A television commercial I saw recently portrays a man in a car talking on his cell phone — with the devil. The man and the Devil banter back and forth, the Devil offering the man riches and power and so on. But the smiling driver refuses each of these offers as he accelerates around a mountainous curve. Admiring his car, he says, “I have all that” and hangs up. We now understand what the ad is selling. But I wonder if it is also, not so subtly, selling something else. The commercial seems to say, pleasure is not a spiritual matter; it is something in which you alone are the driver.
King Solomon was a man who had every pleasure the human eye has ever desired, yet he came to a strikingly different conclusion. In the book of Ecclesiastes he wrestles with a question any pleasure driven culture would do well to ponder. He asks, “What does pleasure really accomplish?”
Solomon sets out to find the answer to that question, using pleasure as his vehicle. He writes, “I denied myself nothing my eyes desired. I refused my heart no pleasure.” King Solomon embraced the pleasures of success and power, wine and women, servants and entertainers. He built buildings, expanded his territory and possessed more wealth than any kingdom. And he observes, “My heart took delight in all my work and yet this was the reward for all my labor — when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a mere chasing after the wind. Nothing was gained under the sun.”
Jack Higgins, an accomplished author, was once asked in an interview, “What is it you know now that you wish you’d known as a younger man?” Without even batting an eyelid, he said, “I wish I had known that when you get to the top, there is nothing there.”
To borrow from our earlier illustration, when you alone are the driver in your pursuit of pleasure, pleasure will ultimately end up driving you. It will drive you from pleasure to pleasure — each time with the hope of fulfillment. Weariness comes when you realize this seemingly looming fulfillment is quite simply an empty mirage.
Solomon pointedly describes this when he proclaims over and over, “Nothing was gained under the sun.” It is that qualifier, “under the sun” which unlocks the answer. It is a Hebraism literally meaning, “Outside of God.” You see, when you lock God out of your pursuits everything becomes a chasing of the wind.
Pleasure “under the sun” exudes the promise of refreshing, but in the end is only exhausting, an endless chase of emptiness. Dear friends, the satisfaction you and I seek is fulfilled along the road to Christ. When He is what drives you, pleasure yields new meaning.
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Copyright © 2002 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. “A Slice of Infinity” is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.