Studies In Ecclesiastes

1. Studies In Ecclesiastes Presentation 02

2. The Futility of Life Chapter 2v1-26 Presentation 02

3. Introduction The priority of the Preacher is not the production of pretty prose but the demolition of dangerous dogma. He is carefully constructing a case against secularism. The secularist is not necessarily an atheist but the person who has shut God out of his private world. Life in this world, described here as ‘life under the sun’,may seem attractive – but this ‘sun’ offers neither heat, nor light, nor life. Under it, men can find neither satisfaction nor meaning to life. Presentation 02

4. Pandering To Pleasure The secularist has already travelled unsuccessfully down the blind alley of unenlightened human reason. He now changes direction, abandons the heavy thinking, and takes a headlong dive into a sea of pleasure letting his hair down in a big way! First, he dives into a world of folly v1ff; a world of hallucination and make believe. People who have closed God out of their world view look for some escape from the meaninglessness of their drab existence. Presentation 02

5. Pandering To Pleasure And surely television more than any other media creates multiple make believe worlds. Writers of the lets-pretend-world of soap opera admit that their aim is to offer people, whose lives are dull and grey an escape into a world of glamour colour and excitement. No harm in that you say! No, unless of course the escape becomes a substitute for reality. It was recently claimed that children aged between 4-11 watch on average 26 hours of T.V. a week. Patterns of behaviour which in some cases are not easily broken and which fail to provide people with meaning and purpose in their lives. Presentation 02

6. Pandering To Pleasure Next, the writer tells us he tried to drink his way into a state of joy and satisfaction. No one thought to tell him that alcohol is a depressant and not a stimulant and that an overabundance of it would not ennoble his character or advance his search for meaning. Instead make him appear a fool. A secretary in an office where I worked could not wait until the end of the working week in order to engage in what she described as her "weekend bevvy". On the Monday morning a flat, lifeless creature dragged herself into the office. She had failed to find the satisfaction she was looking for. Presentation 02

7. Pandering To Pleasure This secretary’s failure was aggravated by memories of her folly under the influence of alcohol. Apparently, she regularly made a fool of herself after several drinks. This produced guilt and embarrassment which in turn she tried to drown the following weekend and so her life went on. Presentation 02

8. Pandering To Pleasure The next thing the experimenter in our passage turns to is laughter v2. It may seem harmless but the force of the Hebrew describes a destructive cynicism. Something that is perilously close to sick humour. The sort of thing that degrades standards, scorns morality and ridicules all that is spiritual. The kind of humour that is surely on the increase today. It is easy to caricature wholesome morality and spirituality but you will generally find that those who do so have nothing to replace what they have sought to tear down. All these escapes from reality are fairly obvious to the serious enquirer but there are others that are much more subtle. Presentation 02

9. Pandering To Pleasure In v4-6 the focus shifts to more creative pleasures. The experimenter becomes a D.I.Y. enthusiast building his own Garden of Eden, his own little world within the world. But this too is constructing a hiding place from reality. Many people pour all their energy into building private Eden's, while leaving God outside. Every spare minute of every day they are building away. They have no time to think about life, perhaps once they are finished! But they are never finished, they are never satisfied, their whole life is taken up with moving from one project to another. There is more to life than building things that will perish. Such people take no time to take stock and ask, ‘is this really what life is all about?’ Presentation 02

10. Pandering To Pleasure In v6-11 the writer pursues the pleasures of ownership and permissiveness. There is a sense in which the two are related. For the more a man owns the more he is able to employ his resources in the pursuit of sensual satisfaction. Its a lot easier to be a playboy if your a millionaire than if your scraping to make ends meet. And the writer possibly Solomon says in v10 "I denied myself nothing my eyes desired, I refused my heart no pleasure." This pursuit of sensual pleasure is insatiable. Presentation 02

11. Pandering To Pleasure The man who says he will be satisfied when he has earned his first million never is. Why? because its much more attractive being a billionaire to being a millionaire. Others pursue wealth because they are after status and power cf. v9 "I became greater by far than anyone before me". The man who is going to be satisfied when he gets to the top of the ladder of his profession, never is! Look at the conclusion the writer reaches at the end of this great pleasure binge v11…’everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind’. Presentation 02

12. Wisdom And Folly Up to this point in the book we have looked at secular philosophies which are poles apart, the first applauded the way of wisdom, the second the path of pleasure now in v12-16 the value of these two approaches to life are now compared. The immediate and superficially obvious conclusion is that wisdom is unquestionably superior cfv13... Wisdom is superior to folly as light is to darkness. The man who can see that alcohol is no answer to life’s problems and who sees the fleeting nature of sensuous satisfaction has the advantage. Presentation 02

13. Wisdom And Folly But having made that comparison he concludes that there is a sense in which there is no difference between these two approaches to life. Wisdom may help a man through life but at the end of the day the same fate awaits the wise man and the fool - death! Death is the great leveller and whether a man has wound himself up to be wise or freewheeled on frivolity, he is no nearer answering the question, "after death what?" The writer having come up against a brick wall goes back to the beginning again. Presentation 02

14. The Futility Of Endeavour In v17the writer considers those who look to their occupation to give their life meaning - the workaholic! This man does not simply work for his living but lives for his work. A small boy who when asked for his favourite bible verse said, "The one in which people loaf and fish." But the man in view here is no loafer. He sinks all of his life into his profession. It is a costly procedure as we learn from v22 it involves, pain, effort, striving, grief, anxiety, and restless nights. The criticism of this approach to life isn't simply that there are no pockets in shrouds but that the man who lives for his work is reluctant to let it go. Presentation 02

15. The Futility Of Endeavour A businessman who should have retired on health grounds years ago allowing his sons to take over the business wouldn’t let go! Does he share the concern of the writer in v18 that his successors might ruin all that he has worked so hard to achieve. This is precisely what happened when Solomon’s son Rehaboamcame to the throne - the kingdom of Israel was torn in two! Now the man who makes his work his whole life will often be brought to the place of the writer and say, ‘what’s the use? I'm building all this up with no certainty that my successor won't undo all I've done’. If all a man has is ‘life under the sun’, then death not only robs every man of his dignity but every project of its point. Presentation 02

16. The Writers Appraisal Pleasure In v24ff the writer makes the first mention of God. He steps out of the secular framework for a moment in order to throw some light on his subject and to guard against any misunderstandings. His basic thesis is not that God is against pleasure and satisfaction - he is indeed the author of them. God does not reflect the grotesque caricature of Puritanism by insisting that life must be dull, grey and unfriendly. God is not against pleasure but against it becoming an end in itself. He is against our making it the goal of our lives for our lives have an infinitely greater goal. God himself! God Satisfaction Presentation 02

17. The Writers Appraisal Whenever we seek pleasure for pleasures sake, we will never experience true satisfaction. Aristotle got it right when he said, "consider pleasures as they depart not as they come". Men come to pleasure with such great anticipation but soon are disappointed and dissatisfied. And if a man is left dissatisfied you can be sure that he has made pleasure and not God his goal. Satisfying pleasure is a mere by-product of a life that is lived in submission and obedience to God. Something that creeps up on us often taking us by surprise! Presentation 02

18. The Writers Appraisal Similarly, when we turn to work and creativity we find these too are God’s gifts. Their purpose is not to tyrannise and rule us. Rightly used the basic things of life are sweet and good. Even work comes into that category! But what spoils them is our hunger to get more out of them than they can give. For they are incapable of satisfying the eternal dimension of our lives of filling what Pascal calls our ‘God-shaped blank’, or indeed of unfolding life's meaning. Presentation 02

19. Conclusion The great contrast we are left with at the end of this chapter is between those who seek and find God and so experience the satisfying spiritual gifts of wisdom, knowledge and joy and the secularist who has a hole in the lining of his pocket, he has nothing of lasting worth. This is encapsulated in the line from the pop song, ‘I can’t get no satisfaction’. Words that may resonate in your heart. You may have travelled in vain down many blind alleys in pursuit of satisfaction. Jesus, by identifying himself as, “the way the truth and the life”,affirms that following him will not result in another dead end but bestow life in all its fullness. Will you open your heart to him? Presentation 02

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