Ecclesiastes 2:1-11 I said in my heart, Go to now, I will prove you with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure: and, behold, this also is vanity.… We have to consider - I. THE CONSTANT QUESTION OF THE HUMAN HEART. In what shall we find the good which will make our life precious to us? What is there that will meet the cravings of the human heart, and cover our whole life with the sunshine of success and of contentment? II. A VERY NATURAL RESORT. We have recourse to some kind of excitement. It may be that which acts upon the senses (vers. 3, 8). Or it may be that which gratifies the mind; the sense of possession and of power (vers. 7-9). Or it may be found in agreeable and inviting activities (vers. 4-6). III. ITS TEMPORARY SUCCESS. "My heart rejoiced" (ver. 10). It would be simply false to contend that there is no delight, no satisfaction, in these sources of good. There is, for a while. There is a space during which they fill the heart as the wine fills the cup into which it is poured. The heart rejoices; it utters its joy in song; it declares itself to be completely happy. It "sits in the sun;" it rolls the sweet morsel between its teeth. It flatters itself that it has found its fortune, while the angels of God weep over its present folly and its coming doom. IV. ITS ACTUAL AND UTTER INSUFFICIENCY. (Ver. 11.) Pleasure may be coarse and condemnable; it may go down to fleshly gratifications (vers. 3, 8); it may be refined and chaste, may expend itself in designs and executions; it may be moderated and regulated with the finest calculation, so as to have the largest measure spread over the longest possible period; it may "guide itself with wisdom" (ver. 3). But it will be a failure; it will break down; it will end in a dreary exclamation of "Vanity!" Three things condemn it as a solution of the great quest after human good. 1. Experience. This proves, always and everywhere, that the deliberate and systematic pursuit of pleasure fails to secure its end. Pleasure is not a harvest, to be sedulously sown and reaped; it is a plant that grows, unsought and uncultivated, all along the path of duty and of service. To seek it and to labor for it is to miss it. All human experience shows that it soon palls upon the taste, that it fades fast in the hands of its devotee; that there is no company of men so utterly weary and so wretched as the tired hunters after pleasurable excitement. 2. Philosophy. This teaches us that a being made for something so much higher than pleasure can never be satisfied with anything so low; surely we cannot expect that the heart which is capable of worship, of service, of holy love, of heroic consecration, of spiritual nobility, will be filled and satisfied with "the delights of the sons of men." 3. Religion. For this introduces the sovereign claims of the Supreme One; it places man in the presence of God; it shows a life of frivolity to be a life of culpable selfishness, of sin, of shame. It summons to a purer and a wiser search, to a worthier and a nobler course; it promises the peace which waits on rectitude; it offers the joy which only God can give, and which no man can take away. - C. Parallel Verses KJV: I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure: and, behold, this also is vanity. |
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