold of his best English double-barreled shotgun, put two canisters in it, and blew away his entire cranial vault.”

What do these men—Rousseau, Tolstoy, Hemingway, for that matter, Tom Brady—all have in common. What they have in common is that at some level of their consciousness, at some point in their lives, they believed they had arrived, they believed they had it all. At some point in their upward ascent in their life as they progressively squeezed out of this world all that a person could ever experience, whether that be through possessions or property or various other pursuits, they each came to realize the dead end nature of their quest for temporal happiness, for earth-bound joy, with men like Tom Brady admitting it to a camera on 60 Minutes, and with Ernest Hemingway admitting it as he wrapped his lips around the barrel of a shotgun.

On that cheery note, believe it or not, today is Part 2 of our Joy to the World Christmas series, We kicked off the series last week in a sermon titled Starved for Joy and in that sermon we saw that for those who lack a relationship with the living God, a relationship that can only be found by putting one's faith in the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, it is impossible to find joy in this world, it is impossible to experience true joy in this world. For those who are unbelievers, for those who are unsaved, they are by their constitution joy deficient. Instead, as we saw from Titus 3:3, they are foolish, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending their lives in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. And necessarily so because again they are detached from, and not only that, but opposed to the only true source of joy in this world, God Himself. The title of this message this morning is Seeking Joy where we're going to see one example of one man's pursuit of joy through the various pathways of pleasure that even today mankind tends to follow. And we're going to see where that pursuit ultimately led him.

Turn with me in your Bibles, if you would, to Ecclesiastes 2. God's Word reads, “I said to myself, come now, I will test you with pleasure. Enjoy yourself. And behold, it, too, was futility. I said of laughter, it is madness and of pleasure, what does it accomplish? I explored with my mind how to stimulate my body with wine while my mind was guiding me wisely, and how to take hold of folly until I could see what good there is for the sons of men to do under heaven the few years of their lives. I enlarged my works. I built houses for myself, I planted vineyards for myself, I made gardens and parks for myself and I planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. I made ponds of water for myself from which to irrigate a forest of growing 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 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 desired I did not refuse them, I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart was pleased because of all my labor and this was my reward for all my labor. Thus, I considered all my activities which my hands had done and the labor which I had exerted, and behold all was vanity and striving after wind, and there was no profit under the sun.”

The book of Ecclesiastes is an absolute gem. It contains so much timeless truth about truth and reality, about how things appear to be versus how things as they actually are. I like to think of it as this written version of an aged man who has been walking through life without the prescription for his eyes that he so desperately needs only to, later in life, have that prescription written so he can finally put those lenses on and see the world around him with clear focus for what it actually is. It's a timeless treasure trove of wisdom from Solomon who outside of Jesus Christ we know to be the wisest man who ever lived. Now to set the stage for the text that we'll be in today, let's take a little bit of a look at what has been going on so far in the first chapter here of Ecclesiastes, just over the page. First, we see in Ecclesiastes 1:1 Solomon identifies himself. Look at Ecclesiastes 1:1 where he identifies himself as “the son of David,” meaning the physical descendant of David. Then he also identifies himself “as king in Jerusalem.” Not only that, he calls himself “the preacher” in the very first few words there, meaning a herald of God, a herald of truth who is giving us now these several powerful truths to consider all throughout the book of Ecclesiastes.

Then Solomon next in Ecclesiastes 1:2 makes this statement which many have heard before even if they've never read nor studied this book. Look at Ecclesiastes 1:2, he says, “Vanity of vanities, says the preacher. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” Meaning everything in this world, everything temporal, everything that is earthbound is vanity. The meaning of that term vanity, that term is hevel and it means something like breath or mist, meaning everything here on planet earth when considered in and of itself is like a mist which evaporates. It's like the steam that comes out of that teakettle and disappears into the air in your kitchen. It's like that cold morning breath that leaves our mouth on freezing mornings only to dissipate into the air. All is vanity, he says. He goes further in his thoughts here in Ecclesiastes 1 where we see that Solomon tests his thesis, his ultimate thesis, that all in this life is fleeting, vanity, hevel. He begins by exploring wisdom to see if wisdom will pass this test of his thesis. Look at Ecclesiastes 1:12, just down the page. He says, “I, the preacher, have been king over Israel in Jerusalem and I set my mind to seek and explore by wisdom concerning all that has been done under heaven. It is a grievous task which God has given to the sons of men to be afflicted with. I have seen all the works which have been done under the sun and behold, all is vanity and striving after wind. What is crooked cannot be straightened and what is lacking cannot be counted. I said to myself, behold I have magnified and increased wisdom more than all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my mind has observed a wealth of wisdom and knowledge. And I set my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I realize that this also is striving after wind because in much wisdom,” verse 18, “there is much grief and increasing knowledge results in increasing pain.” I won't have time to go through all that he says there in Ecclesiastes 1. If you want to do a deeper dive into the vanity of wisdom, I commend to you Gil Rugh's messages in Ecclesiastes from 2019 or Mike Otazu's messages to the college ministry earlier this year. But the basic idea is that Solomon here could find no ultimate meaning, no ultimate purpose in the pursuit of wisdom.

Then that brings us to our text for today where Solomon speaks of this time in his past, in his earlier days as a younger man where he sought meaning, purpose in his life now through the pursuit of pleasure. But as was true of his experiments with earthly wisdom, we're about to see that Solomon found that what the world offers in terms of pleasure, happiness, joy even is hevel. It is gone with the wind, it is here today, it is gone tomorrow; and it brings ultimately no satisfaction.

Last week we looked at those seven traits of the joy-starved soul and we developed those traits as we worked our way through Titus 3:3. Today as we work our way through Ecclesiastes 2 we're going to see the journey of one joy-seeker, Solomon, whose quest for joy, whose pursuit for joy demonstrates ultimately the futility of any search for joy when it is not ultimately anchored in a relationship with the true, living God of all.

Let's get into our study of the text. He starts by saying, verse 1, “I said to myself,” other translations have that, “I said in my heart,” or “I said within my heart.” Solomon here is simulating a conversation with himself. This is an internal monologue that is now being recorded in written form here. The eleven verses we'll be in today, as Solomon reflects on his former life, a life given over to worldly pleasures and worldly sources of so-called joy, a clear clue as to how self-indulgent he was comes right through the grammar of this text which is littered with these first person statements, these double first person statements. “I said to myself, I explored with my mind, I enlarged my works, I built houses for myself, I made gardens and parks for myself, I made ponds of water for myself, I bought male and female slaves, I possessed flocks, I became great.” That sounds a lot like Tolstoy there. Now I do understand that every autobiography by definition, and Ecclesiastes is autobiographical, necessarily must have its share of first-person statements. It's about I, me. But here in Ecclesiastes 2 there is so much me, myself and I in Solomon's words that we can clearly see that he thought himself to be the center of the universe.

Getting back to our text, what is it that Solomon said to himself there in verse 1? Note, he doesn't inwardly meditate on the greatness of God or meditate on the faithfulness of God or any other attributes or characteristics of God. He doesn't meditate on the sinful status of his soul or his need for a Savior. No, instead it says, “he said to himself, come now, I will test you with pleasure, so enjoy yourself.” As he writes these words, Solomon, now in his older age, is looking back on this earlier phase of his life in which he plunged himself into frivolity. This is referring to this former time in Solomon's life in which this man of wisdom became this man of pleasure. Instead of consecrating himself to Yahweh as any good Israelite would seek to do, to be holy as He is holy, Solomon went down this path of pleasure seeking. He decided consciously, intentionally to become a hedonist. He decided that he would live it up and sow his wild oats and paint the town red and experience every sense and stimulus that mankind could. Look at how measured and calculated the method he took on here, in which he went about doing so. The text says he decided to test himself. “Come now, I will test you with pleasure.” What Solomon engaged in, in other words, was a grand experiment. The wisest man in the world was deliberately intending to learn something through his own personal hedonistic experiences. What he sought to test himself with, the text tells us, was pleasure. “I will test you with pleasure.” That's a broad term, that word pleasure encompasses various sources of pleasure and happiness and joy that are out there in the world. We're about to see Solomon indulged in everything from pleasure in laughter and liquor and land and ladies. Those are not the four points for this morning, by the way. But I mean for us today it might be the perfect Disney vacation, or it might be the mega truckload of fireworks to put on an absolute banger of a Fourth of July celebration. Or it might be the forbidden lover or the bottom of a bottle. In Solomon's case he found the pursuit of pleasure ultimately, though, was to no avail.

Look at the next part of verse 1. He says, “And behold, it too was futility.” Just like his pursuit of worldly wisdom was futile, so was his pursuit of worldly pleasures. His hedonistic pursuits were hevel. It was all a mist, it was fleeting, it didn't last. By the time his pleasures, whatever form they took, reached their end, they were gone, like sea spray or chaff blown away by the wind.

As we turn to the remaining verses here in this section, what we're going to see Solomon now do is take the main idea that he gives us here in verse 1 and then funnel it down and apply it to various different categories of pleasure or joy seeking. Then, what he'll do in verse 11 is he'll get back at the end of the section, back to his main idea, his main thought of where this all ends. As we're about to see, Solomon's pursuit of joy can be funneled into three broad categories. These are the three points, if you are a note taker. #1 would be Play, #2 would be Possessions and #3 would be Passions.

We'll start with Play. Look at verse 2 where Solomon begins by describing how he sought joy and pleasure in laughter. He says, “I said of laughter, it is madness and of pleasure, what does it accomplish?” Now for some context here, Solomon served as king during what is known as the Golden Age of Israel. These were prosperous days in the land. The kingdom was still unified, and this was before the nation's full-on nosedive into depravity and spiritual idolatry which led to their eventual captivity. This during Solomon's time was the Gilded Age. This was the period of living it up and laughing it up and partying it up. We're actually given a clue into the spirit of this age in I Kings 4:20 which when speaking of Solomon's reign says this, “Judah and Israel were as numerous as the sand that is on the seashore in abundance. They were eating and drinking and rejoicing.” Now there is nothing necessarily wrong with any of those, there is nothing necessarily sinful associated with any of those. After all, even today as Christians I Corinthians 10:31 says, “Whether we eat, whether we drink, all that we do we are to do for the glory of God.” There is nothing wrong with laughing or laughter, there is nothing wrong with humor, there is nothing wrong with joking around. But when the laughter and the jokes and the humor become all that your life is about, whether that be through the antics of a court jester in days gone by or your favorite raunchy comedian today, when all of life becomes one big joke to you that is a problem. In fact, we know from Scripture that excessive laughing and excessive joking can be a mask, can be a cover for what is oftentimes an aching and grieving heart. Proverbs 14:13 says, “Even in laughter the heart may be in pain,” meaning those who make it their life's work to be the class clown or to be the perpetual butt of every joke are often masking sorrows that they are too fearful to reveal. Laughter, we know, can also be a cover up for sin, like the sin of laziness, sloth. I'll eventually get to that project that my boss assigned to me, I just have to watch a few more YouTube shorts first. Or it can mask the sin of envy or the sin of anger, like when the people we're envious of or the people we're angry toward are repeatedly the butt of our jokes. Solomon knew what this was like. He knew what it was like to attempt to find happiness or joy or pleasure in laughter, but he found that laughter in and of itself failed to bring him any lasting fulfillment or joy. He says, “I said of laughter, it is madness and of pleasure, what does it accomplish?” Now when Solomon there, by the way, uses that word madness, that's not referring to someone being crazy or out of their mind. Instead, he is referring to a sinful state of mind, it's referring to moral perversity rather than some sort of mental oddity. He's referring to a sinful state of mind. When you think about that, that really is true of a lot of laughter that we see all around us or hear all around us in our day. It is morally perverse. I mean, there are things my wife and I, since we got saved, we simply can't as Christians look at or laugh at anymore. I'm sure you could say the same thing as you've sat under the Word of God faithfully preached all these years, some of you many decades, there are some things you know you can't be laughing at anymore or watching anymore. Again, none of this is to say that laughing is in and of itself sinful or bad; joy, we're about to see, is an essential part of the Christian faith. Many times, joy will engender and bring about laughter, but the reality is that a lot of joking can be frivolous and superficial and cynical and sarcastic and even cruel. Consider this example from Proverbs 26:18. It says, “Like a madman who throws firebrands, arrows and death, so is the man who deceives his neighbor and says, 'Was I not joking?'” There is sin at the root, and it is covered up by laughter.

Well Solomon here ultimately found laughter for laughter's sake to be a useless pleasure. As he thinks back on that time of laughter bouncing off the walls of his royal home, as he thinks back on the various so-called friends and “hangers on” who are around him exchanging their jokes and drinking their wine and feasting bountifully and literally laughing out loud at the displays of wit and joking that were happening all around them, Solomon here, writing later in life, is looking back on it all and he is thinking of all those people who were giggling themselves to the grave and he says, “it was madness.” Yes, the good times rolled but ultimately it accomplished nothing. That is literally what he says at the end of verse 2 through this use of a rhetorical question, what does it accomplish? Answer, nothing.

Next up in this journey of the joy seeker was alcohol. Solomon turns to this next source of so-called pleasure in verse 3 where he says, “I explored with my mind how to stimulate my body with wine while my mind was guiding me wisely.” Wine, in other words, was a lubricant for his laughter, as it is for so many. Hence the phrase, the happy drunk. Now to some interpreters those words there, “stimulate my body with wine,” strikes a negative note. To those interpreters, they'll say that Solomon here does not appear to be taking his wine with moderation with thanksgiving to God for the glory of God. Instead, they'll say he appears here to be abusing alcohol the way that so many people abuse alcohol in our day. This is yet another selfish hedonistic pleasure, they'll say. He is off the rails and in this case, he is actually violating what he wrote over in Proverbs 20:1 where he says, “Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler, and whoever is intoxicated by it is not wise.” I would actually disagree with that interpretation. Note the words here in verse 3. Solomon very clearly says he explored with his mind how to stimulate his body with wine, but then it says, “while my mind was guiding me wisely.” In other words what I think is happening here for Solomon, this wise man, is that this was a controlled experiment at an early phase of his life in wine-tasting. He was partaking in moderation and then soberly and thoughtfully reflected on his experience. He wasn't, to use today's terms, an alcoholic. He wasn't given over, we can't see here, to intemperance or to drunkenness. He wasn't addicted to strong drinks, as the Proverbs will speak of. He was too wise for that. Instead, he was like the modern-day connoisseur of fine wine, those folks will talk about notes and noses and various another wine-related lingo. I think the phrase is wine snob, I'm not one, have never known one, no I've known some. But they're talking about tasting the choicest vintages. In context here what Solomon's apparent train of thought is, is that he wanted to experience the most exquisite taste sensations, maybe a little bit of relaxation thrown in and maybe then he could find some joy and satisfaction in that. We can't lose sight of the whole train of thought here, which is that Solomon is looking for pleasure, for joy in anything he can get his hands on, anything he can put in his body, which is continued on in this section.

He keeps on going, next he notes how he explored how to take hold of folly, middle of verse 3 there. Now folly there refers to some sort of harmless, enjoyable form of time-wasting. The modern-day equivalent would be something like, no offense, sudoku, candy crush, fantasy football, the Shohei Ohtani plane tracker (maybe four of you will know that reference from a couple days ago). Just in case wisdom didn't hold the answer, Solomon here decided to explore its opposite: folly. As one commentator says, “Sometimes people who are clods seem to be happier than those who are very clever.” So, Solomon here apparently thought I'll try to be a clod for a little bit, I'll look for base forms of entertainment and maybe I'll find some amusement and joy there. But he didn't find joy there. Instead, what he found, as we keep reading on in verse 3, is that man is consigned to a life of toiling and striving and sweating as a result of the curse that now sits over creation. That's what he means at the end of verse 3 there when he says, “Until I could see what good there is for the sons of men to do under heaven the few years of their lives.” Solomon there is simply reflecting on the fact that as descendants of Adam we live and we toil on this sin-cursed planet and we do so and we work in these bodies that expire after a relatively short while, after we have lived out, as it says here, “the few years of our lives.” Real happy thoughts from Solomon here. Well, those are some of the aspects of play that Solomon pursued in his quest for happiness, pleasure, joy: laughter and wine and folly.

Next, we see that Solomon sought joy through his possessions. Here is the description he gives in verses 4-8. He says, “I enlarged my works. I built houses for myself, I planted vineyards for myself, I made gardens and parks for myself, and I planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. I made ponds of water for myself from which to irrigate a forest of growing 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 we'll cut it off there for now. So, Solomon, with all the wealth that he had at his disposal sought joy and satisfaction in whatever he could purchase; and purchase he did, he purchased a lot. He starts by saying back up in verse 4, “I enlarged my works.” In other words, I widened my footprint, I expanded my empire, I moved defenses back. Note that everything that he's about to mention here in these few verses is in the plural, which underscores the ambition and the zeal which undergirded Solomon's plans. He truly lived an opulent lifestyle.

He then says, verse 4, “I built houses for myself.” Houses, plural. And that lines up, by the way, exactly with what we see elsewhere in Scripture, that he built multiple houses. We see in I Kings 9:10 that he built his own house, the king's house. We see in I Kings 10:17 that he built a house of the forest of Lebanon. We know from II Chronicles 8:11 that he built another house for his wife, Pharaoh's daughter. In fact, we'll see all these houses at some level mentioned back in I Kings 7. Turn with me if you would over to I Kings 7, look at I Kings 7. And by the way keep a finger in I Kings, we'll be going back to I Kings a couple of times for the rest of our time together this morning. And as you look at I Kings 7 here I just want you to note the extent of the labors and the effort that went into Solomon's building of his dwelling places, his royal residences. I Kings 7:1, it says, “Now Solomon was building his own house thirteen years, and he finished all his house. He built a house of the forest of Lebanon. Its length was 100 cubits and its width 50 cubits and its height 30 cubits, on four rows of cedar pillars with cedar beams on the pillars. It was paneled with cedar above, the side chambers which were on the 45 pillars, 15 in each row. There were artistic window frames in three rows and window was opposite window in three ranks. All the doorways and doorposts had squared artistic frames and window was opposite window in three ranks. Then he made the hall of pillars, its length was 50 cubits and its width 30 cubits, and a porch was in front of them and pillars and a threshold in front of them. He made the hall of the throne where he was to judge, the hall of judgment, and it was paneled with cedar from floor to floor. His house where he was to live, the other court inward from the hall, was of the same workmanship. He also made a house like this hall for Pharaoh's daughter whom Solomon had married. All these were of costly stones, of stone cut according to measure, sawed with saws inside and outside, even from the foundation to the coping and so on the outside to the great court. The foundation was of costly stones, even large stones, stones of 10 cubits and stones of 8 cubits. And above were costly stones, stone cut according to measure and cedar. So, the great court all around had three rows of cut stone and a row of cedar beams, even as the inner court of the house to the Lord and the porch of the house.” If you want a full depiction of what that might have looked like, ask one of our home builders in the congregation to draw that out for you. But in the meantime, just know that this was quite the place, quite the palace. It gives you a sense of what Solomon is saying over here in Ecclesiastes 2:4 when he talks about building houses, plural, for himself.

But it wasn't just houses Solomon built. As we read on, we see that he was investing time and resources into horticulture, into gardening. Look at the last few words of verse 4 there, he says, “I planted vineyards for myself.” These were likely the vineyards from which he got the grapes with which he made the wine with which he was drinking in moderation, I would say, back in verse 3. Verse 5, he says, “I made gardens and parks for myself, and I planted in them all kinds of fruit trees.” And with that descriptive language that Solomon is giving here you can picture these orchards with their various types of fruit trees punctuating the landscape. You might even with a sanctified imagination think of the pristine walking paths around these gardens and orchards, and you can just sort of feel the shade that these fruit trees would have offered and the relief they would have offered on those hot days in this part of the world. The English writer Samuel Johnson, writing in the early 18th century, was once given a tour of a millionaire's home, and after taking the tour and seeing how beautiful the place was, after seeing all the luxury and the magnificence in this millionaire's home, he turned to the millionaire, Samuel Johnson did, and said, “These are the things that must make it hard for a man to die.” That must have been what it was like to take in Solomon's orchards and his vineyards and his houses and all that was on his property, the things that make it hard for a man to die.

The description of the possessions of Solomon continues on in verse 6. He says, “I made ponds of water for myself from which to irrigate a forest of growing trees.” His sprawling estates needed irrigation; they needed water on those hot, dry summer days. So, he had this army of slaves, we'll see them next in verse 7, making these ponds, presumably with canals and ditches and culverts to lead those water sources to the orchards and the vineyards and the gardens and the parks. For any of you who have constructed a pond, whether it’s a koi pond or a duck pond, or for any of you who have brought water to a place where water didn't previously exist, where it wasn't flowing, or if you're like me and you ran your water seven days a week twice a day last summer, and faced the bill later, you realize that getting water to places is not cheap. It's expensive, it's expensive to irrigate and to transport water. The point here is Solomon spared no expense. He was the richest of the rich, and at this earlier stage of his life he still believed that the accumulation of possessions, in this case having the greenest lawn and the lushest garden and the most productive fruit trees, could bring him satisfaction, happiness and joy.

He wasn't done, though. The next possession he mentions were human possessions, he owned slaves. We see that in verse 7. He says, “I bought male and female slaves, and I had home born slaves.” Given the scope of his building projects and the size of his property holdings, he needed this enormous workforce to run his daily operation. So culturally relevant reference here, culturally appropriate reference, he says, “I bought male and female slaves.” Those slaves reproduced, hence the reference here to the home born slaves who also belonged to Solomon. Of course, to feed everybody on that large estate, not only the members of his household but his slaves, he had to keep large flocks of sheep and herds of cattle. Look what it says at the end of verse 7, “Also I possessed flocks and herds larger than all who preceded me in Jerusalem.” It was a massive undertaking to keep everyone there fed. In fact, we see over in I Kings 4:22, it says, “Solomon's provision for one day was 30 kors of fine flour and 60 kors of meal, fat oxen, 20 pasture-fed oxen, 100 sheep,” this is for one day, “besides deer, gazelles, roebucks and fattened fowl.” Solomon couldn't just drive through Culver's or Runza and feed the family, he had to have an entire massive farming operation to keep everyone fed.

All right, turning to verse 8 Solomon reports now on yet another of his possessions: silver and gold. He says, “Also I collected for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces.” He loaded up on gold bars and silver coins and also amassed wealth through his acquisition of various rare treasures which the kings and the queens of various kingdoms gave to him. There are accounts all throughout I Kings of the various ways in which people supplied Solomon with wealth from the outside, but none says it better than what we see in I Kings 10. So, if you are still with me and still have a finger in I Kings, turn with me to I Kings 10 where we'll pick up in verse 14, I Kings 10:14, and just get a feel, a taste of how wealthy Solomon was and where this wealth all came from. I Kings 10:14, it says, “Now the weight of gold which came into Solomon in one year was 666 talents of gold, besides that from the traders and the wares of the merchants and all the kings of the Arabs and the governors of the country. King Solomon made 200 large shields of beaten gold, using 600 shekels of gold on each large shield. He made 300 shields of beaten gold, using 3 minas of gold on each shield. And the king put them in the house of the forest of Lebanon. Moreover, the king made a great throne of ivory and overlaid it with refined gold. There were six steps to the throne and a round top to the throne at its rear, and arms on each side of the seat and two lions standing beside the arms. Twelve lions were standing there on the six steps on the one side and on the other. Nothing like it was made for any other kingdom. All King Solomon's drinking vessels were of gold and all the vessels of the house of the forest of Lebanon were of pure gold. None of silver, it was not considered valuable in the days of Solomon. For the king had at sea the ships of Tarshish with the ships of Hiram, once every three years the ships of Tarshish came bringing gold and silver, ivory and apes and peacocks. So, King Solomon became greater than all the kings of the earth in riches and in wisdom. All the earth was seeking the presence of Solomon to hear his wisdom which God had put in his heart. They brought every man his gift, articles of silver and gold, garments, weapons, spices, horses and mules, so much year by year.” Just leave it there.

Needless to say, Solomon had a lot of money, he had a lot of wealth, he had a lot of possessions. Some of his treasures took the form of gold and silver, some of his wealth took the form of spices and garments, some of his collections took the form of gardens and trees, some of his possessions took the form of people. Not only slaves, by the way, but as we see at the end of verse 8 if we go back to Ecclesiastes 2:8, after describing his silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces, he says, “I provided for myself male and female singers.” Music was a rare pleasure in Solomon's day and Solomon we see here could afford to bring music into his own home, engaging entire choirs to sing for his pleasure, his entertainment, his joy. He assembled the finest singers, both male and female, to perform not only in public concerts but to perform for him privately. He was a privileged man.

All right, we've seen how Solomon sought joy in play: laughter, liquor, land, ladies (ladies come next). We saw he sought joy in possessions. Now we're going to see how he sought joy in passion, specifically in his fulfillment of his sexual passions, his sexual desires. We see it there at the end of verse 8. After mentioning the male and female singers it says, “He sought the pleasures of men,” and then that term is defined with what comes next, “many concubines.” That's just a summary statement. We get the full picture as we go back to I Kings 11 of the ways in which Solomon sought to fulfill his sexual desires. Look at I Kings 11:1, it says, “Now King Solomon loved many foreign women along with the daughter of Pharaoh,” that would be his wife, “Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian and Hittite women from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the sons of Israel, 'You shall not associate with them nor shall they associate with you for they will surely turn your heart away after their gods.' Solomon held fast to these,” meaning those women, “in love. He had 700 wives, princesses and 300 concubines.” So, you see it there, 700 wives, princesses, 300 concubines. He had more sexual partners than anyone could ever imagine. He had, in terms of raw sexual satisfaction, more pleasure in that department than anyone could ever experience. But there were consequences. Reading on in verses 3-4 it says, “And his wives turned his heart away. For when Solomon was old his wives turned his heart away after other gods and his heart was not wholly devoted to the Lord his God as the heart of David his father had been.” So, the erotic luxury of his vast harem, what he thought would be just royal icing on the cake in terms of his seeking after happiness and joy and pleasure, what it really ended up being was an indictment of how far from God he had drifted.

Now Solomon's story here, of course, is the story of anyone who has seen what a black hole the path to sexual immorality leads to. It is the story of the warnings behind pursuing the adulteress given in Proverbs 5 and Proverbs 7. It is the story of our society today in this post-Romans 1 world in which we have sacrificed our very souls on the altar of sexual idolatry and immorality. Corporately, societally professing to be wise, these various forms of sexual morality and impurity that we find ourselves not only engaged in but as it says at the end of Romans 1 giving approval for shows us that we are fools. If we are engaged in those behaviors, we are far from God.

Back to Ecclesiastes. Solomon begins to wrap up his thoughts in this section in verse 9. He starts by saying, “Then I became great and increased more than all who preceded me in Jerusalem.” That's quite the assessment, the self-assessment there, quite the confident conclusion, isn't it? I became great. From his vantage point it reached the mountain peak of worldly success. He had the satisfaction of climbing higher on that ladder of prestige than anyone who had come before him. That's what it means when it says, “he increased more than all who preceded him in Jerusalem.” He had it all. In Solomon's eyes at least he was greater than David, he was greater than Saul, and he was certainly greater than all those judges and other leaders who preceded the first two kings of Israel.

Then he says this at the end of verse 9, “My wisdom also stood by me.” Now here by wisdom Solomon isn't referring to the kind of wisdom that is anchored in the fear of God. Proverbs 9:10, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Rather here I believe Solomon is referring to his raw intelligence. What he is saying here in context is despite all of this and all the experimentation, I was still as smart as ever. I still had my intellect; I still had my mental fortitude. The women, the folly, the alcohol, none of it changed the fact that I was still as smart as a whip.

Then as we turn to verse 10, we get to the summary statement of this entire journey of the joy seeker. He says, “All that my eyes desired I did not refuse them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure. For my heart was pleased because of all my labor and this was my reward for all my labor.” In other words, whenever he saw something, he wanted, he got it. Whenever he was tempted to indulge in a fleshly pleasure, he did so. In his search for joy, he placed no limits on his expenditures or his pursuits. There was nothing he denied himself. Rather, his life was an unending merry-go-round of getting things and doing things. We're given the reason for that in the second half of verse 10 where he says, “For my heart was pleased because of all my labor, and this was my reward for all my labor.” In other words, he acquired, and he grabbed, and he gained and he took because he thought it was coming to him, he thought it was owed to him. The thought process was I worked hard, I've earned it, so I'll indulge. It's the modern-day mentality of Joe Six-Pack who works all week so that he can kick his feet back on Friday night and then indulge himself all weekend long. This was, in Solomon's words at the end of verse 10, “the reward for my labor, all my labor.”

Now as we turn to the concluding passage here, verse 11, we see that whatever Dopamine-infused hits of happiness, whatever those did for Solomon, when he got his way, when he got what he wanted, whether it was through play or possessions or passions, those feelings, those sensations were ultimately all the reward that he got. Look at verse 11 where he gives us this stunningly realistic assessment. He says, “Thus I considered all my activities which my hands had done and the labor which I had exerted and behold all was vanity and striving after wind and there was no profit under the sun.” He took it all in, all that he had acquired, all that he had experienced, all that he had done, all that he had gained, all that he had purchased, all that he had conquered, and it was vanity. A breath, a vapor. Here one moment, gone the next He also says it was striving after wind, meaning it was futile, especially when weighed on the scales of eternity. Then he says, “there was no profit under the sun,” meaning it brought Solomon ultimately no lasting satisfaction. Instead, on his quest for joy in play and possessions and passions he found himself like Martin Luther who once said that the empire of the whole world is but a crust to be thrown to a dog.

So, what is the lesson that Solomon is teaching us here? The lesson is super straightforward and simple. The lesson is that pleasure pursued for its own sake, happiness pursued for its own sake, joy detached from the one true source of joy that exists in this world, none of it will ever satisfy. None of it can ever satisfy. And again, it's not because Solomon here is saying that he is against happiness or against joy or against pleasure. You'd have to ignore countless statements he makes elsewhere in Ecclesiastes where he is commending the pursuit of happiness and joy. In fact, I'll give you a couple. Ecclesiastes 3:12, it says, “I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good in one's lifetime.” Ecclesiastes 3:22, “I have seen that nothing is better than that man should be happy in his activities, for that is his lot.” Or Ecclesiastes 11:9, “Rejoice, young man, during your childhood and let your heart be pleasant during the days of young manhood.” It is possible, in other words, it is good even to enjoy the things that God has given us to enjoy in this life under the sun. But at the same time what Solomon is teaching us, not only in this passage this morning but throughout the book of Ecclesiastes, is that none of those experiences and none of those acquisitions can give us anything close to approaching the degree of ultimate satisfaction that our heart so desperately craves. That truth, that we cannot find ultimate satisfaction in our earthbound pleasures or in our earthbound sources of joy, whether that be a blast of air blowing by us on a roller coaster ride, or the tender touch of our spouse's fingers on our face, or even just the contagious cackle of a little toddler's laugh. There can't be found ultimate satisfaction in any of those, what that points to is the deeper reality that true satisfaction, genuine satisfaction comes from an altogether different source. True satisfaction, genuine satisfaction comes only from knowing God Himself after having been granted eternal life by God Himself.

In His high priestly prayer to God the Father, the true Lord's prayer, John 17, Jesus said these words in John 17:3, “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Then Jesus says, 10 verses later in John 17:13, “And these things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves.” Did you catch that? Eternal life is granted by God the Father, the only true God. Eternal life comes through God the Son who dwelt in perfect eternal fellowship going back into eternity past with God the Father and God the Spirit. And there is some sense in which the joy which Christ has eternally known can be known by His followers, when they put their faith in Him. That's John 17:13, “That they may have My joy made full in themselves.

That's what we're celebrating right now, this season, at Christmas. Is it not? I mean, that's why we sing songs like Joy to the World. We are rejoicing over the fact that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We're rejoicing over the fact that Jesus is God with us, Immanuel. We are rejoicing over the fact that Jesus' birth ultimately led to His death, His perfect substitutionary atoning death by which our sin debt might be erased and our hope for eternity secured. If you are here this morning and you are someone who has not put your faith in Jesus Christ, you have to know that you are just like Solomon right here. You are running on this hamster wheel of life, peddling and peddling, pursuing the very things Solomon pursued: pleasures and play and possessions. You think you are getting somewhere but you are actually going nowhere. Actually, let me correct myself. You are going somewhere, you are going to a place, if you die in your sin and your state of unrepentance, to a place that is identified as a lake of fire where the temperature never goes down, where the flame is never quenched and where the suffering never ends. If you don't know Jesus Christ, I beg of you, trust in His finished work on the cross at Calvary as the only means by which you might be saved. I'd be happy to talk with you more in the south lobby after this message to give you more information on that and what it means to truly follow Christ and to know that you know God through Him and to know that you are saved. If you are, however, a follower of Christ, you've countless reasons to rejoice, when you consider that you were once dead in your sin, once at enmity with God, once on this fast track to hell, living out those joy-starved traits that we saw last week in Titus 3:3 and like Solomon here in Ecclesiastes 2 looking for joy in all the wrong places. If you are a follower of Christ today you have countless reasons to rejoice when you think of the depths of the love that God had for you as He called you and chose you from before the foundation of the world and plucked you from a sure date with eternal death and regenerated you and brought you to this place where you repented and believed in the Gospel. If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you have countless reasons to rejoice as you consider not only all that I've just mentioned but the pleasures and the joy that awaits you eternally. Psalm 16:11 says, “You will make known to me the path of life, Your presence is fullness of joy. In Your right hand there are pleasures forevermore.”

True joy, in other words, begins and ends with Christ, the Babe in the manger, the Light of the world, God with us. And so we sing, Joy to the world the Lord has come. Let earth receive her King.

Let's pray. God, thank You for this time together in Your Word this morning. Thank You for the two sides of the coin that Solomon's early life shows us, reveals to us, that life of pursuing possessions and pleasure and play, that hamster wheel of living that we all were once on before we came to know Christ, seeking joy, satisfaction, meaning, happiness in the things of this world. Thank You that the book of Ecclesiastes shows us that that is a futile effort. The very things that Solomon sought, the very things that we once sought are like a mist, they blow away with the air. But thank You for Your great love for us, thank You for Your plan of redemption, thank You for sending Your Son the Lord Jesus into the world, the very event that we celebrate this time of year. Thank You for the hope that that brings and thank You ultimately for the joy that that brings, for we who have trusted in Christ know the living God of the universe, we who have trusted in Christ have an eternal hope that is kept in heaven for us and it is secure, and we who have trusted in Christ know that nothing can pluck us from our dear Savior's hand, and in that we say thank You and in that we rejoice. God, I pray that all season long, throughout the Christmas holiday we would be, of all people, the most joyful people, knowing what we know and now living in light of what we know for Your glory. In Jesus' name, amen.