The gift of God

Ecclesiastes 2.1-11

I wonder if you’re familiar with the kids’ book, ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’? Our kids loved it when they were younger. It’s the story of a caterpillar that eats his way through life. He starts with one apple on Monday, then two pears on Tuesday, three plums on Wednesday. On and on it goes. Until he gets to Saturday. He’s still hungry, so he eats chocolate cake, a pickle, cheese, salami, a lollipop, cupcake, watermelon.

For many of us, I think we resonate with the very hungry caterpillar, eating our way through life, trying to fill ourselves up on things and food and experiences, hoping to get full, scrolling through our social media channels, searching for that something that will satisfy us, help us cope with the misery and sorrows of life, and still the nagging restlessness we feel in our hearts. Today, we’re in the Book of Ecclesiastes, which Herman Melville, Author of Moby Dick, called ‘The truest of all books’.

Ecclesiastes a series of honest reflections by the one called Teacher or Professor. He observes the sobering realities of life in the here and now, life as we experience it with all of its sorrows and frustrations, what he calls ‘life under the sun’. The Teacher is on a mission too, searching for meaning and purpose as he journeys through life under the sun, the here and now, life as we experience it today. Like the hungry caterpillar, he eats his way through everything life has to offer.

In Ecclesiastes 1, he turns to wisdom. Maybe wisdom is where meaning and purpose are found. But that doesn’t work, and so, here in Ecclesiastes 2, the Teacher continues his search with the 3Ps. Marketing has 4Ps (product, place, price, promotion). Ecclesiastes 2 has three: pleasure, projects, and possessions. Maybe that’s where meaning and purpose are found.

And I have three section headings this morning.

The experiment
The problem
The solution

By the end of today, we’ll see whether the 3Ps, pleasure, projects, and possessions, will give us what we’re looking for.

But we start with point one: the experiment.

I’m in a real sweet spot with the my daughter’s maths at the moment. I’m really good at timetables, division, addition, subtraction. My secret is I like to break things down. Simplify things, make them more manageable. Come up with different strategies on how to work things out. For example, what’s 14+18=? It’s complicated, right?

But if we break that down and we do

10+10=20

4+8 =12

20+12=32

I know. For some of you, I’ve probably just made it more complicated. But when it comes to life, I have strategies as well. What I do when I’m feeling tired. What I do when I’m feeling sad

What to do when I’m feeling anxious. We all have strategies that we believe will help us navigate through life. And the Teacher today tests three of them.

He starts with pleasure. See there

1 I said to myself, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good.”

He tries to find pleasure in comedy there in 2.2

2 “Laughter,” I said

He tries to laugh his way through life. I’ve recently started seeing the value of friendships. One of my own joys is having my friend Sam who’s started coming to our church. We’ve been able to reconnect after many years. We’ve known each other for ages. Went to highschool together and primary school. He’s good at many things. Cooking. He’s a chef by training. He works logistics now.

But if there’s one thing I love about Sam, is he makes me laugh. There’s this great quote by JC Ryle, one of my favourite quotes on friendship. He says,

This world is full of sorrow because it is full of sin. It is a dark place. It is a lonely place. It is a disappointing place. The brightest sunbeam in it is a friend. Friendship halves our troubles and doubles our joys.

That’s Sam for me. Have you got a friend that makes you laugh? There’s pleasure in laughter.

But there’s also pleasure in wine.

3 I tried cheering myself with wine, and embracing folly—my mind still guiding me with wisdom.

The Teacher uses alcohol as his companion through life. Later, the Teacher tries to find pleasure in sex. It says that he acquired for himself in

8 … a harem as well—the delights of a man’s heart.

A harem is where the king’s concubines reside. It’s a house of sexual pleasure. And so, to sum it all up, the Teacher is saying that he has all the sex, all the alcohol, all the laughter in the world

10 I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure.

Imagine that. A life with no limitations. No stopping yourself. No need for restraint. Just go for it. Anything you set your heart on, it’s yours. A feast of delights and a buffet of pleasure. But it’s not just pleasure.

The Teacher embarks on building projects as well. See there in

4 I undertook great projects: I built houses for myself and planted vineyards. 5 I made gardens and parks and planted all kinds of fruit trees in them. 6 I made reservoirs to water groves of flourishing trees.

It’s the language of Genesis 1, when God created creation, he filled his creation with an abundance of good things, so that it was teeming with life. And so, is the Teacher building a new Garden of Eden? The Teacher achieves more in a short time than many of us hope to do in our lifetime. Everywhere he looks, he says

I built that

I funded that

That was me

It was my idea to do it this way

And his final stop in his experiment: possessions. The last P. The Teacher effectively becomes the wealthiest man in the world. I don’t think he’s overstating things when he says in

9 I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me. In all this my wisdom stayed with me.

He’s greater in the sense that he has more than everyone else. No one can match the Teacher’s wealth. He says in

7 I bought male and female slaves and had other slaves who were born in my house. I also owned more herds and flocks than anyone in Jerusalem before me. 8 I amassed silver and gold for myself, and the treasure of kings and provinces. I acquired male and female singers.

This is unspeakable wealth and possessions, unimaginable pleasure, and uncountable projects. All of this, because as the Teacher says in

3 … I wanted to see what was good for people to do under the heavens during the few days of their lives.

It’s worth asking here, what are our strategies? Not how do we solve maths problems. But how do you cope with the sorrows of life? How do you soothe yourself when you’re feeling disappointed? Where do you look for relief after a long, stressful day? How do you find a sense of meaning and purpose in life? Some of us turn to pleasure. Others give ourselves to projects.

And some turn to possessions, the constant accumulation of more.

As one writer, reflecting on our strategies, said,

We tend to use the world around us - work, possessions, people - as leverage for our own purposes and goals

For example,
Whereas before work was about making a living, providing for your family, now work has to be fulfilling, meaningful, and worthwhile
Whereas before sex was about one man and one woman in marriage giving and receiving, now sex is all about me, taking, for my pleasure, my needs, to validate my self-worth, how did I perform, am I good in bed.
Whereas before food and drink was about basic sustenance, now we take photos of what we eat, it’s about where you’ve been, have you tried the latest cafe, food needs to be rich, full of flavour.
Whereas before ministry was about service, now it’s about making a name for ourselves, because we’ve realised that we can use people as a stepping stone to bigger and better things, all under the guise of ‘ministry’ and ‘serving’.
Whereas before a house was a shelter to keep you and your family out of the rain and cold, now a house is about status, where you live, how much you have, investing for your future.

Now, I’m not trying to say any of these things in themselves are necessarily bad. But I’m trying to show how rather than enjoying these things for what they are, good gifts from a good God who loves to lavish his children with gifts, we’ve turned them into something else, strategies to our happiness and fulfilment.

What is it for you? Why do you work, have sex, eat and drink, exercise, and have kids? What are these things your strategy for? What are you working towards? And is it working?

Because that’s what the second section is all about: The problem.

A few years ago, I had COVID. If you remember, there were symptoms we were told to look out for a sore throat, a runny nose. The one I got was I’d eat food and I couldn’t taste anything! But I wonder if we’ve reached a similar point with our strategies where the more we have something, the less satisfying it is. The more empty we feel. We’re still unhappy. Things have become tasteless to us, they do nothing for us.

The Teacher had certainly reached this point. It’s the same refrain we hear again and again throughout the Book of Ecclesiastes.

Meaningless.

It’s all meaningless.

In terms of pleasure, the Teacher says there in

1 I said to myself, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good.” But that also proved to be meaningless.

And in terms of projects and possessions, the Teacher concludes

11 Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.

A grasping at the air. No point. A fruitless exercise. Nothing was gained. He’s saying that none of these things did what he’d hoped they’d do for him.

If you look back to Ecclesiastes 2.2, the Teacher asks the question

2 “... And what does pleasure accomplish?”

I think this shows us that the Teacher was looking to pleasure, projects and possessions to do something for him. To give him something. He was hoping to achieve or accomplish something by pleasure. Pleasure was a means to an end for him. And what did he find from all that experimentation, testing pleasure, projects and possessions?

He’d found that bigger is not better. More is not necessarily more. There is a sense in which the pleasure and delight we feel doesn’t last. We might feel pleasure for a moment. There’s delight in our achievements and accomplishments. But then, it’s over. People move on. The joy is short lived. And it doesn’t take long for the high to wane and we come crashing back down to earth, back to reality.

There is also diminishing returns, a ceiling that you hit, where each successive time you do it, it isn’t as thrilling or exciting as the time before. As Greg Easterbrook’s book suggests in its title,

The Progress Paradox: How life gets better while people feel worse

It seems the more you have, the less happy you are. Tom Brady, arguably the greatest quarterback of all time. He’d just won three out of his seven superbowls, and yet, he was reported to have said,

Why do I have three Super Bowl rings and still think there’s something greater out there for me? I mean, maybe a lot of people would say, ‘Hey man, this is what is.’ I reached my goal, my dream, my life. Me, I think, ‘It’s got to be more than this.’ I mean this isn’t, this can’t be what it’s all cracked up to be.’

And when asked by an interviewer, ‘What’s the answer?’, Brady could only say,

‘I wish I knew. I wish I knew.’

Most people would look at Tom Brady and envy him. They’d look at him and think, ‘Here’s a guy who has reached the top of his sport. He’s an absolute superstar. Three (and later to be seven) superbowls. Surely, it doesn’t get any better than this.’ But according to Brady, he was left feeling like there’s got to be more to life than this.

As one writer cleverly put it,

Pleasure’s advertising agency is much more effective than its manufacturing department.

Pleasure talks a bit game. If you have me, you will be happy. I will fulfil your deepest longings

I will satisfy your loudest desires. I will give you relief for the ache in your heart. But pleasure just isn’t able to deliver on these promises. That’s the problem.

But all of this to say, how’s it going? How are your strategies working for you? Are they doing what you’d hoped they’d do for you? If anything, that’s what the Book of Ecclesiastes does. It pokes and prods and challenges us, forcing us to face up to the realities of life under the sun, and here we’re reminded of how deeply disappointing it can be.

As the iconic 1965 song by the Rolling Stones says, we find that

I can't get no satisfaction

Gonna try and I try and I try and I try

I can't get no -

Satisfaction.

And this brings us to the final point today: the solution. Why is it that our strategies fail us, and what we try doesn’t fulfil us and doesn’t satisfy us? I’ve recently been loving Mortadella at the moment. Do you know it? Try it with pistachio or olives. Bliss. There’s nothing better than fresh sourdough, some Provolone cheese, Mortadella ham, and some avocados. Make your own guacamole: spanish onions, a dash of olive oil, salt and pepper. Beautiful. But one of the things about the fresh sourdough we buy is you need to cut it up yourself, which isn’t easy . Unless you have a bread knife with a serrated edge, which I’m telling you, makes all the difference.

But as I think about the way we use things as a means to an end, a stepping stone to bigger and better things, leverage for our own selfish purposes and goals, I think the reason why we’re always left feeling disappointed is because we’re not using things for what they were made for, It’s like if I started cutting the sourdough loaf with the blunt edge of the bread knife and then was complaining how it wasn’t working, the knife isn’t going through the bread.

What’s the problem here? You’d say, well, of course it isn’t working! You’re using the wrong side of the knife. You’re not using the knife how it’s supposed to be used. Of course it’s not working! And it’s the same with work, sex, children, marriage, house, food and drink, pleasure, projects, and possessions. We’re not using them the way they were meant to be used. We’re using the wrong side. That’s why it isn’t working.

Because here’s the thing.

If work was just work

And sex was just sex

And exercise is just exercise

And family is just family

Marriage is just marriage

Money is just money

A house is just a house

A car is just a car

Ministry is just ministry

You know what? My guess, and it’s more than a guess, I’m sure of it, we’d actually come to enjoy these things. All the weight comes off and we can just breathe. Because we’re not asking these things to carry the weight of the world on their shoulders, do things they were never meant to be able to do. They’re not a means to an end. They’re the finish line. We’re not expecting there to be more around the corner. Did you notice how even for the Teacher, when work is just work, he actually experiences joy, pleasure and delight in his work?

He says there in

10 … My heart took delight in all my labor, and this was the reward for all my toil.

Why? Because he’s working for work’s own sake. He isn’t trying to turn work into something it’s not, trying to get something out of work that God never intended it to do. And so, how does the Teacher get here? How does he stop looking through pleasure, projects and possessions for what they can do for him, and instead, live in the here and now, enjoying these things for what they are, as an end in themselves, rather than a means to an end?

Here’s the thing. This truth changes everything. When God is in his proper place, everything else falls into place. See, our problem is we’re looking to find in things what we can only ultimately find in God.

It was French philosopher and mathematician, Blaise Pascal, who said,

There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.

And Augustine, one of the early church fathers, who said

You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you

That’s why we keep coming up short. Because we look to pleasure, projects and possessions to do for us, be for us, give us what only God can give us. But like hideous wallpaper that you can’t seem to un-see, they distract us, but they can never fix the ache we feel in our souls. And so, the solution to our unhappiness, the emptiness we feel, as we strain and strive and chase in vain for bigger, better, and more, and are left feeling more dissatisfied than ever before, is … to go to God. Don’t go to food and drink for what you can only find in God.

The first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism famously starts with this question

Q: What is the chief end of man?

A: Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

We were made for God. Only God can fill the vacuum in our hearts. Not work. Not sex. Not another person. Not a house. Not ministry. The whole point of Christianity is not to give you a better life, a more fulfilling life, an easy and comfortable life. No. Christianity is about bringing sinners to God. The gift of God is God himself. He’s the gift that all the other gifts point to.

1 Peter 3.18 says it like this

18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.

John’s gospel says something similar. The night before Jesus’ crucifixion, Jesus is praying in John 17. And he says

3 Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

When you walk into our church, you’ll see everywhere. Find life, light and love. Well, this is it. Do you want life, light and love? We’re not selling a better life. If that’s what you’re looking for, you’re going to be disappointed. Then what are we doing here? We’re pointing people to Jesus in whom life, light and love are ultimately found. He’s it. He’s the key. He’s who we need to know. He’s whom we need to come to. He’s the One we need to submit to, put all our hope in, our trust in, and find our joy in. It’s Jesus.

And if you do, then all of a sudden, cutting fresh bread becomes a whole lot more enjoyable. Because you’re relating to things, other people, your work, properly. Everything falls into place. You’re not trying to find God in them. A friend of mine once shared with me that ‘There are different kinds of relationships. Some relationships you come to with strength and others you come to for strength’. For example, with my kids, I’m the dad. They’re not the dad. So I don’t go to my kids and say, Kids, dad is having a hard week this week. Can you write my sermon for me? That would be inappropriate. That’s asking them to do what’s not theirs to do. I come to them with strength, not for strength.

But in a similar way, don’t go to pleasure, projects and possessions looking for God, to find God and what only God can be and do in them. No. We come to these things with God. The only relationship we should come to for strength, well, is our relationship with God himself.

Is this making sense?

The experiment.

The problem.

The solution.

I’ll finish here.

Two things that this means for us today: we can endure and enjoy what God has given.

The first one: endure. Many of us are going through life like the hungry caterpillar. Hungry. Restless. Discontent. Never satisfied. Always looking over the fence to what everyone else is doing, what everyone else has got. Constantly striving, straining, searching, trying to find that one thing that’s going to finally fill the God-shaped hole inside of us. But as we’ve seen already, simply changing strategies isn’t going to fix the ache in our hearts.

You don’t go to God’s gifts to find God. You go to God, the Giver of all good gifts, to find God.

And so, maybe we endure some things in life. Maybe we stay in the job we’re in. Maybe we’re faithful to the husband or wife we’ve been wedded to. Maybe we stay in the same church we’ve been at for years. It isn’t perfect, but they love deeply, they love the Bible, and they love Jesus. Maybe we stick with the boring, the normal, the ordinary, the not very exciting, and the slow. Maybe we keep changing nappies. We accept things for what they are, not what we think they should be, or wished they would be or could be. Because maybe there’s nothing wrong with them. It’s just the way they are.

As one writer has said,

Not everything needs to be fixed. Not everything is a problem to be solved. Some things must be borne, must be suffered, and endured

Not everything has to be fun, fulfilling, exciting, meaningful. In fact a lot of life is not. And that’s okay. It might not be how we wanted, or how we wished, but that’s the way it is. And so we endure these things. We bear with people. We suffer some trials and afflictions. We endure difficult circumstances and relationships. Because we weren’t expecting to find in these things what we can only find in God. We’re not surprised when things fail us and disappoint us. We endure.

We receive from God what he has given, like the Psalmist who says,

24 This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

But also, we enjoy. That’s the second one. Pleasure, delight, joy, satisfaction, meaning are the gift of God. God isn’t a kill-joy. He’s not trying to make our lives dull and un-exciting. He’s not calling us to a life of stoicism, of no feeling. No. He has in-built pleasure into the world. He has made things in such a way for us to enjoy them, to give us delight.

Work is a gift

Sex is a gift

Money is a gift

A house is a gift

A car is a gift

Friends are a gift

Enjoy them. They are God’s gift to you.

It’s as Augustine said

Love God and do whatever you please.

Again, I say, if God is in his proper place, everything else falls into place. It’s only when we elevate God’s gifts to the place of God, in the place of God, to replace him, that we spoil the gifts. Of course, we need to recognise that we live in a fallen world. Sin, our sin, other’s sin, has spoiled things. I’m not denying that. But there’s still goodness in the world God has made. And so, maybe we need to re-learn how to enjoy God’s good gifts, not as an end in themselves, but as gifts that lead us to praise and worship the Giver of those gifts, God himself. But it all starts with God.

In Prince Caspian, book number four in the Narnia series by C.S. Lewis, there’s a scene where the two sisters, Lucy and Susan, are with Aslan, the lion-king, who has returned to Narnia. There’s dancing, laughter, wine. But amidst all this celebration, there’s a wild boy, ‘dressed only in a faun-skin, with vine leaves wreathed in his curly hair’. The brother, Edmund, looks at the wild boy and says, ‘There’s a chap who might do anything - absolutely anything’. Later, the children learn that the boy was actually Bacchus, also known as Dionysius, the god of wine.

Susan remarks wisely,

‘I wouldn’t have felt very safe with Bacchus and all his wild girls if we’d met them without Aslan’

To which Lucy replies,

‘I should think not’

What’s this got to do with today? Well, I think it’s the same with us. God’s gifts, pleasure, projects and possessions, are only safe when God is in the picture. Without God, we don’t know what to do with them. We end up misusing them as means to our own selfish ends, a stepping stone, the way we squeeze meaning, purpose, significance, joy out of life. But with God, we can actually enjoy them as good gifts from a good God who loves for us to enjoy his gifts.

And so, are you relating to God properly? It’s the one relationship we’ve got to get right. Because when God is God, then

Work is work

Sex is sex

Exercise is exercise

Money is money

Ministry is ministry

And we can simply endure and enjoy. Let’s pray.

Discussion questions:

What struck you the most from the sermon?
What are some of the gifts of God that you turned into strategies for your happiness? Be honest and share it with your group.
Why do you think those strategies fail you? What happened?
How does the gospel enable you to endure and enjoy God's gifts?