As some of you will know, Malcolm Mugridge was one of the most famous journalist personalities of the last century.
!
That's success.
Furnished with a little money and even a little fame, even the elderly, if they care to, may partake in trendy diversions.
That's pleasure.
It might happen once in a while that something I said or wrote sufficiently heated for me to persuade myself that it represented a serious impact on our time.
That's fulfillment.
Yet I say to you, and I beg you to believe me, multiply these tiny triumphs by a million and add them all together, and they are nothing, less than nothing, measured against one sip of that living water Jesus Christ offers.
To the spiritually thirsty, irrespective of who or what they are.
Now that's precisely the lesson that we're going to learn today.
In the language of scripture, in the language of the prophet Jeremiah, the lesson is here to turn from drinking of idolatry's broken cisterns that cannot hold water.
To the Lord, Jeremiah 2.13, the fountain of living water.
For in the language of our Savior itself, it is to drink from him the water that quenches our thirst forever.
A spring welling up unto eternal life.
However, before we get to that living water that God offers to us in Christ, we first must walk through this waterless wilderness of coalesced testing of pleasure.
Recently, my wife and I were watching the BBC's superb rendition of Dickens' Little Dorrit.
As many of you know, Dickens had quite a knack for naming people and places within his novels.
I think of some of the people, the characters.
There's Jeremiah Flintwich, Mr. Chocum Child, Uriah Heap, Volumina Deadlock, great name for an elders meeting.
Volumina Deadlock.
And then, of course, Ebenezer Scrooge.
And then you think of some of the places he created.
The Curiosity Shop, Bleak House, Crooks, Bottle Shop.
Well, here in proper Dickensian form, the person, I won't call him Koalef is the Hebrew name, but I'll call him King Solomon.
King Solomon.
That's the person.
He takes us to a place.
And the place he's going to take us to, I'll call the Hollow House of Hedonism.
The Hollow House of Hedonism.
See, this house is filled.
It's filled with wine.
It's filled with women, with garden, with gold, with songs and servants.
But it's hollow.
It's hollow when it comes to satisfying our deepest needs.
Now, within the House of Hedonism, there are many rooms.
Now, King Solomon is going to show us four of them here in our text in Ecclesiastes 2, 1 through 11.
He'll show us the private pub.
He'll take us then to the garden, to the treasury, and finally to the bedroom.
So first we come to what's called the private pub.
Now, I know pub stands for public, and so private pub is seemingly a contradictory phrase.
But as I attempted to think of a place in our society that offers what Solomon first tested,
pub, I thought, fits best.
It's private, however, because it's in his own house.
And it seems to be for his soul entertainments.
So look with me at verses 1 through 3 of Ecclesiastes 2.
And then I'm also going to jump to the middle of verse 8 as well.
I'm reordering things just a bit in this first room because we find these pleasures,
these three pleasures I'll talk about in a minute, in the pub.
So the pleasures of laughter he finds, the pleasures of alcohol, and the pleasures of music.
I said in my heart, verses 1 through 3,
Come now, I will test you with pleasure, enjoy yourself.
But behold, this also was havel, vanity.
I said of laughter, it is mad, of pleasure.
What use is it?
I search with my heart to cheer my body with wine,
my heart still guiding me with wisdom.
And how to lay hold of folly,
so I might see what was good for the children of man to do under heaven
during the few days of his life.
And then if you go to the middle of verse 8, 8b, it reads,
I got or I acquired singers, both men and women.
Now we're later going to revisit the results of his pleasure experiment,
these verses that are in here.
Behold, this was vanity, or what use was it?
We'll do that once we've gone through, once we've traveled through the four rooms.
So for now, we're in the private pub,
and here Solomon is enjoying laughter and alcohol and music.
First, he had the best music of the day, seemingly on a daily basis.
In verse 7, he begins his list of household possessions.
He says this, I bought male and female slaves and so on.
And then in verse 8, he says, I got singers.
You sort of wonder, did he just buy singers like he would a slave?
Or did he just hire singers for special occasions?
Well, based on the context, my sense is they simply served in his house like his servants did
and his concubines did.
But whatever the case, when he wanted music, he got it.
This is kind of the ancient version of the radio with one station available, choral music.
However, unlike today's radio, it was, of course, it was live music.
It was very expensive music and slightly exotic.
It was exotic because if you remember from the Old Testament, in the temple choir, only men sang.
And here is Solomon having both men and women.
This rare musical experience, this rare musical pleasure in those days was not so rare for the pleasure preacher.
And then alongside the music was the alcohol with his heart still guiding him with wisdom.
That is with a certain mindful self control or objective indulgence, if that makes sense.
He tests wine.
He tests wine to see if it will cheer him enough to forget the few days.
In other words, to forget his life, to forget to find some happiness through wine in the happy hour of his life.
And with, of course, the wine comes laughter, which is touched on in verse two.
Like the fool in Proverbs who laughs while he is unwittingly playing with fire.
Solomon's private pub is alive with frivolity.
Another song is sung.
Another round is served.
Another joke is told.
We close the door.
And there's nothing more to see or hear or smell, but the blur of a body lifting another glass.
The subtle sound of bronze echoing in the air.
And the faint residue of doom walking about the room.
Onward and outward, we move to the next room.
For the next place, we come to a garden.
From the pub to a garden.
We open these cedar French doors out of the private pub into the most beautiful garden east of Eden.
Look at verses four through seven.
Look at Solomon's amazing architectural and agricultural achievements.
He says, starting in verse four, I made great works.
I built houses and I planted vineyards for myself.
I made myself gardens and parks and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees.
I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees.
And then to keep all this going, he needed to employ a massive workforce.
So I bought male and female slaves.
I had slaves who were born in my house.
I also had great possessions of herds and flocks more than anyone who had been before me in Jerusalem.
The commentator Derek Kidner writes here that Solomon has created a secular garden of Eden.
Where there are no forbidden fruits.
And secular is the right term because God and God's command for the man to cultivate creation is nowhere found here in Ecclesiastes.
But Solomon is actually doing all that Adam was supposed to do.
The verbs that are used here to plant, to water, to make the same exact verbs you'd find in Hebrew in Genesis 2.
As are the nouns.
The nouns like garden, all the fruits of the trees.
Same as Genesis.
So Genesis is being echoed here in Ecclesiastes 2.
But it's as if its nouns and its verbs, they bounce off the proud preacher.
I, he says, not God or God through me, but I made great works.
I build houses.
I plant vineyards.
I made myself gardens and parks.
I planted fruit trees.
I made myself pools.
I planted some trees.
!
I planted some trees.
Out of this rock.
Well, here in Ecclesiastes 2, 4 through 7,
we see a self-made man who's not only in a sense made himself,
he's made so much more around him.
Like God, and with God-like control and creativity,
he's created this little ideal world within the fallen world.
It's really like lifestyles of the rich and famous on steroids.
But again, there's no time to stop here.
In this room, he's moving us along.
No time to gawk or even to covet what he has or what he's done.
We're being moved along not only by the author,
but by the photographer from Better Homes and Gardens.
He wants to be certain to outdo the guy from Architectural Digest last month.
So Solomon's servants take us away.
And they take us back into the house, down this narrow stairway,
deep beneath the wine cellar, past the reporter from Forbes magazine,
and through this huge iron door into the treasury.
The treasury.
But how does Solomon afford all this stuff?
The houses, the vineyards, the pool, the parks, the servants, the singers, and so on?
Well, the answer is found here.
Verse 8,
I also gathered for myself silver and gold, the treasure of kings and provinces.
Now that's just an understatement if you know anything about the life of Solomon.
Or if you've read about Solomon in 1 Kings 10, for example,
where we read about his incredible wealth that was obtained through taxes and through tributes,
things that were given to him, and through trade.
I'll read just a few verses from 1 Kings 10.
Now the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was 666 talents.
So how much is that?
Well, it's 25 tons of gold.
In other words, it's a staggering fortune.
In American currency, it's hundreds of millions of dollars,
maybe even a billion dollars a year he was bringing in.
Then read on.
So here's a sampling of what he did with all this gold.
King Solomon made 200 large shields of beaten gold.
600 shekels of gold went into each shield.
The king also made an ivory throne.
Great thing to do.
Ivory is expensive too, isn't it?
An ivory throne.
And then what did he do?
He overlaid the whole thing with gold.
So to sum up, if you read 1 Kings 10,
money was not an issue.
Money was not an issue for Solomon.
Whatever he wanted, he got.
He had the Chateau in Switzerland,
the beach house in the Bahamas,
the penthouse in Paris.
He was the primary stockholder of BP and Ford.
He had that Rupert Murdoch snap of the finger to him.
He had Steve Jobs' business genius to him.
And most importantly, he had the Midas touch.
Everything he touched turned to gold.
Gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold.
Thirteen times in 1 Kings 10, gold is mentioned.
But gold is cold.
It can't embrace you.
It can't touch you.
It can't make love to you.
And so Solomon dialogued with himself.
Might the pleasures of the human body,
might that be the answer?
Let me see if women can quench this strange melancholy
that still exists, that's not satiated by money
and the stuff that money can buy.
Now get this, as the book of 1 Kings transitions
from Solomon's wealth in chapter 10
to Solomon's women in chapter 11,
so too does Ecclesiastes 2.8.
It transitions in that last verse,
I also gathered for myself many concubines
for the light of the children of Adam,
of man.
A man's heart is how it might be translated.
John Donne wrote to Solomon here
that he hides none of his sins.
Solomon preaches himself
and he pours out his soul in that book of Ecclesiastes.
That's true, but it is a tragic,
it's a tragic tale that he tells.
The compromise of the covenant
is what led to his spiritual downfall
in the divided kingdom,
which is perhaps why it is listed last
among his pleasure experiences.
In other words, for emphasis.
Now the Hebrew word here for concubines,
it comes from the same word for breasts.
It's why some translators think
we should actually translate it breasts.
He had many breasts,
or he had abundant breasts.
And however you translate it,
it's a crude reference.
It's a crude reference to women
who are used as pleasure objects,
for sexual pleasure.
Now while the king might have married
for political reasons,
for military stability,
that's not the stress that's given here.
Sex is the stress.
Sexual immorality is the stress.
Solomon was anti-Genesis
as much as he was anti-Jesus.
That is, he was against God's command
from the beginning
that it should be one man
and one woman for life.
But our culture is the same, isn't it?
It's anti-Genesis.
It's anti-Jesus.
Sadly, this bedroom scene here
isn't anything we haven't seen before.
While our sex-crazed culture,
we gasp at some of the sex scandals
that make the news.
We don't gasp at a lot of other things.
We don't gasp about teenage promiscuity
or best-selling books about erotic bondage.
We don't gasp about the hundred billion,
I have to look at the number,
hundred billion dollar porn industry.
We don't gasp at easy divorce
due to acceptable, inevitable adultery.
And now we don't even gasp
at homosexual behavior.
Conventional morality has been shelved.
Biblical ethics are labeled outdated
or expired or even worse,
danger, poison.
And what Woody Allen said to the media
about the sexual relationship
with the adopted teenage daughter of his wife,
the heart wants what the heart wants.
It's become our slogan more and more.
We've listened to the seductive sounds
of the sirens to borrow from Homer's Odyssey.
We've sacrificed our souls
on the altar of sexual idolatry.
For what Solomon gives just one line to,
our culture gives 10,000 libraries to.
Solomon's private bedchamber
is now open to public view.
And nobody blushes anymore.
Nobody blushes.
Christian, let's blush.
And let's turn our eyes away.
Let's leave it all behind.
Leave behind this pub and this garden
and the treasury and the bedroom
of this hollow house.
This hollow house of hedonism.
Let's escape for our lives
and not look back.
It's time to flee vanity.
It's time to flee vanity fair.
And it's time to run over
the delectable mountains
through the wicked gates
into the celestial city.
So listen, Solomon's pleasure test
was an absolute failure.
And he admits as much
in verses 1 and 2 and 9 through 11.
And if you look at those verses,
just notice the word in the ESV,
behold.
I love that they translate it.
Behold.
I said in my heart,
now come,
I will test you with pleasure.
Enjoy yourself.
But behold.
Behold what?
Well, this was also vanity.
Like smoke rising up in the air.
Nothing of consequence.
I said it.
Laughter is mad.
If pleasure,
what use is it?
And then we have the same bitter disillusionment
put differently in summary form
in verses 9 through 11.
So I became great
and I surpassed all who were before me
in Jerusalem.
Also my wisdom remained with me.
And whatever my eyes,
outward delights,
desired,
I did not keep from them.
My heart inward delivers
from no pleasure.
Then I considered all that my hands have done.
All the toil that I expended
in doing it.
And behold.
Behold what?
All this vanity
and a striving after the wind.
Nothing was to be gained
under the sun.
In the popular sitcom cartoon,
The Simpsons,
Homer Simpson,
in one of the episodes,
he says to his boss,
Mr. Burns,
you're the richest man I know.
To which Burns replies,
Yes,
but I'd trade it all in for more.
Well that is not how Solomon feels
the morning after.
The morning after his
years long pleasure party.
Instead you've got to hear him humming
those honest lines
from the rock band
Nine Inch Nails.
What have I become?
My sweetest friend.
Everyone I know
goes away in the end.
You could have it all.
My empire.
My empire of dirt.
At the beginning
and the end of our text,
King Solomon stamps
empire of dirt
across everything in between.
The wine and the women,
empire of dirt.
The gardens and the gold,
empire of dirt.
The songs and the servants,
empire of dirt.
You can have it all.
But why?
Why?
What went wrong
with his pleasure
and possessions experiment
that in the end
he'd call it profitless?
Well,
two reasons he gives
for failure
in this pleasure experiment.
And first is this.
putting self first
ironically fails
to satisfy self.
Putting self first
ironically fails
to satisfy self.
And second,
putting pleasure first
ironically fails
to give pleasure.
The first failure
breaks the second commandment
you should love others
as much as you love yourself.
The second failure
breaks the first
and greatest commandment
you should love God
with all your heart
and your mind
and your soul
and your strength.
So first I want to talk
about this issue
of self.
Self.
I've already noted
in verses 4-7
how much Solomon
spoke about himself.
But further notice
how self just
saturates this section
of scripture.
The word I
along with me
and my and myself
they just dominate
these verses.
The word I
is used 18 times
in this little section
of scripture.
The word my
13 times.
Me
4 times.
Myself.
4 times.
Even the word
yourself.
Enjoy yourself.
It's Solomon
talking to himself.
It's a lot of
self-focus.
And it's not just
the language
it's also the focus
of the accomplishments.
The list is all
self-serving.
It's not philanthropic.
That is on behalf
of other people.
He doesn't mention
anything about
building public parks
so the populace
can enjoy it.
He says this
I build houses
houses.
And I built
gardens or
vineyards for
myself.
For myself.
The sole purpose
of doing it.
But here it's all
artistically intentional
what he's doing.
He's written this
for us to see
what he saw
and what he
experienced.
He boasts in
his achievements.
He boasts in
his enjoyments
because he's
underscoring
ironically
their inadequacy.
And it's brilliant.
I think the
literary artistry
here is awesome
but so is the
practical point.
We all know
that self-centeredness
and self-indulgence
never satisfies
long.
Right?
Why is that the
case?
Well it's common
grace.
It's the way
God has designed
us.
You can call it
the pleasure
paradox.
If we answer
the Westminster
Shorter's
Catechism's
first question
what is the
chief end
of man
by saying
man's chief
end is to
glorify himself
and enjoy
himself as
much as
possible.
We'll always
discover that
those earthly
pleasures that
we grasp so
tightly in our
hands it's as
if like sand
they eventually
fall through our
fingers.
You see
pleasure has a
way of promising
more than it
can actually
produce.
David Hubbard
says this
that its
advertising agency
is better than
its manufacturing
department.
The one
drink, the
one sexual
fling, the
one contest
won, one
project accomplished,
one wild
party, none
of these or
all of them
put together
can bring any
human being
satisfaction.
The sin of
selfishness, it
actually won't
satisfy and
neither will the
other sin, the
sin of idolatry.
Putting pleasure
first ironically
fails to give
us the pleasure
that we're
looking for.
Rabbi Harold
Kushner wrote a
book on
Ecclesiastes and
it was titled
When All You
Ever Wanted
Wasn't
Enough.
Well, I don't
think it's the
best summary of
the whole book.
It's a great
summary of this
section of
Ecclesiastes.
When all you
ever wanted
isn't enough.
Why isn't it
enough?
It isn't
enough if God
isn't first.
John Wesley
put it this way,
there is no
happiness, true
lasting happiness
outside of God.
Listen, many of
the pleasures
that are
mentioned here,
such as
laughing,
planting vineyards,
drinking wine,
creating,
maintaining a
garden, are
all pleasures
you'll find
commended in
the Bible.
In fact, in the
wisdom literature
of the Bible,
which I teach
for a living,
I think especially
in the book of
Proverbs and
Job, you'll
find that
pleasures and
possessions in
fact can be
rewards of
righteousness.
Even throughout
Ecclesiastes,
pleasure is
constantly
commended, as
we'll find out
tonight.
So what's the
problem then?
What's the
problem with the
pleasures that
are listed here
in 2, 1
through 11?
Well, the
problem is that
some of these
pleasures are
immoral, and
that all of
them are
idolatrous.
All of them
are idolatrous.
I'm the Lord
your God who
brought you out
of the land of
Egypt, out of
the house of
slavery, therefore
you shall have
no other gods
before me.
Solomon put
pleasure, put
pleasures before
the Lord God,
before the
worship of the
Lord God.
So then here,
the lesson of
course, is that
when God comes
first, when we
worship the
divine, then
genuine human
satisfaction follows.
That's the way
it works.
Christ satiates
the soul.
It's a good
way.
He brings that
water we talked
about at the
beginning of the
sermon.
He satiates the
soul.
In the book of
Philippians, Paul
commands Christians,
I think it's four
times, to rejoice
in the Lord, rejoice
in the Lord.
Why?
Well, we can
rejoice because
Jesus, as Paul puts
it earlier in
Philippians 2, in
humility, counted
others more
significant than
himself.
He counted
others more
than significant
than himself.
So much so that
he made himself
nothing.
Taking the form
of a servant,
being born in
the likeness of
men and being
found in human
form, he humbled
himself by becoming
obedient to the
point of death, even
death on a cross.
You see, Jesus,
King Jesus, not
King Solomon, but
King Jesus, is the
epitome of
selflessness, not
selfishness.
For our sake, for
our salvation, he
denied the desires
of the flesh.
He denied the
desires of the
eyes and pride in
possessions.
Also, Jesus is the
epitome of putting
God the Father
first.
When Jesus was
tempted by Satan
and later by his
own disciple, by
Peter, to take the
crown before the
cross, to take the
crown instead of the
cross, he wouldn't
bow the knee to
this idol of
temporary power, of
worldly pleasures.
Rather, as Hebrew
puts it, it's for the
joy that was set
before him.
It's such an
interesting phrase.
For the joy set
before him, he
endured the cross.
You see, our Lord,
who taught us to
deny ourselves, to
pick up our
crosses, he didn't
do so because he
was some sort of
cosmic killjoy.
Rather, because he's
the one who knows
the way to the
pleasures of God.
In the presence of
God, there is
fullness of joy, the
psalmist tells us.
At his right hand
are pleasures
forevermore.
He alone knows
how and where to
enter into the
Father's joy.
For what does it
profit a man to
gain the whole
world and forfeit
his life?
Nothing.
Vanity.
The hollow house
of hedonism is
hollow.
But what does it
profit a man or a
woman or a child
to lose his life
for Jesus' sake
and for the sake
of the kingdom?
He answers
everything.
Everything.
Blessed are
happy are the
poor in spirit
for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven.
Doesn't get any
bigger than that.
Blessed are those
who mourn for they
shall be comforted.
Blessed are the
meek for they
shall inherit not a
big house like
Solomon's.
They shall inherit
all.
They shall inherit
the earth.
Blessed are those
who hunger and
thirst for righteousness
for they shall be
satisfied.
Satisfied.
My brothers and
sisters, let us
flee.
We're tempted
every day, aren't
we, to flee.
We're tempted to
live in this house
of hedonism.
But let us flee the
house of hedonism
into the hallowed
presence of our
soul-satisfying God.
Let's pray.