Ecclesiastes 2
McGeeCHAPTER 2In this chapter we will find Solomon following another course to find satisfaction in life. This is a popular route for modern man who seeks satisfaction in pleasure.
Ecclesiastes 2:1
PLEASURESolomon probably tried everything known in the way of pleasure. We are a sex-mad people. And what do we have to show for it? Well, we certainly have low morals, and we have venereal disease in epidemic proportions. Today the church has entered the field also. I suppose most pastors have a sermon on sex; some of them have a whole series.
There are many who feel that the church should have a course to teach our young people about sex. I think that is a tragic mistake. This generation is getting sex right up to their earsall they need and more. Now Solomon was an expert in the area of sex. He had one thousand wives and concubines, and they were all available to him. A man who had a thousand women around him is some sort of an expert.
Solomon tried that way to seek satisfaction. Also he went in for drinking and for entertainment. I suppose he could have put on a performance that would make Las Vegas look like it was penny ante or just a sideshow in a small circus. Solomon went all out for pleasure. “I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure.” But notice his conclusion: “Behold, this also is vanity"empty.
Ecclesiastes 2:2
He probably had a comedian or a court jester to entertain him and tell him the latest jokesprobably many of them questionable. He said, “I found this to be a great waste of time.”
Ecclesiastes 2:3
“Under the heaven"remember that Solomon is a man probing and making experiments apart from God.
Ecclesiastes 2:4
These were hobbies with Solomon. Even today the ruins of the stables of Solomon can be seen right in Jerusalem and in several other places. At Megiddo a tourist guide will show you ruins of the troughs where the horses ate. Solomon had stables all over that land, although the Mosaic Law had expressly forbidden a king to multiply horses.
Ecclesiastes 2:5
He had irrigation.
Ecclesiastes 2:7
He had a ranch out at the edge of town where he raised cattle. You may be wondering how he could afford all this. Well, Solomon had cornered the gold in his day. He had plenty of spending money, and he built in all the comforts of life. It is now known that snow was brought down from Mount Hermon so that he could have cold drinks in the summertime. I think Solomon tried everything that a man could try for pleasure. I doubt that modern man could have anything that Solomon did not have.
Ecclesiastes 2:8
He brought in the best nightclub acts from Las Vegas. He had all kinds of musicfrom symphony to rock, but it didn’t satisfy his heart.
Ecclesiastes 2:9
Mrs. McGee and I are out in conferences a great deal of the time. In the evenings after a service we need to get away from everyone for a while, and one of the things we like to do is just go walking through a shopping area. I have said to her, “Would you like sometime to be able to buy everything that you see and want?” She answered that she wondered how it would feel to be able to do that. Well, Solomon did just that. Anything his little heart desired, he bought. As he looked out upon this world, there was nothing that it withheld from him. You would think that all men in that position would be happy. Well, I don’t know why, but they are not. I am told that we have more suicides here in Southern California than the average for the country. One would think it would be the bums on skid row, the down-and-outers, who would be the ones to commit suicide. Life certainly wouldn’t seem to be worth much to them. Actually, those are not the ones with the high suicide rate. It is the rich, the famous, the Hollywood movie and television stars, the folk who seem to have made it. They are the ones who commit suicide. Why? They have come to the same conclusion that Solomon did. He had tried everything in the way of pleasure and concluded:
Ecclesiastes 2:11
What a statement from a man who had everything! A great many people will not take Solomon’s word for it; they have to make the same experimentsalthough not to the extent that Solomon did. Eventually they arrive at the same conclusion. They say, “Life is empty.” Solomon said, “All was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.” Throughout the remainder of this chapter Solomon moves into another area. I wish I had a better word for it, but I simply call it materialism.
Ecclesiastes 2:12
MATERIALISMThis is living for the now, and this should be understood by the people today because we say we are the “now generation.” It is a materialistic concept. It is a living for the here and now, living for self, selfishness. Each of these words describes a facet of this type of living. In other words, no one could live it up more than Solomon did. He said they would have to repeat what he had done and would find it very monotonous.
Ecclesiastes 2:13
It is better to be a wise man than to be a fool. It is better to be an educated man than to be an ignorant man.
Ecclesiastes 2:14
“The wise man’s eyes are in his head"I’ve heard my parents and my school teachers say to me, “Use your mind. Use your head. Use your eyes.” That is what Solomon is saying. A wise man uses his head and his eyes, but “the fool walketh in darkness.” “I myself perceived also that one event happeneth to them all.” Regardless of how smart you are, you don’t really get too far away from the fool, because you both are going to be carried out feet forward and laid to rest somewhere. You both will end up in the same way.
Ecclesiastes 2:15
You would think that a smart fellow would find another way out. “Then I said in my heart, that this also is vanity.” It is interesting that modern man with all his tremendous inventions and scientific advances has not been able to extend human life very long. Oh, I know that the average life span has been extended by ten years or more. But put that ten years down by a thousand years, or put it down beside eternity, and what do you have? You don’t even have a second on the clock of eternity, my friend. Man really hasn’t done very much for himself here on this earth.
Ecclesiastes 2:16
They die just the same way. You may be innately intelligent. You may have a high I.Q. You may have been educated, even have several doctoral degrees, but none of this will help you when it is your time to die. Neither will any of that stop you from dying. When it is your time to go out the door, you will go, and there is nothing in this world that can keep you from it.
Ecclesiastes 2:17
Let me repeat: Vanity means that which is empty, meaningless, purposeless. With “all the work that is wrought under the sun” what has been done? Thomas A. Edison is an example. He worked in a laboratory and developed many things such as the electric light bulb and the Victrola. All of our recording instruments really go back to the work of Edison. He was a genius, but he died just like everyone else. What good did it do him after all? His laboratory is preserved in Fort Myers, Florida. If you are ever down there, it is worth the time to visit the Edison home and laboratory. He worked in that laboratory day and night. He had insomnia of the worst kind, so he had a little bed in his lab where he would lie down for little naps. He worked day and night, trying out many, many things that never worked out at all. I don’t get the impression that life was a thrill for him. I think that Thomas A. Edison found life very boring.
Ecclesiastes 2:18
I have to go off and leave all of this someday. Have you ever stopped to think about that? What good is it going to do you? Oh, how many folk have worked all their lives to accumulate a little of this world’s goods, then they leave it to some godless relative. Some folk intend to leave it to a Christian organization so that their money can propagate the Gospel after they are gone, but have you ever stopped to think how many Christian organizations have become apostate and have departed from teaching the Word of God? For example, Mr. John Harvard, who founded Harvard University, was a fundamental believer, and he left his money to propagate the fundamental Christian faith. Today you wouldn’t find fundamental faith within ten yards of Harvard. They have departed from the faith. The money which Mr. Harvard left has come to be used for the very opposite of what he intended. People today leave money to so-called Christian organizations, but they have no assurance that the organizations will remain true to the faith. We know that Solomon faced this same kind of problem, and 1 Kings 12 tells us what happened. He left the kingdom to his son, and it was his son’s foolish arrogance that divided the kingdom. What a tragedy that was.
Ecclesiastes 2:19
Solomon saw that it was a waste of time to work for something and then to turn it all over to a fool.
Ecclesiastes 2:20
Notice again that this is “under the sun.” It is the view of the man apart from God. This is not the man in Christ seated in the heavenly places of Eph_2:6. This view under the sun always leads to pessimism.
Ecclesiastes 2:23
Solomon found out that it didn’t do any good to worry about it because there was nothing he could do about it.
Ecclesiastes 2:24
If you are living just for selfwhether you are God’s man or an unregenerate sinnerit will come to naught. It will lead to bitterness in your heart, and you will be holding nothing but dead leaves in your hands at the end.