Message Date: September 15, 2024
Bible
Birds Eye View:
“Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, For this is man’s all. For God will bring every work into judgment, Including every secret thing, Whether good or evil.”
Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 nkjv
The purpose of this life is to become the person God created and redeemed you to be. He is more concerned with your character than your comfort.
We saw that :
Neither nature or history stop repeating
It’s a framework for something else…. He draws the parallel of under the sun.
Not the point but the backdrop.
We saw that neither wisdom or pleasure on their own can be the meaning of life.
Wisdom :
1.Origin- where do we come from
2.Meaning-what’s the meaning of life, we all need (wonder,truth,love,security)
3.Morality- how do we know right from wrong(naturalism cannot answer how an nonmoral beginning brought about by an ammoral process brought about moral reasoning-the emperor has no clothes)
4. Destiny-what is to become of us(what happens when we die?)
Wisdom as an end in and of itself without revelation knowledge, without knowledge of God “human wisdom“ will always be missing pieces of the puzzle and incomplete, causing grief… Because the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.
Pleasure:
1. sensual pleasures hold promises they can’t back up.
2. Sensual pleasures offer to open our eyes but really just blind us.
3. Sensual pleasures disillusion us and make us cover up artists. (Addiction)
Then the Ray of sunshine.
“Then I turned myself to consider wisdom and madness and folly; For what can the man do who succeeds the king?— Only what he has already done. Then I saw that wisdom excels folly As light excels darkness. The wise man’s eyes are in his head, But the fool walks in darkness. Yet I myself perceived That the same event happens to them all. So I said in my heart, “As it happens to the fool, It also happens to me, And why was I then more wise?” Then I said in my heart, “This also is vanity.” For there is no more remembrance of the wise than of the fool forever, Since all that now is will be forgotten in the days to come. And how does a wise man die? As the fool! Therefore I hated life because the work that was done under the sun was distressing to me, for all is vanity and grasping for the wind. Then I hated all my labor in which I had toiled under the sun, because I must leave it to the man who will come after me. And who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will rule over all my labor in which I toiled and in which I have shown myself wise under the sun. This also is vanity. Therefore I turned my heart and despaired of all the labor in which I had toiled under the sun. For there is a man whose labor is with wisdom, knowledge, and skill; yet he must leave his heritage to a man who has not labored for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. For what has man for all his labor, and for the striving of his heart with which he has toiled under the sun? For all his days are sorrowful, and his work burdensome; even in the night his heart takes no rest. This also is vanity. Nothing is better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that his soul should enjoy good in his labor. This also, I saw, was from the hand of God. For who can eat, or who can have enjoyment, more than I? For God gives wisdom and knowledge and joy to a man who is good in His sight; but to the sinner He gives the work of gathering and collecting, that he may give to him who is good before God. This also is vanity and grasping for the wind.”
Ecclesiastes 2:12-26
Wisdom madness and folly. = smart, insane, or stupid.
Without God in one’s life, even simple pleasures are mundane. There is nothing inherent in humanity that makes it possible to extract, enjoyment and purpose from the things we do.
Close.
The fall
“To the woman He said: “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; In pain you shall bring forth children; Your desire shall be for your husband, And he shall rule over you.” Then to Adam He said, “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’: “Cursed is the ground for your sake; In toil you shall eat of it All the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, And you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread Till you return to the ground, For out of it you were taken; For dust you are, And to dust you shall return.””
Genesis 3:16-19 NKJV
Adam was cursed to suffer pain while working the ground, and Eve was cursed to experience pain and struggle in her family relationships.
but……. In redemption what once was curse becomes a gift.
“Live joyfully with the wife whom you love all the days of your vain life which He has given you under the sun, all your days of vanity; for that is your portion in life, and in the labor which you perform under the sun.”
Ecclesiastes 9:9 NKJV
“But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.”
Ephesians 4:20-24 NKJV
Baptism
“What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”
Romans 6:1-4 NKJV