WELCOME:
When: November 3rd 2013
What: “Meaning (less): “Playing with Matches and Firecrackers”
Intro: Ecclesiastes like everything else, traces its beginning to God, creation,
sin, and ultimately aims to answer the meaning of life. It falls under wisdom
literature and has confused people for thousands of years as to purpose and
meaning. The themes that Solomon the author traces fall into one of six
categories: money, power, religion, friends, work, or pleasure. The terms
“meaningless” or “vanity” (38 times) along with key phrases like “there is
nothing new under the sun” (29 times) and “what does man gain from all his
toil” (18 times) as a thread that must be considered. The fundamental concept
to be understood and further explored in this series is that life has no meaning
unless Creator and creation are reconciled together. Everything points to Jesus
as the goal of our existence. He gives meaning to the meaningless.
Commentary: Ecclesiastes 2:1-11- Preached by Pastor Jared Daugherty
V.1- Solomon is going to get at the root of pleasure and what truly makes one
happy. What does make us happy and can it really be sustained? “I would be
happy when ______?” He will move us from merely looking at life on the
periphery to diving into pleasure and its enjoyment head first. He will put
pleasure to the test not by scientific method, but through life experience. This
entire section is full of ‘Me’, ‘Myself’, and ‘I’. Solomon will insert his own
life into the great laboratory of life experiment. This too is meaningless-vapor.
V.2- Just laugh a little more. Tell some jokes at your own expense. Don’t take
yourself too seriously. Is laughing it off going to fix this ‘meaningless life?
Solomon calls this crazy. What use is pleasure if everyone takes wisdom and
folly so serious? It is not that we don’t have pleasure, but more that we are far
too easily pleased by the wrong things. We laugh at the wrong things and take
serious the jokes that were intended to bring laughter and not pain.
V.3- Solomon moves from the inward self in verse 2 to the outward sign of the
senses in verse 3 by applying his entire being to cheering himself partying
through alcohol and feasting. Liquid courage could really pay off in the
marinating process of pleasure. Why not try a go at self-gratification in eating
fine meat and getting wasted. Excess and experience shake hands well, right?
This experience was all in the name of grasping folly so everyone might know
what human wisdom leads to in the few days we live under the sun. Vapor.
V.4-6- Moving from intellectual pleasure to the senses will naturally lead one
to physical pleasure. We have a desire and it comes to fruition through our
lives lived from what our heart believes. If the head affects the heart, then the
hands must come next. Experience will long for the physical/actual which can
more often than not lead to worth or purpose. Do what makes you feel good.
Solomon builds the temple, luxurious palaces, vineyards, gardens, parks, and
irrigation systems to water and maintain. In Genesis 3, the fall occurred and
our first parents sinned against God. Solomon tries to reproduce paradise as an
echo of Eden. Despite all the physical work from our hands, things fall apart
and must be constantly maintained or else they die or fall apart. Vapor!
V.7-8- The physical exertion over things will cause one to do the same to
people in having them maintain our paradise. In the pursuit of pleasure we can
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force others to be and do whatever makes us happy. Self-sufficiency is never
produced without the sweat and blood of those who seek it. It depends on who
we employ for us and for what means to bring about our pleasure. One
person’s pleasure can easily lead to another person’s pain. Solomon buys
people, livestock, invests with gold and silver, hires his own personal
entertainment to make him happy, and strategically builds a sexual empire of
women. As if 700 wives was not enough, he creates a harem of 300
concubines or stripper girlfriends on top of that. Everything that his eyes saw
he did not deny himself. He pursued pleasure to the point that everything was
in the excess. There was no restraint. When pleasure is the goal in itself, it
often enslaves and mistreats everyone and everything in its way.
V.9-10- Seeking to be great, famous, and popular above all others Solomon
held his human wisdom and pleasure seeking in everything, but God. He
found great satisfaction and pleasure in the work of building, buying, and
having lots of sex, until it too fell apart and lost meaning. Good thing Viagra
was not yet invented. His paradise was also fallen and tainted with sin at every
corner. The eyes wanted so much and never got what was so called
‘promised’. This is why commercials work so well in our culture. Just watch
what is advertised through visuals and sounds, but delivering little
implications if one purchased or gave whole-heartedly to it. The promise of
pleasure and nothing on side effects or sin tainted brokenness in the morning
is mentioned. Even pleasure in work does not lead to progress, but eventual
frustration. Meaningless-Vapor.
V.11- Everything considered, this paradise although on the surface looked
wonderful, was really just hell on earth and chasing after wind. Pleasure for
pleasure sake will never satisfy. Frustration everywhere. Pleasure in itself is
not bad but created by God to be good when tethered to Him. When we seek
pleasure for our own as idols apart from God it soon leads to sin. Sin is fun for
a while but in the end it always frustrates and separates from God, ultimately
leading to death. When our pleasure rules us rather than surrendering it all to
God the creator of pleasure, we exploit others for our means at whatever cost
to them. At some point the party ends and all that is left is the cleanup.
Conclusion: All of these frustrations of life should cause us to look at what
our lives were intended for in this meaningless life. Unless Creator and
creation are reconciled, life under the sun will always come undone. We were
created to enjoy God and in so doing we can enjoy and have lasting pleasure
in Him through Jesus. God set these frustrations before us so that we would
cry out to Him. Our pleasure, the pleasure that satisfies, is in the object of
our love and affection, Jesus. The Gospel is not about us being happy in
ourselves, but being happy in God who is the Gospel. God took pleasure in
punishing the Son in our place (Isaiah 53:10) and Jesus, the perfector of our
faith, takes pleasure in us by laying His life down and rising three days later
for the glory of God (Hebrews 12:3). Jesus came eating and drinking and was
called a glutton and drunkard, and yet embodied the full pleasure of God and
what it can be for us as we find all pleasure and sufficiency not in ourselves
and acheivements, but in Christ alone.