Ecclesiastes 2 - I Can't Get No Satisfaction
Tom Shrader examines Ecclesiastes 2, where Solomon systematically explores every avenue people think will bring happiness—pleasure, wealth, achievements, possessions, and entertainment. Through Solomon's vast experience and resources, he demonstrates that nothing 'under the sun' can provide the satisfaction and meaning that only comes through a right relationship with God through Christ.
“This world will not produce happiness, joy, contentment, satisfaction, if you're trusting it to provide that satisfaction that only comes in a right relationship with God through Christ.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Reflections From the Top of the Heap (2007)
Recorded: May 10, 2007
Duration: 38 min
Themes: satisfaction, purpose, wealth, pleasure, wisdom, meaning, happiness, fulfillment, seeking purpose, feeling empty, pursuing wealth, chasing success, middle aged, successful professional, searching for meaning, disillusioned adult
Scripture: Ecclesiastes 1:2-3, Ecclesiastes 2, 1 Kings 10:1
Theological Themes: ecclesiastes, vanity, eternal perspective, worldliness, stewardship, biblical wisdom, solomon, meaninglessness
Full Transcript
If you have Bibles, turn to Ecclesiastes chapter 2. I teach on Wednesday morning, Thursday morning, and Thursday noon. That's my regular schedule for this session for priority living.
I was getting ready to go over yesterday morning and our administrator was at church and he said, "What are you teaching?" I said Ecclesiastes chapter 2. He said it doesn't really matter what chapter—they're about all the same once you get to Ecclesiastes. They really feel that way.
If you are new to this and new to a study, you've come at what I would think is a really good time. We're looking at a book that's crucial to the understanding of you as a person.
The Importance of Eternal Perspective
I am, in a couple of weeks, doing a little getaway for a group of guys and one of the topics they want to talk about is discipleship. There's enough other guys there that will talk about it that I don't think I need to spend a ton of time on it. But I've been doing a lot of reading and one guy suggests, talking about disciple as a follower, a learner, defining it, but says here's what Jesus tried to put in the heart of His disciples. And that was servanthood, Jesus as a model, cultivate faith, and then—and I think this is like the big motivator—an eternal perspective.
If I can start to see my life, the lives of the people around me, the world I'm in, if I can see that from Jesus' perspective and then act accordingly, now things start to fall into place. They make sense. It's not the world as I want it to be. It's God's perspective.
Solomon: God's Laboratory for Human Happiness
Well, in His desire, God's desire for us to have that perspective, He gave us a guy by the name of Solomon. We'll probably make some reference to this every week because you have to keep this in your mind. If you miss this, then the lessons are very confusing. And this is easy to remember: God allowed Solomon to experience whatever it is you think would make you happy, and then he tells you the end result of that.
Ecclesiastes means "the one who assembled the facts." So as you move your way through life, essentially, whatever your experience is, at least in a broad sense, Solomon can say, "Been there, done that. Let me tell you how that ends."
Some of you are parents, still parenting, and grandparents, still grandparenting, and probably parenting. Some of you are in that state, state of life that's kind of a weird state, because you're parenting your parents, and you're parenting your grandkids, and you're parenting your kids, and part of that is imparting wisdom. Well, Solomon is this rich source of wisdom. Hang out with Solomon.
Solomon's Upfront Conclusion
In the book of Ecclesiastes, he does this. Chapter 1, verse 2, verse 3, he gives you a conclusion. I was—Sandy was in Pasadena for a few days, so I wanted a book to read, and I got the new John Grisham novel. I'm 57% of the way through it, which tells you I'm reading it on a Kindle, and I'm going, "All right, let's figure this out." It's Grisham, so it's mystery, a bit of a whodunit, and that's the story.
I met someone last night, and I said, "What are you doing?" And her answer to me was, "I'm writing a book." I said, "Oh wow, what kind of book?" And she said, "Well that's a mystery," and I didn't know if she meant what kind of book it is is a mystery, or you're not telling me, or it's a mystery—it's a whodunit.
There's no whodunit for Solomon. You don't have to get by the first three verses to get His conclusion. He tells us in verse 1 of chapter 1 who he is, though he doesn't use his name, and here's his conclusion: "Vanity of vanities, vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What advantage does a man have for all his work, which he does under the sun?"
Key Terms to Understand
Solomon says, "Here's life. I've looked at it. I've lived it. Vanity"—some of your translations will say "meaningless, meaningless." He uses a phrase, "under the sun," and that's one of the keys. There's a couple of words that I got to get defined in my mind, or I'll never get the book of Ecclesiastes.
"Under the sun" means Solomon as I look horizontally around the world, and I evaluate it on a worldly perspective. That's "under the sun." Then he uses the word "gain," or "what is left," and what he means is this—we might say it in terms of what's the net after the transaction. After I live my life, after I do these things, after I experience all there is, what's the gain? And his answer is, there's really nothing to be gained under the sun.
I Can't Get No Satisfaction
Well today we're looking at chapter 2, and you can see on your outline, we've used the title of one of the anthems, probably, from my generation, "I Can't Get No Satisfaction," the old Stones song: "And I try, and I try, and I try, but I can't get no." Now the English may not be great, the grammar, but the idea is there, and Solomon preceded them by thousands of years.
So we're just going to take a look at it, and I'll tell you up front, and it's going to be the same thing over and over and over again. This world will not produce happiness, joy, contentment, satisfaction, if you're trusting it to provide that satisfaction that only comes in a right relationship with God through Christ. There's something in you that wants to be happy, wants to be satisfied, wants to be fulfilled. You were created to be, but you were created to be fulfilled in a right relationship with God through Christ.
Solomon's Pleasure Hunt
So Solomon takes a run at it, and he starts with pleasure, verse 1 and 2. I use the term, he goes on a "pleasure hunt." "I said to myself, 'Come on now, I'll test you with pleasure, so enjoy yourself,' and behold, it too was futility. I said of laughter, it was madness, and of pleasure, 'What does it accomplish?'"
He said, "I decided that I'd try to find fulfillment in fun," is the word I would use. I'll get—in my day, Johnny Carson, or now I'll get Jimmy Fallon, or I'll get Chris Rock, or whoever you're—Brian Regan, whoever your person is, whatever that show is, and I'll have fun. I'm going to find fulfillment in fun. I'm just going to do fun. When I came to town,
My pursuit was like Solomon's, minus the wisdom and minus the money. But when you don't have a lot of dough, you become an expert at something called the happy hour. I worked in Tempe, and there was a Black Angus on Broadway that had the best happy hour I could find in town. They had incredible food, and they had call drinks, meaning you didn't get bourbon and water or whiskey and water—you got Johnny Walker Red and water for 75 cents. This became like a magnet for me every day around three o'clock.
There was a lady who was a server who was old enough that you weren't trying to hit on her, but she was a pro. She would come by every time I was in there and say, "Tom, we're going to have happy hour over pretty fast. You want an order?" So I'd say bring me two, bring me three—not a lot of water, but a lot of ice. She knew how to make it.
Here's what I discovered: that place was filled with people for happy hour, and rarely, almost never, were we more happy at the end of the hour than we were at the beginning. I'll be brutally honest—it seems like my loneliness, my yearning, whatever it was, was deeper at the end of that. The jokes were funnier, but the hurt was greater. That's what Solomon says. Solomon says, "I could have saved you a lot of time. That isn't going to work."
The Pursuit of Material Things
So He tried a new approach. "I explored with my mind how to stimulate my body with wine while my mind was guiding me wisely, and how to take hold of folly until I could see what good there was for the sons of men to do under heaven during the few years of their life. I enlarged my works: I built houses for myself, I planted vineyards for myself" (verses 3-4).
Solomon built a house. Many of you in here have done that or are doing that. Solomon built a temple, remember that? It took Him seven years to build the temple. To me, this seems important—it took Him seven years to build the temple, but it took Him fourteen years to build His house. It was a big house.
Now, there's nothing wrong with a house. I feel like I'm constantly backpedaling in this discussion. He's not saying don't build a house, but He's saying you've got to understand: if you're building that house to be happy, it's not going to make you happy.
I am way past the stage in life where we help friends move. But remember that stage where it was like every weekend somebody that you hung out with was moving? Almost every time, we had the same experience. It was Solomon-esque in the sense that we would move everything in, and then the people we were moving would bring in pizza and soda or beer or whatever it was, and we'd sit around. The people who were moving into the house would almost every time say, "This is all the house I'm ever going to need. I'm not going to need any more than this. This is the greatest house"—all hyperbole.
The Cycle of Never Enough
So many of my friends are downsizing. The question, it seems to me, is why did I upsize? "Well, we had kids." Here's a revolutionary thought: you can put two in a bedroom. They don't need their own room. In fact, they're going to be more selfish, more socially maladjusted if they have their own room than if they're sharing a room. They're going to learn some social skills of negotiation.
Solomon says, "Listen, you got this house, and then you get this house, and then you get this house, and you're asking that house to make you happy, and it won't."
I'm talking to Sandy the other day, and we're driving down, and there's a billboard that says "Powerball, $403 million." I never bought a Powerball ticket. I don't know how to buy one. I assume you just—judging from the fact that a lot of people do it—I'm guessing I could figure it out. Like, "Give me a Powerball ticket."
But I said to Sandy, "If you won the Powerball, what would you do?" She said, "Well, I'm not going to win the Powerball. I'm not going to buy a ticket"—what my dad said. I said, "But if you won, what would you do?" She said, "You know, I might buy a condo in Coronado, because I know how big that is to you. But other than that, I don't think I'd do much different."
Now I don't know if that's true or not. I'm sure that would change things. But the fact she mentioned a condo in Coronado, I found myself saying, "If I had that, do you think that would make me happy?" And then if I had a condo in Coronado, it'd be on the third floor, but there's all those floors over me. So there's no end to that. It isn't going to end.
A Story from Jackson Hole
I know I told you the story of a friend of mine who was going to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I've never been, so I don't know anything about it. I guess it's beautiful. He phoned up and screened and found the realtor and said, "Check me out. I'm legitimate. Here's the stuff you need. Tell me what you need, because if I see something, I'm going to buy it and I want to move quickly and let's get it done."
So this is Him telling the story—short version. Walk into the first house, absolutely beautiful. The realtor says, "If you like it, you need to move kind of quickly. I've got a motivated seller, they're going through a divorce." Go into the second house, same story: motivated seller going through a divorce. Third house, He said, "We walk in." I don't know if you ever watched House Hunters, but if you watch House Hunters, you can recreate it. You can look out the front door and go, "Oh, wow, a million dollar view. Can you imagine waking up to that every morning?" It's the same discussion every time.
He said, "We walked in and this room is kind of a circular floor to ceiling glass looking at whatever the big mountain is"—He said, "absolutely breathtaking." And the guy said, "If you're interested, you better hurry up. I got a motivated seller, they're going through a divorce."
He said this became the illustration. He said, "I said to the realtor, 'Is there something in the water up here? What's with motivated seller going through a divorce?'"
And the realtor said, "Here's what happens. People typically have a lot of resources, meaning they have money, or they wouldn't be here. When they come here and they buy a house, the house they're buying is bought to make them happy. Once they move in, they realize they're moving all their problems in with them—meaning themselves."
So if you're an AA guy or gal, it's the geographical cure. "I'm unhappy in Dayton, I'll move to Cleveland." I mean, that makes me laugh to say it. "I'm in Cleveland, I'll get to Chicago. If I'm in Chicago, I'll get to Phoenix—it'll make me happy." When I first got here, there was a lot of that in Phoenix in '75. There were a lot of people moving in, and almost all were unhappy people who thought everything was going to get better here.
What Solomon is saying is, "I've been to Jackson Hole, and that's not going to solve your problem." He's not saying you're a bad man or woman if you want a house. He's just saying don't ask that house to do what only Jesus can do.
Trying Good Works and Social Contribution
So then Solomon goes, "Well, maybe I'm too selfish. I'm going to give back to the community." So he made gardens, verse 5, and parks, and he planted all kinds of fruit trees. He made ponds of water for himself from which to irrigate the forest of growing trees. He said, "I'm going to do all these public works. I'm in this desert—I'm going to make it rich and vibrant. I'm going to give back. I'm going to do social work, good work, charity work."
He said, "Well, that didn't make me happy."
Pursuing Wealth, Arts, and Pleasure
So maybe a little bit inward, he says in verse 7, "I bought male and female slaves, and I had home-born slaves. Also, I possessed flocks and herds larger than anyone who preceded me in Jerusalem. Also, I collected for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and province, and I provided for myself male and female singers and pleasures of men and many concubines." He said, "I'm going to try to satisfy myself through the accumulation of stuff and the arts and the music."
Let me read you verses 6, 7, and 8 from The Message. It's a paraphrase by Eugene Peterson: "I made pools of water to irrigate the groves of trees. I bought slaves, male and female, who had children, giving me even more slaves. Then I acquired large herds and flocks, larger than anybody before me in Jerusalem. I piled up silver and gold, loot from kings and kingdoms. I gathered a chorus of singers to entertain me with song, and the most exquisite of all pleasures, voluptuous maidens for my bed."
Solomon said, "I decided now I'm going to pursue big bucks, pleasure, arts. I'm going to get musicians."
A Personal Illustration About Music and Entertainment
I don't know who yours would be. Last Sunday at 3 o'clock—I don't know where you were—I was at the Chandler Performing Arts Center for the Glenn Miller Orchestra. My birthday's in November, and last November my daughters, with enough foresight, said, "What's something Dad would really enjoy? Well, he's going to enjoy Glenn Miller."
This is way more history than you want, but I feel compelled to give it to you. After Glenn Miller died, the family formed the Glenn Miller Orchestra. All of the arrangements of that band that was organized in 1956—the band still exists, obviously with different musicians. The first date I ever had in my life, my mom took me to see the Glenn Miller Orchestra and Phyllis Diller.
So we walked in there the other day, and it was like the same bandstands were up there. They came out and sat down—it was 17 pieces with a piano, and all the different saxes (I'm not sophisticated enough to know all the differences), and the different trumpets. Every arrangement sounded like the records. I'm waiting, and everybody in there's waiting for one song—everybody's waiting for "In the Mood."
When they got to that, I mean, there's a bunch of old people. I sat down and said to my daughter (and I can't hear), "Look at how old these people are." She said, "Dad, shh." I said, "I'll bet you five bucks we don't get through this without calling an ambulance." She said, "Everybody can hear you." I said, "There's no way they can hear me—I can't hear myself."
For two hours, it was like you were back in time. I couldn't see Glenn Miller, but I could see Jimmy Stewart leading the band and June Allison dancing. I counted six guys who wore their army uniforms. It was absolutely the coolest thing. But when it was over, it was over. It transported me, but it didn't make me happy.
The Limitation of Cultural Pursuits
What Solomon said is, "I'm going from thing to thing to thing to thing to thing, and it's not working."
One of the things I can't stand is somebody that moves out from New York or Chicago or Boston and says, "I moved down here, but you people don't have any culture out here." I'm going to say, "We got even less now that you're here. Go back. Go back there. Go back to the East, wherever you're from."
But the classiest, most cultured people maybe of all time were in Nazi Germany, drinking the finest brandies and wines, and then executing Jews systematically all day. There's nothing wrong with music—it's great. He mentioned sex—there's nothing wrong with that. It's great. But it's only going to take you so far.
Solomon's Final Assessment
Now he starts to focus on some of the futility of it all. He says in verse 11, a little bit of a summary: "Thus I considered all my activities which my hands had done and the labor which I had exerted, and behold, all was vanity and striving after the wind, and there was no profit under the sun."
There's that conclusion. The "thus." I thought about it all. I thought about the striving for pleasure, the striving for business. I thought about the political success. I thought about the business success. I thought about the arts. I thought about all these things. At the end of the day, there's nothing left.
Do you get the phrase "under the sun"? Horizontally. He was a man who had amassed great wisdom.
I turned to consider wisdom, and madness, and folly. For what will a man do who will come after the king except what has already been done? I saw wisdom excels folly, as light excels darkness.
Solomon was a wise man. We're told in 1 Kings 10:1 that the queen of Sheba came to visit him and was astounded at his wisdom. And he said here's something really weird: the more wisdom I got—let's define wisdom in kind of a utilitarian way as the ability to connect the dots, the ability to see life as it really is—the wiser I got, the more I realized that life apart from God is meaningless. I can't take it with me.
Another Conclusion: The Futility of Leaving Everything Behind
Verse 18: "Another conclusion, Thus I hated all the fruit of my labor for which I labored under the sun, for I must leave it to the man who will come after me. And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool, yet he will have control over all the fruit of my labor for which I've labored by acting wisely under the sun. This is foolish."
He said, here you go. Let's say I acquire and accumulate and preserve. When it's done, I'm leaving it and I don't know what's going to come after me.
Every once in a while, I'll watch a show on PBS, and I'll go, "This is really messed up." A lot of it's really good, by the way—I'm not a PBS basher. A lot of it's really good. But it'll be some show, and then it'll say, "Sponsored by the Ford Foundation." I'm thinking, Ford would not be a happy dude if he knew he was funding this thing. Think about leaving it.
Sandy and I have been married—it'll be five years this May. Before we got married, we did not do premarital counseling, which probably was a little bit of "I don't think I need this," but fundamentally, probably should have done it. But we accidentally got premarital counseling. We went in to write our will and deal with our estate because we had a guy that was really good, and he asked a lot of really hard questions.
So, Sandy, you have a daughter. What kind of relationship do you have with her? What kind of relationship will she have with Tom in the event of your demise—which is a euphemism, not "in the event of it," it's coming. How do you want to disperse that? You want to treat her like you treat Sarah and Haley? Do you want to take what you have—which is not a ton, but it's a lot—do you want to leave it to them and let it go from there?
I've always had kind of this fundamental conviction. Assuming now—I mean, I'm getting up there, my girls are mid-30s—if when I die, my girls are 45, if they need my money, then the last thing I probably ought to give them is my money. Because there's some reason by 45 you don't have this figured out. But it doesn't matter. You're going to leave it to them. And just what he's saying, you got no idea.
Everything Stays Behind
At the end of the day, that's it. At the end of the day, you're going to sit down and everything you have is going to stay. Every dime, every house, every asset, every Mickey Mantle baseball card, every car, every trophy.
It's interesting—I keep mentioning to you, Sue Wright is very sick, and she's had a stroke, and the rehab on that, as many of you know, is really hard. If you're strong-willed, maybe, but you have to be strong. And Sue doesn't want to. Since Larry died, when you see Sue, you'll say, "Sue, how you doing?" And she'll go, "I just want to go be with Larry."
I visit her, and she's in bed, and the conversation inevitably is about faith, and family, and friends. It's inevitably about that. So if that's where it's going to end up, Solomon's saying, understand that. Know that. A fortune that you amass isn't going to satisfy you.
Testimonies from the Rich and Miserable
Here you go, listen to these wise, rich men. W. H. Vanderbilt said, "The care of 200 million dollars is enough to kill anyone. There's no pleasure in it." John Jacob Astor: "I'm the most miserable man on earth." John D. Rockefeller: "I have made many millions, but they have brought me no happiness." Andrew Carnegie: "Millionaires seldom smile." That's a great line. That goes with my old saying, you never see a bumper sticker on a Mercedes. I don't know what that means, you just never do. Henry Ford: "I was happier when doing a mechanic's job."
Those are five great quotes. I had two guys yesterday email me and say, "Will you send me a copy of those quotes?" And I emailed back and said, "I don't know how to do that, I'll give you a hard copy next week."
But here's what I know. When you hear those quotes, here's what you think: "I'm the exception. I'll bet I could care for 200 million dollars." I don't know what you need. You got Solomon and Vanderbilt and Astor and Rockefeller and Ford and Carnegie, and they're all telling you the same thing.
Human Nature and the Addiction to More
Human nature is such that says, "If I have that, I'll be happy."
I want to say 10 or 15 years ago, Bill O'Reilly had kind of popped on the scene, and the O'Reilly Factor was just kicking off, and now it's been number one in cable for however many years. So he did what you do when you burst on the scene—he wrote a book, and somebody thought I needed to read the book, so they gave me a copy of the book. I scanned it, and he came from humble means. He was a high school teacher. I think Harvard, so he was educated.
In this book, in the middle of it—I had to go to page 172 to find the quote—he wrote this short paragraph: "Here's something that really surprises me. The more stuff I have, the more stuff I want. And so I looked around and saw that everyone else was the same. It was not until I had a few things that I noticed how this works. The material stuff is addicting."
I'm starting to feel better. And the same thing happened to me last year. I really feel—I honestly do—I'm there. I'm getting close. And I watch the golf channel—it's the dumbest thing in the world—and I'm going, "You know what? I need a new driver." Now understand, I've played 12 holes in five years. So equipment's probably not going to be my problem.
I'm guessing I've got bigger problems than that. But if I just get that driver. Here's the new golf ball. Everybody's playing. It gives me five more yards.
There was a golf magazine—golf digest, something golf—and I'm going to mess this up. I should have bought the magazine. I didn't. I was in a hurry. But this was the lead story: "Change your game in eight seconds." I've been at golf a while. You're not going to change it in eight seconds. You're not going to change anything in eight seconds other than a heart that moves from stone to flesh.
The Endless Pursuit of Perfect Solutions
Give me that house. I still go to Barnes and Noble because I love the vibe of a bookstore. I hang out and the magazine racks are as big as this side of the room. And they're endless. This house, this architecture, this golf, this car, this beauty. Get this tucked and that pulled and this moved around.
What Solomon is saying is, it isn't going to happen. Solomon said, you're not going to find it. Solomon says it and says it. Let me remind you, not as a jealous loser who never got there, but a guy who's at the top of His game. A guy who said, listen, I'm all for it. Knock yourself out, buddy. Build the house, get the car, get the job, get the girl, get the other girl.
The Statistics Don't Lie
I love this statistically. I think this is one of those great statistics because you don't have to make it up. It's the Bureau of Census. Second marriages fail at a higher rate than first marriages. Third marriages higher than second. Fourth, higher than third. Fifth, higher than fourth. Sixth, higher than fifth. And then you're Larry King after that. I don't know what you do after that.
My point is, it fleshes out what we're saying. If I get rid of her, I'll get a new her. I go through this with guys all the time. The 2017 models are out, guys. And they look really good. But you're not going to get much for your trade in. And it's going to cost you a lot. And when you get it home, you're going to take it for a spin. And you're going to go to Panera to get a salad. And they're going to ding that door. And all life starts all over again.
The True Answer
The end of this is not despair and hopelessness. The end of this is, even in this world, I can find meaning and purpose, not in a person, place or thing other than Jesus. That's the only thing that's going to satisfy me.
Next week, more of the same. But it'll feel better.
Father, thank You for that awesome truth. We know it. We know it. We're looking at it and say, we know that's true. God, drill it deep into our heart and our mind. Help us see the world as You see it. And then live our life accordingly. We pray that to You in Christ's name. Amen.