Let the Good Times Roll

But I wonder if this is what we're doing with our little rose bushes and our lawns and our gardens, if this is all just sort of a faint echo of what God the Creator has implanted in our hearts that gives us a longing for that to return, a longing for that home we lost, a longing for the redemption of creation, we're told, where we will be, in fact, inheriting a new heavens and a new earth. Have you ever wondered if pleasure and wealth bring true happiness? King Solomon had everything, unimaginable wealth, endless parties, lavish projects, and unrivaled power.

Yet Solomon called his pursuits empty and meaningless. We'll explore why possessions and indulgences left him unsatisfied. Find out how his journey speaks to today's chase for success and why ultimate joy is found somewhere deeper. Keep listening as Stephen unravels the lessons from one of history's richest kings. I came across a song that I think is apropos for the ages. It sort of guides our world, whether it's the lifestyles of the rich and famous, successful business and world leaders, best-selling authors, award-winning musicians, whatever. It's also a set of lyrics that I think fits the average guy on the street who is trying to make a living and is looking for a break.

In fact, he's looking forward to the weekend when he can take a break. It would be the same song for them all. It seems to describe the pursuit of the human race.

It's made famous by an artist by the name of B.B. King, who belted out the lyrics that go like this, hey, everybody, let's have some fun. You only live but once, and when you're dead, you're done. So let the good times what? Roll.

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've got to go out and spend some cash. And let the good times roll. Let the good times roll. I can't think of anybody better suited for those lyrics than the person we're discovering together in our study of his autobiography. King Solomon is living the lyrics. Let me have you go back to that book.

We call it Ecclesiastes. He's enjoying one party after another. He has plenty of cash to finance it all. Truth is, he really didn't earn a paycheck, but if he lived today, you can think of it this way, his debit card would have been directly linked to Fort Knox.

It was never declined for insufficient funds. He never arrived at that place, one guy was telling after the earlier service, the old man who was revising his will, who wrote, I, being of sound mind, spend it all. Well, Solomon never spent it all, and the good times seemed to roll for him.

This would be his theme. In fact, you could write at the heading of chapter two, we call it, let the good times roll, because that's what he's going to describe. Now, 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 as chapter two opens, don't read ahead yet, let me give you basically the main question he's going to be asking in this chapter. He's 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 own? What can I accomplish so that I can be happy in life? And he begins by telling us about some opening decisions he made to try to experiment with just the right formula to find happiness. Notice verse one, I said in my heart, he's talking to himself, come now, I will test you with pleasure, enjoy yourself. But behold, this also was vanity. So I said of laughter, that is, I tried that.

I said, it is madness. And of pleasure, what use is it? Now with these opening decisions, Solomon is putting some things to the test to experiment if they're going to give him, you know, that opportunity to say, well, you know what, the good times are rolling and they're really rolling and they're not stopping. He tried wisdom. Remember in chapter one, if you were with us, he tried being a scholar, he tried being an explorer, he turned over every rock, he looked everywhere, but he said, you know, the more I learned, the more it increased my sorrow. With knowledge came sorrow. The more I learned about life, the more trouble it gave me.

So now in chapter two, he makes a shift. He says, I'm going to try entertainment. In fact, literally, laughter. You could understand this Hebrew expression as comedy.

I'm going to try comedy. We don't know how he did it or what he did, but he probably brought in the best standups in the kingdom, jesters, whatever, the show, and they're going to make him laugh. So he's laughing. He's enjoying it. Why be studious?

Why be serious all your life? You notice in this text, he concludes that laughter, comedy, is madness. That word carries with it the nuance of moral perversity.

In other words, most of the comedy in Solomon's day hasn't changed. It is the comedy of our day. Most of it is morally risque.

Most of it is off-color. It's dirty. It's hard to find clean comedy.

So it was here. He just sort of surrounded himself with a comedy of the day, and it was really risque. It was dirty. It made him only feel a little dirtier after the laughter ended.

None of it, he concludes, really helped him 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. And how to lay hold on folly till I might see what was good for the children of Adam or the children of man to do under heaven during the few days of their life. I mean, hey, once you're dead and over, it's done.

We only have a few days to live. A little buzz perhaps might help a roll along. Alistair Begg writes on this particular text that Solomon leads the comedy club then heads for the bar. He's searching. Maybe I'll find it in that bottle or that glass. He turns, like many people, to some kind of substance to essentially numb the pain of an empty life.

Maybe that'll help. So he tries comedy. He tries laughter.

He tries the best stand-ups in the community. Now, by the way, there's nothing wrong with fun. There's nothing wrong with laughing for the right thing. In fact, Solomon will say it's good medicine.

It's good medicine. I enjoy hearing you laugh. I love being able to laugh. Sometimes I'll throw in something that I think might make you laugh. And you'd laugh more if you had a better sense of humor.

But at any rate, we do know this. Comedy can entertain us, but it can't free us. It can't heal us.

It can't redeem us. And whether the comedy is clean or not, either way, the show eventually is over and you're driving home and you realize, you know, life isn't really a laughing matter. Solomon is looking at all the wrong places to find happiness, and so he concludes with these opening decisions that they're not working. So what Solomon does next is catalog what we'll 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 4, I made great works. I built houses and I planted vineyards for myself. Key phrase, for myself, I made gardens and parks and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees.

I made myself and for myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees. Southwest of Jerusalem, a place seldom visited by tourists are to this day huge depressions in the earth still referred to as the pools of Solomon which he used to water his private gardens. By the way, I find it fascinating that Solomon chooses words here directly from Genesis chapter 2, the same Hebrew words for make, plant, 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.

Persian word for it was paradise. And they lost it all because of sin. And by the way, don't think for a moment that just because Adam and Eve were forgiven that they ever forgot for one moment what that garden had been like. But I wonder if this is what we're doing with our little rose bushes and our lawns and our gardens, if this is all just sort of a faint echo of what God the Creator has implanted in our hearts that gives us a longing for that to return, a longing for that home we lost, a longing for the redemption of creation we're told where we will be in fact inheriting a new heavens and a new earth.

Maybe we're just dabbling and enjoying something that we're going to see in such spectacular array one day. Now keep in mind as well that what Solomon is doing here is for himself. He's not sharing paradise. These great works where he says, I made great works, these great works are not public works. 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, in this passage, and I underlined and circled them because it struck me early on, Solomon uses the word me four times. He uses the word myself four times. He uses the word my 13 times. And he uses the word I 18 times.

39 times he lets us know, yeah, the good times are rolling, but it's all for me, myself, and mine. You know, if he were talking like that in the third grade, we'd make him stand in the corner, wouldn't we? And you wouldn't want to play with him on the playground.

Those are his toys and he'd tell you that. In fact, that's his playground. That's his neighborhood. That's his state. That's his city. That's his country.

That's his world. He isn't sharing any of it. He isn't sharing the credit or the glory because people wrapped up in themselves don't share. In fact, he's sharing none of this glory with even God. These are his decisions.

These are his obsessions. Now Solomon lists what we'll call his royal possessions. Look at verse 7. I bought male and female slaves, household servants. Slaves were even born in my house.

Just kept multiplying. Other passages, by the way, like 1 Kings 5 tell us that Solomon had an additional 30,000 active Jewish men and women to work on his building projects. He had this incredibly huge workforce building these projects, managing his daily operations, manicuring those lawns and gardens and waiting on him hand and foot. You might wonder, you know, what's he going to feed all his workers? Back at verse 7 again, I had also great possessions of herds and flocks more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. 1 Kings 4 again informs us how much food Solomon prepared every single day to feed his government workers, his household staff, his farming staff and his leaders. Listen to this, 1 Kings 4 verse 22. Solomon's provision for one day, one day was 180 bushels of fine flour, 360 bushels of meal, 10 fat oxen and 20 pasture fed cattle.

Did you catch that? Pasture fed. That's grass fed beef.

You got to go to Trader Joe's and spend more money to get grass fed beef. Well, that's exactly what he's doing here. I mean, this is the best of the best.

They have been given no hormones, no antibiotics. These are happy cows. Solomon is feeding his workforce the best. That's not all. He's prepared each day now, the text goes on to say 100 sheep besides deer, gazelles, robuck and fattened fowl.

They've been raised and fattened. Now, where's he getting all his money? Verse 8, I gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. That is, I'm 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, if I read further, in today's economy, he's bringing into his kingdom $1.8 billion every year. He says, I had enough money, I bought the choir.

Notice I got singers, both men and women, many concubines, hundreds of them, the delight of the sons of man and 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. This is how he's funding all of his projects, his palace, his palaces and a thousand women. In fact, the taxation upon his people is so burdensome and the conscripted labor is so heavy that when his son takes the throne, they beg him to please give people relief and his son says, you haven't seen anything yet and the kingdom splits and never unifies again for struggling under this selfish man who is all about himself, but it would have been staggering to the imagination. This is the man surely where the good times keep rolling along. If he led 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, the gorgeous costumes of his attendants 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 $25 million a day. It all belongs to him and every night on those mosaic courtyards, there's another concert and another party and the choir which he purchased is singing something like come on everybody, let's have some fun. You only live at once and when you're done, when you're dead, you're done, so let the good times roll. He delivers his personal decisions, his lifelong obsessions. He recounts for us his royal possessions and now he offers up for us in verse 9 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. Well, that would be a reference to David is dead. This is sort of a little dig.

Hey, you thought my dad was great, I topped him. Also, my wisdom remained with me, that is I kept my wits about me. Whatever 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 designed this.

I planned this. Since I had money to burn, if something looked good, can't be bad, so I bought it. If something tasted good, well, it couldn't be wrong, so I ordered it.

If something seemed pleasant or pleasurable, it can't be harmful, so I had it. And by the way, I deserved it. This is my reward. This is my reward.

So if you think the good times are rolling too high for me, you need to know I deserve all of this, every bit of it. And now Solomon says to himself, okay, now that I'm alone and the bands wound down and the harems asleep and the star-studded crowd's gone, why am I still empty? And with that he makes an honest confession in verse 11. Notice. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, look, look, all was vanity and a 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 facts.

You could even woodenly translate it 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 eye. Here I am at the end of my life, and I'm going to face up to reality. And here's what it amounted to.

We've studied these phrases before, but he just piles them all into one verse. It's all vanity, futility. It's meaninglessness. It's striving after wind. That's like trying to catch happiness, like catching wind with a net.

You can't do it. 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's nothing really gained. Remember the difference between walking through life under the sun and walking through life alongside the sun, S-O-N. He started out this chapter determined to enjoy his life. He fast forwards the tape and he says, you know when I face up to reality, no matter what I've accomplished or what I've possessed, enjoyment never lasted much longer than that concert or that buzz or that possession or that building project.

Everything I had, I honestly totaled it all up, and it equaled one big fat zero. See, without God, the pursuit of your desires will not lead you to the destination you really want. In fact, according to the Bible, we've all been given the wrong ticket, and we're all 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't imagine what that all was like that he had, but he gave all that he had away. 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 did he do? Paul Wright, 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, you might become rich spiritually now, physically, economically. One day, like we cannot imagine, the problem with the human heart, like Solomon, is that we're 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 thee.

I love that. Our hearts are restless, unsatisfied, until they find their rest in thee. And 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, and you choose to walk down here under the sun, alongside the sun, S-O-N, your heart finds what it's missing. And by the way, in regards to the context of this chapter, your destination also changes.

Let me tell you just for a moment about that destination. Here's an angelic choir that will never stop singing. The concert is never over. There are palace grounds where gold is so common, it's asphalt. We can't imagine gemstones as foundation stones. We can't imagine gardens that will bloom in the new earth as God recreates paradise. We can't imagine the celebration that never ends. We can't imagine perfected, glorified bodies and holiness, the sin nature forever gone, and life which will never again ever be boring or tedious or difficult or painful or troublesome or sinful. Let the good times roll. You better believe it. They're going to roll and roll on and roll on and never end.

That was Steven Davey and this is Wisdom for the Heart. Today's message is called, Let the good times roll. Only God brings lasting joy.

Seek Him and your heart will find true rest and purpose. We've got a tool that can transform how you explore the Bible. If you've ever wondered about something in the Bible, we have a resource to help you. It searches Steven's teachings instantly and gives you a trusted biblical answer. Whether your question is big or small, theological or practical, our tool provides answers in seconds. Visit wisdomonline.org forward slash ask or click the blue icon on any page. Thanks for joining us today. Come back next time to discover more from Ecclesiastes and develop wisdom for your heart.