The Pursuit Of Pleasure - Chasing After The Wind Series

Good morning. I trust you all had a pleasurable 4th of July. Speaking of the word pleasure, I need somebody to define pleasure for me. What does the word pleasure mean? Enjoyment. Satisfaction. Would you be satisfied with this definition? Pleasure is the enjoyment or satisfaction derived from what is to one’s liking, gratification, or delight. We can agree that the definition of pleasure is good. We can agree on what it means, but what we have a difficult time agreeing on is how do you experience the greatest pleasure in life. What are the things that you like to do that give you the most pleasure? I would imagine that some of you get a lot of pleasure from eating a nice piece of dark chocolate or a thick steak. That gives you a lot of pleasure. I suspect there are a lot of people here who get a lot of pleasure from being outside and taking a walk along a beach or sailing a sailboat or walking through the woods. Then there are other people who get pleasure from sports, watching sports, participating in sports, listening to sports. There are others who get enjoyment out of hobbies such as gardening or building things or whatever or just playing some music. There are still others who achieve some sense of pleasure from their achievements in life. From getting awards at the workplace and getting promotions and that sort of thing. Although we can agree on some form of definition of the word pleasure, what we can’t really agree on is the best way to pursue pleasure because there are so many avenues in life to pursue and to find pleasure. It seems like the corporate world is continuing to accommodate our need to find pleasure and allowing us to do so 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Even so, we know that people are out there constantly pursuing pleasure but never becoming really satisfied.

As I mentioned last week, we live in a culture that is very bored. We will find in today’s passage out of the book of Ecclesiastes that really there is no eternal pleasure apart from a relationship with God. If you haven’t been here, we have been going through a series on the book of Ecclesiastes called Under The Sun. The idea of under the sun is just a phrase that is frequently used in the book of Ecclesiastes that basically means living a life right now for the here and now really apart from God. The book of Ecclesiastes is King Solomon’s attempt to document what life is like lived totally apart from God. The conclusion that he makes throughout the whole book is that life is meaningless and has no meaning to it. Last week we followed Solomon’s pursuit to find meaning in the life cycles of nature and the human lifecycle only to come up short and to realize not only is life meaningless and not only are all those things in nature meaningless, but they are pretty much monotonous. We found out that when you put God back into the picture, all of a sudden everything takes on a divine and eternal quality. We begin to see life and nature much the way a child is able to see nature. To be able to see God in all of it. Today, what we are going to do is follow Solomon’s quest to find meaning in the pursuit of pleasure. In order to do that, we need to read the first 11 verses of chapter 2. As usual, I would like somebody to stand up that hasn’t read before. Ideally, read from the New International Version Ecclesiastes, chapter 2, starting at verse 1 and going down to verse 11. (Scripture read here.)

As we talked about the last few weeks, Solomon was this guy who was very, very wealthy. He had the time, talent, treasure, and power to pursue pretty much any form of pleasure that he wanted to in all of life. He pretty much summed up that pursuit as he often does where he writes “I thought in my heart, ‘Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good.’ But that also proved to be meaningless.” We know really the conclusion at the beginning and what he found out. As a side note, what some would suggest he is doing here is following the hedonistic philosophy of life. The hedonistic philosophy is just the idea that in order to achieve true happiness, the best thing you can do is avoid pain in life and to pursue pleasure. We find out that is what he did. We see that he did pursue a lot of different avenues of pleasure. Avenues that really are not unlike what we pursue today. He talks about at the beginning how he pursued wine and eating and laughter. You get the sense that it is a party-like atmosphere. And we know today that people find pleasure partying on Carson Street or partying with friends or just having a meal with friends and having a lot of laughter. We also found that he pursued pleasure through the building of great projects whether it was houses or buildings or monuments, to himself in many cases, or whether it was taking on some hobbies like building gardens and vineyards and groves of fruit trees along with the irrigation system that was necessary to keep that stuff alive. We also saw that like many men and women today, he also tried to find pleasure in his accumulation of wealth. While Solomon didn’t have a stock portfolio, we see he did invest in livestock, and he had a lot of stock. He also had a lot of gold and silver. Finally, we see in that passage that he also tried to find pleasure in relationships with women. As I said last week, Solomon supposedly had 700 wives and 300 concubines. He had the ability to seek pleasure through sexual intimacy. Obviously, we find people today seeking pleasure out through sexual intimacy.