397: I Denied Myself No Pleasure | +Quigg Lawrence

Introduction

Good morning, friends. You might want to grab a Bible today. We're in Ecclesiastes two. We're preaching a summer series through the book of Ecclesiastes. I've never ever heard a church preaching through Ecclesiastes. I suppose someone has, but we've never done it in thirty-six years. And so we're going to learn a lot about Hevel and meaninglessness and futility and the strategies we try to bring to the table to deal with it, rather than finding our joy from the only one who is the source of true joy. But today is pleasure. Now, how ironic. You got Tim, you got Sloop, and you got Quiggs splitting the series. I would have loved wisdom, but somehow Sloop grabbed that one and they threw to me pleasure.

The Context of the Passage

Now, one of my greatest fears before I got ordained is that somebody would find the yearbooks from UVA 1978 and '79. If you could go to Alderman Library and find the '78-'79 UVA Corks and Curls yearbook, and you looked on the cover of the fraternity page, you would see a very intoxicated young man in kitty cat pajamas with a cup of grain alcohol in his hand. And from there, it just went downhill. So why do people do that? Because they're trying to make sense of this.

Let's recap for those who haven't been here or might have missed some weeks on vacation. What's going on in Ecclesiastes? First, it's on page 553 if you need to get there. But what's the punchline? Twenty-eight times in the book of Ecclesiastes, the author—who a lot of people think is King Solomon—says this.

The words of the preacher, the son of David, King in Jerusalem. — Ecclesiastes 1:1

Scholars disagree on who the author is. You guys, I read so many boring commentaries. I just wanted to drive screwdrivers in both eyes. Commentaries are fine if you want to glance at them. But as they told us in seminary, sometimes the Bible sheds great light on commentaries. I don't actually care who wrote this because I know who wrote it. It doesn't matter to me if Ecclesiastes—if Solomon actually penned it, or somebody else got his thoughts and words, and God inspired them to write it. Who cares? Let's deal with the reality of God's Word in the text.

The basic message is life is a train wreck. It's filled with Hevel, which is a word meaning meaninglessness and futility. How does this express itself? In three primary ways according to Ecclesiastes.

The Reality of Hevel: Death, Injustice, and Cycles

First, everybody's going to die. I kind of laugh sometimes when I'm coming to church, I might be eating a donut, slugging down some coffee with half and half and sugar in it. And I'll see some skinny little mini running down Merriman Road. And I'm like, Hey, dude, you're going to die just like me. Everybody is going to die. So if you want to eat like Mike Massey, I'll tell you another story. It's not in the text, so we'll just go there. About fifteen years ago, I'm pulling into McDonald's to get a double cheeseburger with a large fry and a large chocolate milkshake. As I'm going through the line, Mike Massey calls me and he says, Hold on quick. And he goes, he's going through a drive-thru as well. He goes, I'd like a chicken breast with lettuce and a water. And I'm like, Massey, are you kidding me? Have some pleasure in life. Live. And now we're about the same size. So just saying, send that to Massey, will you?

Meaninglessness in life is seen by death. We're all going to die. You can try to escape in a million ways, you're going to die. You're going to die, get ready.

Number two, there's random injustice. Have you seen that? You might have seen it in your own life, but you certainly see it out there. Pick up the newspaper. Remember we shared the story of a kid who just turned 17. He loved Jesus with his whole heart. He was a worship leader. His dad was a Young Life area director. He's just minding his own business coming home from school and some crazy person sprayed bullets from an AK-47 and one of those caught that kid in the head and he was dead. Random injustice. One of the things that makes me so angry is what is done to children, not just in the United States, but all over the world. Little tiny children. It is wickedness. It's a wicked thing under the sun.

And the last one is life is cyclical. It's like second verse, same as the first. You know, the rich people are going to exploit misery, the rich people that think accumulation is going to make them happy, they find out it doesn't. And we're all going to die anyway. And the pattern just repeats, repeats, repeats, and repeats. It's like we're in a rut. And we can't get out of the rut. So there's meaninglessness, we've seen it with death, random injustice, and that life is just kind of a cyclical train wreck.

Strategies for Dealing with the Hevel

What are the strategies for dealing with it? You have a strategy. Do you know what your strategy is? What's your strategy? Prayer. You're a godly woman. I have not always used those kinds of strategies. According to Ecclesiastes, Solomon used these strategies. The first one was he applied himself to wisdom. Wisdom applied himself to wisdom. That's a good thing. That's a good thing. God loves wisdom. He is wisdom. But Solomon thought, well, if I just become the wisest man in the world, then life will have meaning. But then he found out it didn't. It was like striving after the wind.

Then he went to his next strategy and that was pleasure. I want you to think for a second, you're in high school, you need money. You go over there to the ice cream store and you say, I'd like to work in your nice store. And they said, you can have all the ice cream you want. Awesome. One of my friends, actually a family member, said she worked in an ice cream store. She thought it was going to be amazing. But after two or three days of training, the last thing she wanted to see or smell or touch was ice cream. And so the trick is, you think you're going to go to Happy Land and just eat ice cream, but if you got all you wanted, it would make you miserable. It'd be like riding on a roller coaster, that's fun. How'd you like to do it for seven years straight with no stop? Do you see?

Another strategy is work. And the scriptures are clear, work is good. Right? God invented work. Work is, work can be holy. Work can be freedom. Work's a good thing. But ultimately, it doesn't solve the meaninglessness.

How about wealth? Now, you guys are better Christians than me. I really think many of you are. Have you ever had this lie go through your head? If only I had this, then I would really be happy. Is there a dollar amount you've ever floated through your head just privately, not sharing with anybody? Like, if you went home today and you got an email and said, hey, we've just deposited $10 million in your checking account. Well, that'd be pretty awesome. And you think it would make you happy. But if it did, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, who's that Microsoft guy? Yeah, that guy. All those guys would be the happiest people on the planet. But they're not because it doesn't work.

And so those are the strategies. Today, we're going to hone in on Ecclesiastes two on pleasure. And boy, I preached a minute longer introduction, so I gotta get going. Turn to Ecclesiastes chapter two, and he starts out in verse one. It's his strategy. It's one of his strategies for dealing with the meaninglessness and the futility and the brokenness and the ugliness in life. He says,

I said in my heart, I will test you with pleasure, enjoy yourself. But behold, this also was vanity. — Ecclesiastes 2:1

Well, as soon as I read that, alarms went off. Solomon's supposed to be one of the wisest men that ever lived. If you actually read the Bible, he wasn't actually that wise. He did a lot of really foolish and dumb things. But here we see some of his stupidity. He says, I said in my heart, why is that stupid? What does the Bible say about your heart and my heart?

The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick; who can understand it? — Jeremiah 17:9

It says it's wicked or deceitful. It's deceitful above all things. So that this whole idea, oh, I just trust my heart. Well, heart's a really terrible thing to trust. Right? It's a terrible thing to trust. So I just want to ask you, are you trusting in your heart? Because your heart is a liar, liar.

Then it says, come now, I will test you with pleasure. I don't know about you guys, but I've taken a thousand tests in my life, some of them I've crammed overnight for, but they always make me a little anxious. And I love tests if I get an A, if I get a B, it's okay, worse than that, not so good. The one test that I have enjoyed in my whole life is testing myself with pleasure. I think you like it too. We're gonna get into that, Solomon. And so this is a very personal thing. It says, I said in my heart, I will test you with pleasure, enjoy yourself. That was my strategy.

Early on, our home was a—it was not a fun place to live. It was a war zone. And so what happens is you have to develop a strategy for dealing with that kind of brokenness and ugliness. And so from an early age, one of mine was accomplishment. I was an Eagle Scout at age 13. And I had to wait till I got 13, so they would give it to me. You know, whatever it is. Oh, social chairman of all the fraternities at UVA. I want it. I did it. Bishop, I wanted it. I did it. And you know, at the end of the day, all those things, they're not bad things. They just don't solve the brokenness and ugliness of the world. They don't— they don't really make sense of it.

Now, I want you to think about your life and what strategies you used. Are y'all getting hot in here? First service is a lot cooler. Okay. When you were a toddler, do we have a toddler in the crowd? Robbie, you're a little—who do we have? Do we have a toddler? Hey, Barrett, how you doing buddy? There's Barrett, he's a toddler. What do you reckon is a pleasure mechanism for a toddler? Mommy, right? Mommy, snack. How about a little bit older toddler? What do they like? They like candy. Do you know this? I have little kids come in, Can I have a mint? Can I have a mint? Every Sunday. Kids love candy. What else do little kids like? Little tinies. They like when their mom bakes a cake and does chocolate icing and has a little—and he gets to lick it. Do you like that? As a kid, that’s a big deal. What else do kids like? Ro, I’m gonna call on you on this one. Okay, $5 if you get it right. What are some things that you put together to make things and it’s really exciting for you and they snap together? Legos. Yes.

So when you think, like, if Legos gives you pleasure, let's just go to Legoville. Let's get somebody to write a check and send them $10 million worth of Legos. Eventually, you get tired of them. Okay, how about a middle school kid? What gives a middle school kid pleasure? What gave you pleasure in middle school? We didn't have cell phones when I was in middle school. We had cans with strings on them. I'm not kidding. Weren't the brightest either. Like, the big thing in our thing was that we had forts and then we would go in these sites where people were building houses, and we'd find what we call dirt clods. Actually, they were rocks and concrete and dirt, kind of all mixed in one, and we would throw them at about 96 miles an hour at our friend's head. And he had a trash can top, and he would try to block it. So that was pleasure for us.

Middle school for me, camping and sports. My whole life was about Boy Scouts, camping, hiking, canoeing, all that. Loved it. Okay, let's go a little bit older. What about in high school? What's pleasure for high school kids? Beach week. Right? What else? High school kids, what's pleasure? Cars. Yes, perfect. Cars, music, girls, food, boys. Right. It's all that. So, there's a strategy for high school kids: be popular, work out, sports, hunting, hunting, bluegrass, whatever.

Okay. College. College is where it kind of breaks open, right? Because over here, I'm living with my mom, and she has rules. She's a godly woman, and a smart woman, so she has rules. But then I drive in my car up to Charlottesville, and all of a sudden, there are no rules. And buddy, it was awesome. I'm embarrassed to tell you, the first day at UVA, I was over served, and I went to either the third or fourth floor of our dorm, and I decided it would be a good idea to urinate off that in front of everyone. Sadly, my resident advisor thought that was a really bad idea, and I got in big trouble. College is filled with people just doing whatever they want to do to hit the pleasure meter, just—there are no rules. And for a while, it's amazing. But in the end, it's kind of like a Venus flytrap, where it's kind of like one of those Chinese finger traps—you think it's going to be awesome, just like the person eating ice cream all day. But—once you get your fill of it, it's not producing the pleasure that you thought it would. And then you're really miserable.

Okay, we got to move ahead. Middle age. What do people do in middle age? What did you do for pleasure? Watch Fox News. Okay. Now, what do you do for travel? Travel. That's awesome. Yeah. You know what I did? I accumulated. Accumulated. So our family, we had money, we lost money. And so one of the ways I pleasured myself was to accumulate things. Hey, man, Henkel Harris furniture back in the day, gotta have it, gotta have it, gotta have it. I want this kind of mixer, I want this, I want that, I want the best hunting stuff. So, my goal in life was to accumulate so I could be happy, so I could experience pleasure. But much like you or many others, when we accumulate, we find there's just more maintenance to do. And things break down and they're not as exciting in the long run as we thought they were.

Okay, last one is this. How about the golden years? Not picking on anybody. In the golden years, what are things that bring people pleasure? Hip replacements. In our first service, somebody said bowel movements. Okay. Here's what I think: except for me, it's still bluegrass, it's eating, it's hunting, it's friends. But you know what it really is? I tell older people this all the time: your body, it's a perishable body. Have you figured it out yet? If you don't believe any other scripture, your body is a perishable body, that's truth. But God in his mercy often gives us grandchildren. And one of the beauties of when you're old and everything hurts and your heart's not working great, your knees not working great, you see those little grandkids and your heart just is filled with joy. I think that's a good thing. But ultimately, grandkids grow up and they get cars and they stop seeing grandma and grandpa.

Now, let's go back to verse two. That was a long segue. The thing is we all have strategies for pleasure. He said in verse two, I said of laughter, it is mad and of pleasure, what uses it? Do you know the Bible is actually very positive about laughter, right?

A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. — Proverbs 17:22

A cheerful heart's good medicine, but in Proverbs, well, hold on, just stay there for a second. Back when I did young life, I used to get in a car—and don't tell anybody—I used to put tobacco under my lip. It's a really stupid thing to do. Thirty-four years of stupidity, now I have a heart issue. But at the time, it was awesome. Right? Because it gave me pleasure. And I used to sit with another young life guy, and we'd be in his car, and we'd be dipping, and we'd be laughing, and he's one of the funniest men I've ever met. And he'd tell me a story, and I would start laughing. I don't know, have you ever had this experience? Where you start laughing so hard, it starts to hurt, and you're like, David Anderson, stop that. Oh, you, no, dude, stop, stop. And then he tells another joke, he’ll go, and then you start laughing again. And sometimes I’d be like, bro, just please stop. I can't take it. I’m laughing so hard.

But Proverbs 14:13 says this:

Even in laughter, the heart may ache, and the end of joy may be grief. — Proverbs 14:13

Laughter, or another way to say this, in laughter there can be great sorrow. But the original language is more like a hidden thing. In laughter, it can hide the misery that you're actually walking in. Right? Some of us are living there right now. Hi, I'm fine. But inside, not so much.

Let's go to verse three. So, Solomon goes, or whoever read it, says, I searched with my heart how to cheer my body with wine. Tell some of my wine, wine is awesome, as long as you don’t drink too much of it. Wine makes the heart of man glad. And some of us have already had our share and we need to stop. But for others, wine's awesome. We use the Lord's Supper. But I think it's ironic that Solomon here is saying, I searched. Here's the smartest man in the world. He said, I searched with how to cheer my body with wine. Brother, that took me about thirty minutes at UVA to figure out. You're the smartest man that ever lived, and you're trying to figure out how to cheer your body with wine? It's not that hard. You get the thing, you put it in your mouth, you drink.

He says, my heart was still guiding me with wisdom. Again, guys, I don't think Solomon is that wise. He's talking about how he's going to search and try to learn how to make himself happy with much drink. He says, but I'm still using wisdom as my guide. Sure you are, buddy. Sure you are. I taught my mom the same thing when I was in college.

He says, my heart was still guiding me with wisdom on how to lay hold on folly till I might see what was good for the children of man to do under heaven during the few days of their life. Now he commenced to bragging.

Look at verse four. Kind of reminds me of Muhammad Ali here. He thought he was the greatest. I am the greatest. He says, I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. I made myself gardens and parks and planted them in them all kinds of fruit trees. I made myself pools, plural, from which to water the forest of growing trees. I bought male and female slaves—that’s not such a great idea. I bought male and female slaves and had slaves that were born in my house. I had also great possessions of herds and flocks—more than any who had come before me.

Do you see him bragging? But I think it actually was true. I asked ChatGPT because it's like my source now. I said, how wealthy was Solomon? And they gave this long answer, but basically said, about the same as Jeff Bezos or who's the other guy? Elon Musk. They said, but the wealthiest person that ever lived, Augustus Caesar, worth four hundred forty billion dollars.

Bottom line is, Solomon had a lot of money, right? And so, he did all these things. He not only tried to pleasure himself with 700 wives and 300 concubines, with material things, and work of his hand, and incredible wealth, he did it all. And yet at the end of it, he says, it's all vanity. I thought it was going to be great. I thought it was going to make me happy. But the hard truth is it didn't. And now I'm really sad.

That, friends, is why I became a Christian. Like Solomon, I denied myself no pleasure. My mom wasn't around. I did whatever the heck I wanted to do. Whatever. And you would think that would put a smile on your face. But you know what happened after some time? It just made me more hopeless, more hopeless. And I got stripped down to the point where I finally said, well, this isn't working. Is there any other thing that might work? I was a church person, not a Christian, but I started to consider the claims of Christ because nothing else was working. That's why I began to look at Jesus.

The Power of Pleasure in Christ

All the way down to verse nine, he says, so I became great and I surpassed all who were before me, and whatever my eyes desired, I did not keep from them. I refused my heart no pleasure. You know, I don't think any of you guys are as sinful as the pastor, right? Or certainly as I was, but a lot of you guys are denying yourself no pleasure. You know, and if you start making some money, you get whatever you want, just hit a button on Amazon, it'll come, it'll come. You want to travel here, you want to go there, want to accumulate? The hard truth is, God's not against us having things that are pleasurable, experiencing joy and pleasure. But ultimately, he's the source of pleasure, right? He's the giver of the gifts. And so he gets upset on our behalf when we start to put our arms around the gifts and not around the giver because he knows we're gonna be incredibly sad and unhappy, just like Solomon. And Solomon says, even though I tried all these things, verse 11, I consider that all my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it. And behold, all was vanity, all was futile, all was meaninglessness. It was a striving after the wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.

The Consequences of Chasing Hevel

So, what was the result for Solomon? He says in Ecclesiastes 2:17, "So I hated life." You know what? God has designed us to become absolutely miserable—absolutely miserable—when we seek after even good things and reject the giver of good things. The reason many of us in this room are miserable is because our strategy is to do pleasure and to do wealth, and they’re not working. And eventually, if you walk it long enough, you’re going to be like Solomon and say, I hated my life. It made me sad to think that everything here on earth is useless, like a chasing of the wind.

Conclusion

Okay, I could preach for another hour, but let me close with a quote from C. S. Lewis. You know, it's either Tim Keller or C. S. Lewis, right? That's what you do. But listen to what CS Lewis says:

It would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. It would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us. Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because we cannot imagine what is meant by an offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

Friends, I don't know what strategies you are using, but the only one that works is to find your joy in the source of all joy. It's not a thing; it's a person. Jesus Christ, the source of joy.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.