Let the Good Times Roll - Ecclesiastes 2:1-11

I wonder if this is what were doing with our little rosebushes in our lawn and are gardens if if this is all just sort of afraid.

What God, the creator is that in our hearts that gives us a longing for that to return a longing for that will lost a longing for the redemption of creation were told where we will be back inheriting a new heavens and a newer live with the realization that there's something about this world that leaves us unsatisfied as a young man. King Solomon pursued knowledge, but he quickly realized that knowledge didn't bring meaning to his life. He decided instead to pursue pleasure and entertainment that didn't work either. And then he turned to the pursuit of possessions and that also failed all of us will be restless until we find our rest in God. This is wisdom for the heart and today Stephen Davey is going to explain all of this in the lesson that he's calling. Let the good times roll came across a song that I think is apropos for the ages, sorta guides our world. Whether it's the lifestyles of the rich and famous, successful business world leaders, best-selling authors, award-winning musicians, whatever is also a set of lyrics that I think for the average guy on the street who try to make a living in looking for a break. Fact is looking forward to the weekend when he can take a break.

It would be the same song for them all. Seems to describe the pursuit of the human race is made famous by an artist by David BB King who belted out the lyrics that go like this. Everybody let's have some fun.

You only live once. And when your dad done so let the good times what role I don't care if you're young or old get together and let the good times roll. Don't sit there mumbling and talking trash. If you want to have a ball. You gotta go out and spend some cash and let the good times roll with the good times roll. I can't think of anybody better suited for those lyrics. Then the person were discovering together in our study of his autobiography, King Solomon is living the lyrics. Lily had to go back to that book we call it Ecclesiastes. He's enjoying one party after another.

Yes, plenty of cash to finance it all to dizzy you really did earn a paycheck but it delivered today this way is debit card would've been directly owing to Fort Knox. It was never declined for insufficient funds. You never arrived at that place. One guy was selling out of the earlier service old man was revising as well the road I being of sound mind, spend it all well. Solomon never spent all and the good times seemed a role for him. This would be a theme in practicum you can write the heading of chapter 2 we call it let the good times roll because that's what is going to describe the Solomon has been introducing us and will in this chapter to what we could call a rather star studded life, but he's been dropping hints all along the way that as exciting as it seems to be nothing seems to last now is chapter 2 opens I don't really have yet to give you basically the main question he's going to be asking in this chapter is going to ask it and try to answer it.

A number of different ways, and the question is basically this, how can I find happiness. What can I do what can I have known what to accomplish, so that I can find so that I can be happy in life and begins by telling us about some opening decisions he made to try to experiment with just the right formula to find happiness. Notice first one I said in my heart is talking to himself, now I will test you with pleasure. Enjoy yourself.

But behold, this also is vanity so I sent of laughter. That is, I tried that I said it is madness and of pleasure, what use is it that with these opening decisions. Solomon is putting some things to the test to experiment if they're going to give them you know that opportunity to say you know what the good times roll. Another really rolling and they're not stop. He tried wisdom. Remember in chapter 1. If you're with us.

He tried being a scholarly drive being at Explorer be turned over every rock. He looked everywhere but he said you know the more I learn more and increase my sorrow with knowledge came sorrow the more I learned about life warts probably gave me. So now in chapter 2 he makes a shift.

He said something to try entertainment that literally laughter you can understand this Hebrew expression as comedy. I'm try comedy. We don't know how he didn't want it. It probably brought in the best standups in the kingdom jesters whatever show and make them laugh so is laughing.

He's enjoying it might be studious. Why be serious all your life you notice in this text. He concludes the laughter comedy is madness that word carries with it the nuance of moral perversity. Another works most of the comedy in Solomon's day hasn't changed. It is the comedy of our day. Most of it is morally risqué.

Most of it is off-color. It's it's dirty, it's hard to find clean comedy so was here a disorder surrounded himself with a comedy of the day and it was really risqué was dirty and made of only feel a little dirtier after the laughter ended.

None of it includes really help them find any lasting happiness in life, so he says well here's what I did next. Verse three I searched with my heart how to cheer my body with wine. My heart still guiding me with wisdom that's earthly wisdom. Now hold on folly, till I might see what was good for the children of Adam were the children of man to do under heaven during the few days of their life. I mean hey you know what's it's what your dad over it's done will have a few days to live little bottles. Perhaps my couple roll along Alastair Beck writes on this particular taxes.

Solomon leaves the comedy club and heads for the bar he searching. Maybe I'll find that bottle or that glassy terms like many people is some kind of substance to essentially numb the pain of an empty life. Maybe that'll help. So he tries comedy drives, laughter drives the best standups in the community by knowing there's another with finding there's nothing wrong with laughing for the right thing. In fact, Solomon will say it's good medicine. Good medicine. I enjoy hearing you laugh. I love being able laugh sometimes I throw in something that I think might make you laugh and laugh more.

Get a better sense of humor, but at any rate, we do know this comedy can can entertain us, but it can't free us. It can heal us. It can't redeem us, and whether the comedy is cleaner not. Either way, Sean actually is over and and you're driving here realizing I want to visit really a laughing matter. Solomon is looking all around places to find happiness and so he concludes with these opening decisions that are not working.

So what Solomon does nexus catalog will will call his lifelong obsessions in the next three verses he's going to condense 40 years of his career as King. Keep that in mind, verse four, I made great works. I build houses and I planted vineyards for myself.

Key phrase for myself. I made gardens and parks implanted in them all kinds of fruit trees. I made myself and for myself pools from which the water.

The forest of growing trees southwest of Jerusalem place seldom visited by tourists are to this day.

Huge depressions in the earth still referred to as the pools of Solomon which you use the water in his private garden. By the way, I find it fascinating that Solomon chooses words here directly from Genesis chapter 2 same Hebrew words for make plants water and garden. They come out of the creation account of the garden of Eden. This was the garden that Adam and Eve called home. It was literally a paradise person word for it was paradise and they lost it all because of sin and bio I don't think for a moment just because Adam and Eve were forgiven that they ever forgot for one moment what that guard had been like, but I wonder if this is what were doing with our little rosebushes and our lawns and are gardens if if this is all just sort of afraid echo what God the Creator is implanted in our hearts that gives us a longing for that to return a longing for that will lost a longing for the redemption of creation were told where we will be in fact inheriting a new heavens and a new earth maybe were just dabbling and enjoying something that were going to see such spectacular array one day to keep in mind as well that what Solomon is doing here is for himself. He's not sharing paradise. These great works as I made great work these great works are not public.

He writes in verse four. Again, I build houses and planted vineyards for myself. They were for myself. I made them for me. By the way, and in this passage in and I underlined and circled because it struck me early on, Solomon uses the word to me four times he uses the word myself four times he uses the word my 13 times and he uses the word. I 18×39 times. He lets us know yet the good times in Rutland but it's all for being my cell and my you know if he were talking like that in the third grade would make him stand in the corner Woodley and he would want to play with him on the playground, those are his toys and he tell you that fact that since playground that's his neighborhood. That's his state the two cities that this country that's his world is in sharing any of his in sharing the credit or the glory because people wrapped up in themselves. Don't share 50 sharing. None of this glory with even God. These are just decisions.

These are his obsessions that Solomon lists what will call his royal possession of or seven I bought mail when female slaves. Household servants, slaves were even born in my house is Multiple other passages. By the way, like first Kings chapter 5 tell us that Solomon had an additional 30,000 drafted Jewish men and women to work on his building projects he had this incredibly huge workforce. Building these projects. Managing his daily operations of manicuring those laws and gardens and waiting on him hand and foot, you might wonder you know what you going to feed all his workers back in verse seven and I had also great possessions of herds and flocks more than any he would bend before me in Jerusalem, first Kings chapter 4 again informs us how much food Solomon prepared every single day to feed his government workers, is household status, farming, staff, and his leaders listen to this. First Kings chapter 4 were 22 salads provision for one day.

One day was 180 bushels of fine flour 360 bushels of meal 10 fat oxen and 20 pastor said cattle to get jet pastor for that grass fed beef you got to go to Trader Joe's and spend more money to get grass fed people. That's exactly what he's doing here.

This is the best of the best I have been given hormones. No antibiotics. These are happy counts. Solomon is feeding is workforce the best.

That's not always prepared each day now the text goes on to say hundred. She sighed dear gazelles robot and fattened found and raised in fact, nowhere is he getting all his money. Verse eight.

I gather for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces that is getting all this tribute from these nations. I have subjugated around me. It's coming in on ships. It's pouring into the kingdom.

According to biblical accounts. By the way I read further in today's economy, he's bringing into his kingdom. $1.8 billion every year. He says III money.

I bought the choir notice I got singers, both men and women. Many concubines hundreds of the delight of his sons of man, hinting at that again is for those who are living down here chasing after the wind. This is how Solomon is funding his party machine since Allie's funding all of his projects is powerless. This palace and the thousand women. In fact, the taxation upon his people is so burdensome and the conscripted labor is so happy that when his son takes the throne they go to please give people relief and his son says you haven't seen anything yet the kingdom splits never unifies again struggling under the selfish man who is all about himself, but he would have been staggering to the imagination.

This is the man surely where the good times keep rolling. If you lead us toward his palace, we would have been staggered to see this golden age of Israel's history laid out in marble and gold mosaic, precious stones from Africa spices from Arabia ivory from India Cedar closets and ceilings from Lebanon gorgeous costumes of his attendance and his servants the like of which the Queen of Sheba came to visit and she says it took her breath away. Solomon has the ability and it seems like he's doing it. He is in today's economy.

Spending $5 million a day.

It all belongs to him and every night on those mosaic courtyards, there's another concert and another party in the choir, which he purchased and singing something like come on everybody, let's have some fun.

You only limit once and when you're done when you're dead, you're done so that the good time will he delivers his personal decisions is a lifelong obsessions. He recounts versus Royal possessions. Now he offers up for us in verse nine, his selfish rationalization notice.

So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem, by the way, that's the second time you've read that phrase I had more I did more than anybody else before me in Jerusalem.

What I would be a reference to David is dead. This is sort of a little dictate.

You thought my dad was great. I talked also my wisdom remained with me that as I kept my wits about me whenever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure for my heart found pleasure in all my toil note this and this was my reward. I'm entitled to this. This is my reward. I worked hard I design I planned this desired money to burn. If something looks good to be bad so I bought it something tasted good well could be wrong.

So I ordered something seem pleasant or pleasurable and can't be harmful. So I had and by the way I deserved it. This is my reward.

This is my reward. So if you think the good times are rolling to live for me. You need to know I deserve all of this, every bit of now Solomon says to himself, okay, now that I'm alone in the bands wound down in her sleep and star-studded crops grown. Why am I still in and with that he makes an honest confession, verse 11. Notice that I considered all that my hands had done in the toil I had expended in doing it in the hole look look all was vanity and striving after wind and there was nothing to be gained under the sun. Then I considered that Hebrew verb translated to consider means I faced up to it. I faced the fact you could even Woodley translated to look someone in the eye. Solomon says so what I did is I stopped and I faced the facts. I looked at my life in the high here I am at the end of my life to face up to reality to we study these phrases before, but he just piles the mall and the one versatile vanity utility. It's it's meaninglessness it's it's striving after awareness like try to catch Leaders like catching wind within that camp. Doing nothing is gained under the sun.

With that perspective, never acknowledging the creator of the sun when you're stuck down here under the sun. There is nothing really changed. Remember the difference between walking through life under the sun and walking through life alongside the sun, SO, he started out this chapter. Determined to enjoy his life and fast-forward the tape and he says you know what I face up to reality, no matter what I've accomplished what I possessed in enjoyment never lasted much longer than that concert or that buzz for that possession were that building project everything I had. I honestly told it all up and it equal one big fat 0C without God. The pursuit of your desires will not lead you to the destination you really want fact, according to the Bible we all been given the wrong ticket and raw heading to the wrong destination, but fortunately it occurs to me we have in the Bible the biography of another king, King Jesus, who had it all and we can imagine what that all was like that he had, but he gave all that he had a way he gave everything he had the right to keep to give us a right we did not deserve to have for as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God. What he there all right you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, our king Jesus, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty might become rich spiritually. Now physically, economically one day like we cannot imagine.

The problem with the human heart. Like Solomon's that were chasing after things we can see and our deepest need, and our greatest source of joy is not in what we can see it is not visible. It is found in one who is invisible. Augustine wrote centuries ago, our hearts are restless until they find their rest in the love that our hearts are restless, unsatisfied till they find their rest in the when you come to him by faith. When you place your life in his hands.

When you acknowledge the creator who reigns above the sun you choose to walk down here under the sun alongside the sun, and so in your heart finds what it's missing. By the way, in regards to the context of this chapter, your destination also changes only tell you it just for a moment about that destination.

There is there's an angelic choir that will never stop singing concert is never over. There are palace grounds were golden so common it's asphalt we can imagine gemstones as foundations we we can imagine garden that will bloom and the new earth. As God re-creates paradigms we can imagine the celebration that never ends. We can imagine perfected, glorified bodies and holiness. The sin nature forever gone and the life which will never again, ever be boring or tedious or difficult or painful, or troublesome, but the good times roll better believe it. Roll and roll-on never