The Limits Of Pleasure Ecclesiastes 2 111

Take your seats, and please turn with me and your bibles to Ecclesiastes chapter two. Ecclesiastes chapter two, we'll look there at those first eleven verses. On Last week we examined the limits of wisdom and knowledge. This week we examined the limits of pleasure. Remember the principles that we talked about last week when reading Ecclesiastes, that we have to understand that Ecclesiastes is wisdom literature, and it helps us. It guards us against viewing wisdom as law. Wisdom literature gives us principles that help us understand the way the world normally works. Amen. They give us principles to help us understand the way the world normally works, but they are not hard and fast laws. The principles in wisdom literature are not the same as you know the law of gravity. The law of gravity is just it's going to get you. It always works, Amen, don't believe me. Just jump off of something, right. It's not the same when you talk about wisdom literature. And we get in trouble when we read wisdom as law because something happens and we think, well, I did this, I was supposed to get that, and it's not true. That's not a guarantee, it's not a law. And so Ecclesiastes comes along, and it reminds us of that by showing us that there are instances that prove to us that wisdom literature, that things don't always work out the way they usually work out. And the other principle that we have to remember is that we read it backwards. We always remember the end. We always remember that. At the end of this book, he tells us to remember our creator in the days of our youth. At the end of this book, he tells us that we're to love God and keep his commandments. At the end of the book, he's pointing to the sovereignty of God. So we don't end up in despair, but instead we are reminded that God is sovereign, that he is in control, that there is a way that the world usually works. Sometimes it doesn't, but that never catches God by surprise, and it never calls his sovereignty into question. Amen, well, that in mind, we turn our attention today to the idea of pleasure and the limits of pleasure. Look with me, Beginning at verse one of chapter two, I said, in my heart. Come now, I will test you with pleasure. Enjoy yourself. But behold, this also was vanity. I said, of laughter it is mad. And of pleasure, what use is it. I searched with my heart how to cheer my body with wine, my heart still guiding me with wisdom, and how to lay hold of folly till I might see what was good for the children of Man to do under heaven during the few days of their life. I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. I made myself gardens and parks. I planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees, about male and female slaves, and have slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house. I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. I also gathered for myself silver and gold, and the treasure of kings and provinces. I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines the delight of the sons of Man. So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me, and whatever my eyes desired, I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun. Amen. This one is a little bit even more difficult to deal with than the last, because this one falls into a category with which we have great difficulty, and it's the category of earthly pleasures. When it comes to earthly pleasures, we tend to make one of two mistakes. There's a ditch on either side of the road, and we tend to either fall into one of those ditches or live very close to one of those ditches. On the one side is hedonism. Hedonism is the idea that pleasure is our ultimate end. Pleasure is our ultimate end. The way we make decisions is by gauging what pleases us more, the way we determine whether something is good or bad is by whether it pleases us. That this becomes the rule by which we gauge and govern and interpret all reality. Did it bring me pleasure? This is the root, for example, of the Prosperity Gospel. It is a form of hedonism. It christianizes hedonism. If you will that God intends for us to have pleasure. God intends for us to have plenty. God intends for us to have more. And so name it, claim it, believe it, receive it. It is a form of hedonism. It governs whether or not we are truly spiritual, by whether or not we are truly acquiring and gaining more and more and more. It's a perversion of the chief and of man. The Great Westminster Shorter Catechism, Question number one, what is the chief end of man? The chief into man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Hedonism is a perversion of that. Remember we're to enjoy God forever. Amen. The second problem, the ditch on the other side of the road, is asceticism. Asceticism is the opposite of hedonism in that it views pleasure negatively. It views pleasure as bad. This is the ideology of monks and priests and mystics who take vows of poverty, who swear off marriage, This is the idea that in order to be truly godly, you have to shed the pleasures of the world. And true godliness is a monk in a cave with nothing, closing his eyes and thinking of absolutely nothing. That's asceticism. That's asceticism. By the way, asceticism doesn't just manifest itself that way, and asceticism is the more common temptation. It's more likely that you struggle with asceticism than you struggle with hedonism. Explain why for many of us, and I know for me when I first heard the Gospel in them, when I was first considering Christianity, how many of you have thought or have run into people who think that becoming a Christian is really difficult because of all the things you have to finish the sentence give up. We all know it, right, all the things you have to give up, because being a Christian is about not doing this and not doing that and not doing that. In the South, there is a saying that sort of summed this up right, and the saying was, I don't drink, smoke, cussel chew, or date the girls that do. Right, I don't do all of that stuff. I'm a Christian and I know I can prove to you I'm a Christian because I can give you a list of pleasures that I deny myself. If you can't say amen, you ought to say ouch, that's asceticism. I'm more godly than you because you enjoy that, and I would never allow myself to enjoy that. That's asceticism. That's asceticism. And I make this point because if we're not careful, we will read this passage wrongly. And what I mean is we'll read it it completely differently than we read the passage last week. In the passage last week, we talked about the limits of wisdom and knowledge. We acknowledge the fact that we need wisdom and knowledge, and that we ought to pursue wisdom and knowledge, but that the text is teaching us that it has limits. Amen. This means you're with me, right, right, be careful, because the tendency with this passage is to read it differently and say right, if we're reading it the same way as we were reading the passage that just came before it, by the same author who says wisdom and knowledge are essential but has its limits, then we'd read this newsflash, you don't even like to think that let alone say it. Amen, somebody knows that as a Christian, the last thing that you would say is pleasure is essential, because pleasure is bad. In fact, there are times when we have a decision to make right. It's it's this job versus that job. And as a as a pastor, it happens all the time. And someone comes in and it's you know, I can do this or I can do that. And you sit there with the person and you say, okay, based on what I know about you, seems like, seems like this over here makes all the sense in the world. Right. I know who you are, I know what you like, I know what your what your what your passions are, I know what you I know that, and like this fits. And then here comes the response, I know, but I'm just afraid that Maybe that's my flesh afraid of pleasure because if I really want it, then that can't be God, because everybody knows that God would never want you to have the desires of your heart, except the Bible says he does. But we are mired in asceticism. It plagues us. So I want you to be aware of that as we look at this text and to think about it the same way we thought about the text last week. Amen. Four things here. Number one, Earthly pleasure is unavoidable. Earthly pleasure is unavoidable. He says here in verse one, I said to my heart, come now, I will test you with pleasure. Enjoy yourself Verses nine and ten. So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also, my wisdom remained with me. That this is important. He says that twice in the text, that my wisdom remained with me. In other words, when he says my wisdom remained with me, he did not leave biblical truth behind. He did not leave his desire for God behind. He did not lose control. Even when he says, you know, he refers to wine, he says, that's the other place where he says, and yet my wisdom did not leave me. So this is not a person who just went off the deep end. He ran away from everything that he knew, and then, after his life was wrecked, came back and said that was awful, and I learned a lesson from it. No, that's not what he's saying here. He's saying, I have my wits about me, and I pursued these things. He says, whatever minds desired, it did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. So it again, These are the pleasures that he found in the normal course of life. These are the pleasures that he found as he tried to answer the question of what life is supposed to be, about, how it is supposed to be lived, how it is that we're supposed to enjoy these good gifts that God has given us. He's not running off on fools hills somewhere. It's important to keep that in mind, because earthly pleasure is unavoidable. Why is earthly pleasure unavoidable. Why would I say that, Well, because it was designed to be so. God created the world and everything in it for his glory and for our pleasure. Before the fall, Adam lived in an environment that brought him pleasure. When God created man and put him on the earth. When God put man in the garden, God did not say I'm going to put you in a place where you can be godly, and because you're going to be godly, nothing in it will please you, because we know pleasure cannot be godly. Genesis, Chapter one and verse thirty one. God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning the sixth day. Everything God made was very good. Look at chapter two Genesis, chapter two, verses eight and nine. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. That's pleasure. That's pleasure. It looks good, it tastes good. That's pleasure. And it's built into creation. In fact, it is so intertwined in the way that we're created that one of the ways we know what foods to avoid and what things can do us harm is that they are unpleasant. This milk is spoiled. How do you know it has an unpleasant smell or it has an unpleasant taste. This plant is dangerous. I need to avoid it. Why Because I touched it and it hurt. That was unpleasant. God designed the world so that we are warned by the absence of pleasure. We can't get away from it. God promised Israel what I'm going to give you a land, and it's going to be drab and terrible and awful, because you are My people, and everybody knows that godly people have to avoid all pleasure. No, he says, I'm going to give you a land flowing with milk and honey. What does that mean? Prosperous and full of good and pleasing things? Psal, I'm thirty seven Versus three and four. Trust in the Lord, and do good, dwell in the land, and befriend faithfulness, delight yourself from the Lord. Watch this, and he will give you the desires of your heart. This is where I take people all the time, when they come in struggling with asceticism and there's a good opportunity before them, and they're scared. Scared because the presence of pleasure and delight must be a negative sign. The fact that God has put an opportunity before me that I absolutely delight in must mean that this is a test. It's a test to see if I'm really godly, because if I'm really godly, I won't chase after the desires of my heart. Do you hear how warped that is? In light of this text, delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Now, obviously that does not mean that everything pleasant is good. Amen, there's a problem. There's a problem. After the fall, our relationship with God's good creation changed, and our ability to enjoy pleasure rightly changed. Ephesians Chapter two, verses one through three. You were dead in your trespasses and the sins in which he once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work, and the sons of disobedience, among whom we all, among whom we are, all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. There it is our passions overtaking us, and pleasure becoming something that it was never intended to become. We see it again in one John two fifteen to seventeen. Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires. But whoever does the will of God abides forever by the way. That's where we get our asceticism from passages like that that warn us, Passages like that that open our eyes to the fact that we have desires that are sinful, we have desires that are broken. And because of that, what we decided to do is not learn to live with wisdom, but to live like the Pharisees and run as far away from pleasure as we can, so that perchance we will not be tempted by it. What we must learn to do is enjoy earthly pleasures in a righteous context, in a righteous way, because they are absolutely unavoidable, built into God's creation, an essential part of our experience, just as human beings let alone as those who love and pursue the God of creation, those of us who desire to appreciate this good creation that God has given us. Not only are earthly pleasures unavoidable, they also come in many forms, and this is important to note. The reason that this is important to note is because remember, they're unavoidable. But then we tend to be mired in asceticism. And when we're miird in asceticism, what we do is we say, no, no, no, I'm a Christian, and as a Christian, I don't live this life pursuing those earthly pleasures, pursuing those desires of my flesh right. And so we have a form of asceticism. However, remember what I said, earthly pleasures are unavoidable. So what we tend to do is we have a list of pleasures that we identify as ungodly and another list of pleasures that we identify as godly. And we make sure that we keep these lists separate. I don't do those things. I will do these things. By the way, here's the problem with that. You've removed your heart from it. You can sinfully pursue anything. And what this list thing does is it allows us to live in moralism and legalism, not deal with our sin and call ourselves righteous because of a list that we've made. Look at verses three through eight, and notice how comprehensive this list is. Of course, it's not exhaustive, it can't be exhausted, but it's rather comprehensive. I searched with my heart how to cheer my body with wine. My heart's still guiding me with wisdom, and how to lay hold of folly till I might see what was good for the children of man to do under heaven during the few days of their lives. I made great works. So we've gone from wine and folly and these sort of things. Now we're at great works. I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. I may myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. Anybody got fruit trees in the yard? Right? Isn't it interesting? We don't put that on our list? Right? Where are your fruit trees? I don't have them because I'm godly, and fruit trees are pleasurable, and as a godly person, I deny myself pleasure. It's right here, fruit trees, fruit trees. You get me. It's easy to make lists, because all we do is we decide which things we're okay with avoiding, and we put those on the list of the righteous, and the other things we don't bother with. I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees. I bought male and female slaves, and I had slaves who were born in my house. I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. Anybody, anybody got any goats, anybody got any cows, anybody got any huh? Anybody, anybody, anybody got a maize field somewhere? Hm hmm. I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. We're wearing silver and gold right now. Amen. Anybody got a ring, earring, necklace, and don't give me that it's gold plated stuff, that's still gold. I got singers, both men and women. I can't afford singers. Really. How much music do you have on your device? More than he was able to have with his singers that he bought, And you've got them on demand any time you want them. Huh. And many concubines the delight of the sons of man. And so what we do is we we will get a list like this, and we'll say, Okay, the concubines, that's bad. The slaves don't want to do that, the wine don't want to do that. And so we put that on a list over here, and we say me, I'm a Christian, I don't I don't have concubines because you know, sexual sin, we gotta stay away from that. And you know, I don't have slaves because you know, we know slavery. That's bad. And I I don't. I don't do wine. I don't do and and we just ignore the fact that the pleasure that he's talking about also includes having a garden, fruit, trees. Huh. Music, be careful, legalism, moralism, pietism. It's like a cancer. It's like a cancer, and most of us are infected with it and have no idea. Look at the verds that he uses. I made, I built, I had, I bought, I gathered, I got, I became, I surpassed. This is the work of his hands. These are things that he's pursuing and acquiring. Then look at the various forms of pleasure, again not exhaustive, but very comprehensive. Wine, folly, great works, houses, vineyards, gardens, parks orchards, forests, slaves, herds, flocks, silver, gold, singers, concubines, everything, everything, He tried it all. This list is important for a couple of reasons. One we've already looked at. It's important because it's necessary for us to check ourselves, because we have a tendency to think that we're doing well with keeping pleasure in check because we've got a list over here. Now, never mind it, we're just completely blind to all these things over here. But we've got a list over here. We stick our chests out and we hold our heads up high because we're Christians, and we have a list of the pleasures that we deny ourselves all the while there are others that we absolutely don't and when we look about that, we miss the point, We miss it completely. The other reason that this list is important is so that we can be reminded of how good God has been to us. Amen, God is so good to us. How many times do we pause and enjoy a sunset? Not many? When you think about the number of days that God has given us, right, how many times have we paused? And I remember, we've lived here eight years now, and I can remember there's wonderful sunsets in Lusaka, amazing sunsets in Lusaka. Been here almost nine years. I don't even pay attention to him anymore. We forget, we forget fruit, trees in the yard. You just go and pick and eat. God is good, Amen, and we need to be reminded of that. Thirdly, although earthly pleasures are unavoidable, although they come in all these forms, it's important to remember that earthly pleasures can never fully satisfy. Amen. They can never fully satisfy. And that's the point here, Just like last week, the point was wisdom and knowledge can never fully satisfy. Wisdom and knowledge are essential, but they can never fully satisfy. The point here is pleasure can never fully satisfy. It's essential, but it will never fully satisfy Verses one and two. Behold, this also was vanity. The end of verse one, I said, of laughter it is mad, And of pleasure, what use is it? And then look at verse eleven. Then I considered all that my hands had done, and the toil I had expended in doing it, And behold, all was vanity and striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun. Look at the descriptions that he uses vanity, madness, What use again, vanity, striving after the wind? Nothing to be gained? These are the phrases that he uses, and he uses that last week when talking about wisdom, it's all vanity. It's striving after the wind. You can strive after the wind all you want. You won't catch it, Amen, you won't catch it. If the wind is blowing that way. You run after the wind, you don't catch the wind. You get tired, you stop, and then the wind blows from behind you. Anyone who has lived long enough understands pleasure and knows exactly what the preacher is saying. It's a vicious cycle. And here's how the cycle goes. Step one, we discover a pleasure. We discover a pleasure. Step two, we experience the pleasure. Step three, we delight in that pleasure. Step four, we indulge in that pleasure. Step five, we can no longer get enough of that pleasure. Step six, it's not pleasurable anymore. That's the vicious cycle. That's the vicious cycle. Tell you a story you can't tell anybody. When as a boy, I lived in the projects in Los Angeles, south central Los Angeles, California, not a good neighborhood at all. I grew up very poor, raised by a single mother. And one day in the projects where we lived friends of mine, we woke up in the morning, we're going outside to play, and all of us noticed that there were these small bottles of soda that were on our door. There was a doorhannger with these small bottles of soda. It's called aspen soda. Never forget, it's apple flavored soda, aspin soda. And so I had it on my door, my buddy had it on his door. And the projects that I lived in was a huge project, and we just kind of quickly just surmised, this is on everybody's door. So we went all around the whole project, gathering the soda off everybody's door, and we hit it in my closet. Why my closet. Yeah, So, so my mother discovered all of these bottles of soda in my closet and she said, I know you didn't do it by yourself. And being the courageous stand up friend that I was, I told on everybody. And so my mother called other people's mothers and we all gathered at my house. I thought there was going to be a collective beating, but there wasn't. Our parents had gotten together and came up with a plan, and they took us to my room and pointed to the closet and said, drink them. It's the best punishment ever. Let me read the cycle for you again. We discover a pleasure. Step two, we experience it. Step three, we delight in it. Step four, we indulge in it. Step five we can't get enough of it. And then finally we no longer find pleasure in it. It made us sick to this day, to this day, like, don't bring me appetizer, just to this day. That's what the fall has did, was it's perverted pleasure, it's perverted good things. Listen to this jewel. In Proverbs thirteen twenty five, the righteous has enough to satisfy his appetite, but the belly of the wicked suffers want. The righteous has enough to satisfy his appetite, but the belly of the wicked sufferers want. We see this all around us, people with wealth, always seeking more and greater wealth, people with beauty constantly seeking to enhance that beauty and never satisfied with it. People with fame, always trying to maintain and grow their fame. How many times have we heard the story of the famous beautiful woman whose husband cheated on her? And you hear people all the time no way. If I had she was my wife, she was if she was your wife, sir, you would go through the exact same cycle that I just read. Because the problem is your heart is seeking pleasure for its own sake, and it will never satisfy never. Never. There's a reason that it won't, and that is because earthly pleasure is but a shadow of things to come. This is not our home. Amen. God has given us wonderful things that we can enjoy here, but they'll never satisfy us. They will only cause us to long for that which is to come. Listen to this Amos nine thirteen. But hold the days are coming, declares the Lord. When the plowmen shall overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes him who sows the seed, the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it. There is unimaginable pleasure ahead for us Psalm sixteen eleven. You make me to know the path of life, and your presence there is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Amen. That's what we're designed for. That's why we can't be satisfied here. That will never happen here. The things that we experience, the pleasures that we experience here are but a foretaste. They are good, and we ought to embrace them and enjoy them to the glory of God, Amen, recognizing that they will never satisfy. And there's where we cross the line. Where we cross the line is when this is no longer something that God has given for me to enjoy, but this is something that becomes the God that I enjoy. It becomes my obsession, It becomes the answer to all my problems. It becomes that satisfaction that I believe will ultimately get me to that final place where I will want no more. And it never comes. It never comes, not this side of glory. One more passage, Titus chapter three. Titus chapter three, verses three through seven. Listen to this, For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others, hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God, our Savior, appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, not because of lists of things that we don't do, or lists of things that we do not because of that, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ, our Savior, so that being justified by His grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. Errs heirs. That means there's a possession yet to come. Amen. We're heirs through Christ through Christ. The problem is we are meant to be setied in Christ and in Christ alone. Amen. It is only when we are satisfied in Christ that other pleasures can be enjoyed in their proper place. Well, what about things that I should enjoy or I shouldn't enjoy? Be satisfied in Christ, be satisfied in Christ. If you're satisfied in Christ, then that's when we ask ourselves, is this Christ? Like? Is this from Christ? Can I do this in the name of Christ? And if the answer is no, turn from that and turn to Christ. Be satisfied in Him and in Him alone. But remember, there is no satisfaction in Christ apart from coming to Him in repentance and faith. Amen. And when we come to him in repentance and faith. All things pass away, all things become new. We become new creatures in Christ. And because we are new creatures in Christ, there are new passions that ignite us and old sinful ones that we no longer enjoy. That's the difference. That's how we view passion. Rightly, Let's bring humble ateration and gratitude for your goodness toward us, Thanking you for all of the good things that you provide. I will be asked that you would grant us grace to be a grateful people, that you would make us mindful of the myriad pleasures that are ours, day after day after day, pleasures that we've come to take for granted. Lord. We also asked that you would cause us to delight in nothing more than we delight in You, but that instead we would view every pleasure as a gift from your hand, and that we would also or that we would always rather enjoy the gift more than the giver. In all of this, we pray that we would be found in Christ, that we would find our joy in Him, and that nothing would please us more, and that as we do, our pleasures would be governed by Him. Our delights would be governed by him. Our hearts, our minds, our souls would be conformed to his very image, so that we might find pleasure in the things that he finds pleasure in, that we might find delight in the things that he finds delight in. And in all of this we pray that our eyes would always be looking upward and anxious anticipation of the day when our joy will be made complete in your presence, where there is endless joy, endless delight, because we will be your God, your people, and you will be our God, and we will delight ourselves in your very presence throughout all eternity. These are the things that we pray. These are the things that we ask, and we ask him in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen. Am