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Candid Counsel on Life and Death
Ecclesiastes 8:16-9:9 #12
If you would please take out your Bibles now and turn in them to the Book of Ecclesiastes. In the middle of your bible, a little bit to the right of the middle, and chapter number 9, chapter 9.
Last Sunday, Lowell Busenitz put in my hand a copy of a Fortune magazine article on Ted Turner. On the front cover, it had a picture of Ted with the title “Gone with the Wind.” I don’t know if you know it, but he’s lost $8 billion in recent days…that’s “b”, billion dollars. The subtitle on the article was “Ted Turner’s a worried man. His media career is gone with the wind, His faith in the United Nations looks naïve. He thinks humanity is on the verge of extinction, and he’s down to his last billion.” Not a problem I think I will be having in my life.
Here’s a 64-year-old that I think could have benefited by spending some time at the feet of Solomon. When asked how he’s doing these days, this is part of what the article says, he replies with these words: “Down, out, tired, miserable, wounded, worried.” He said, “I went 90 miles per hour through my career, I built a multi billion-dollar company. I won the America’s Cup. I was the greatest sailor in the world. I ran through three wives and numerous girlfriends, and I wore them all out. I’ve smoked through life.” He’s not talking about cigarettes here; he’s talking about the way he lived his life.
He has 91 framed magazine covers of himself. He has 400 sailing trophies. 34 honorary degrees. He has 37 thousand head of bison (he’s the number one owner of bison in America). It’s kind of amazing. He’s going to be starting bison restaurants; that’s the reason for that. He owns 1.9 million acres of land (the number one landowner in America). He owns land in ten states, 2 different countries—and yet, he’s restless. In the average month, he changes location ten times.
His youngest son, Beau, was concerned with all the stock losses Turner was undergoing and so he said to him, “Don’t be like your dad! Don’t take your own life!” That’s what his father had done. Turner believes that it’s a 50/50 chance that humanity will become extinct in 50 years. And Ted Turner at 64 says he feels like he’s running out of time. He’s worried about his health. In April, he had to have his heart shocked to stop a rapid beat that was going on.
Here’s his self-assessment of his life right now and I’m quoting him. “I’m like a little baby left in a doorstep, needing a woman to take care of me.” It’s amazing he had this perspective. You know, he was married to a lady, who [claimed to have]trusted in Christ, who was born again, by the name of Jane Fonda. Ted Turner was raised in a Catholic-Episcopal home and considered early in his life of becoming a missionary.
But a mystery occurred in his life that his turned his life bitter toward God. His teenage sister had a rare form of lupus. He said, he prayed every day for 30 minutes for God to heal her, and He didn’t. And so, he said, “I don’t want to have anything to do with you God.” Here’s a man who could use some perspective about life that Solomon offers us.
Solomon, we’ve seen in our study, wades through the backwater regions of life. And he’s not really being defeatist as he does that, he’s being a realist as he does that. And his warning that comes through over and over again—which is a warning that Ted Turner needs to hear—and that is that lasting fulfillment cannot be found apart from God.
Now today we’re going to be looking in chapter 9, really at the first 9 verses along with the last 2 verses of chapter 8. It just seems like a subject division works better there. I have entitled the message today “Candid Counsel on Life and Death.” And here’s the plan that we’re going to be looking at today. Really it involves four things. First of all, we’re going to see that Life is Mysterious but God is in Charge. We see that in 8:16 to 9:1a.
Secondly, we’re going to see that While Life is Uncertain, Death Isn’t. We’ll see that in chapter 9:1b to verse 3. Third, we’re going to see that The Living have Hope. And that’s chapter 9 verses 4 to 6. And then he’s going to draw a Conclusion in chapter 9, verses 7 to 9.
So that’s our plan, that’s where we’re moving. We’re going to see that Life is Mysterious, but God is in Charge; While Life is Uncertain, Death Isn’t; The Living Have Hope; and then he’s going to draw a two-fold Conclusion in verses 7 to 9. So that’s what we want to look at as we sit down at the feet of Solomon and learn what he has to share with us.
So, let’s begin by looking first at “Life is Mysterious, but God is in Charge.” Have you ever noticed that life is full of mysteries? It’s full of them. Everywhere you look. For example, one mystery in life is what you might call the “sock mystery.” You know what I’m talking about. You take those babies, you put them in the hamper. They go from the hamper to the washing machine, to the dryer, and then back to you. And something seems to happen with this sock. There’s always one sock, and there’s another sock, and another pair and, you know, I always hang onto them thinking that the other half will show up eventually. And then I have like six or seven pairs of things that don’t match. That’s a mystery! I wonder what happens to those things!?! I mean, do you ever wonder about that? That’s a sock mystery: that’s a tough one.
And then there’s the check-out line mystery. You know how that works. You get in this line and another line moves faster, so you move over to that line. And then the line you were in moves faster. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t figured that out yet. 52 years old and I still don’t have a clue how the check-out line works.
And then there’s the $153 ‘failure to come to a complete stop’ traffic ticket mystery which I just entered into Tuesday night, coming home from Kyle’s soccer game up in the city. Now catch this, it’s after midnight. I’m driving along on 134th street in Oklahoma City and I come to a four-way stop. There are no cars in sight in ANY direction. And I came very close to a ‘full stop.’ I mean as close as you can come…but I wasn’t close enough for the police officer who informed me that “your tires must come to a complete halt.” One hundred and fifty three dollars for that lesson. And the lesson for you is: be very careful driving in Oklahoma City—extremely careful!
Life is full of mysteries. For example, you have the mystery of Ted Turner’s sister, don’t you? Why would a teenager get an odd form of lupus and die as a teenager? It’s a mystery. You have the mystery of the car wreck that occurred last Sunday. I don’t know if you saw the article in the newspaper, a car wreck involving the two Lane sisters who had gone to the ‘Ignite the Flames’ student rally for Billy Graham. And coming home from that their car crossed the median and 19-year-old Alicia was killed. A young girl who was not only very excited about the Billy Graham mission but hoped to one day possibly be a missionary to China. Life is just full of mysteries like this. What is with all this?
Well, I want you to notice what Solomon says in Chapter 8 verse 16. He says, “When I gave my heart to know wisdom and to see the task which has been done on the earth (even though one should never sleep day or night), and I saw every work of God.”
In other words, he was saying, I was observing everything that goes on in life and I have concluded that “man cannot discover the work which has been done under the sun. Even though man should seek laboriously, he will not discover; And though the wise man might think, “well I know,” he cannot discover.” He says, I’ve examined, I’ve researched, I’ve looked at the mysteries of life. I’ve looked at the futility of life—it seems like things just happen at random. And he said, You know what I’ve concluded after I’ve spent all this time? The answers are beyond our reach. The answers to these mysteries are just beyond our reach.
The little phrase in verse 17, “he will not discover.” Sometimes we go on a hunt, we want to know the
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answer. And he says, when it comes to many of these mysteries of life, you can’t come up with it [the answer]. And if you claim to know: you really cannot. Now he’s not saying, in your life and my life, that we’re not to think; that we’re not to reason; that we’re not to seek to be wise; that we’re not to seek to understand. But what he’s really saying is that you can spend your whole life—and I’ve spent a lot of my life Solomon is saying—investigating and analyzing and searching for all the answers. And he had all the resources, and the wisdom, to be able to search this out. And the time! And he said: I still fell short.
In chapter 9, verse 1 he says, “For I have taken all this to my heart and explain it that righteous men, wise men, and their deeds are in the hand of God.” Key phrase there is ‘in the hand of God’. What you have to conclude with all of this mystery, is that ultimately, He is in control. He is in control. We may not really in this life know the ”Why,” but we can know the “Who”. And the “Who” is way bigger than us. And the “Who” is way better than us.
That’s why Paul says in Romans 11 verse 33, “Oh, the depth of the wisdom and the knowledge of God.” The New Living Translation goes on to say there in Romans 11:33, “How impossible it is for us to understand His decisions and His methods.” Solomon is saying, You can go on a search, but the truth is that God is bigger than us and God is better than us. The life is mysterious, but God is in charge!
Now the second thing he wants to communicate in this section to us, is that, While Life is Uncertain, Death Isn’t. While life is uncertain, death isn’t. Notice he says there at the end of verse 1, “man does not know whether it will be love or hatred; anything awaits him.” The truth of the matter is we don’t really know what’s ahead: love or hatred, prosperity or adversity. You know, when the Lane sisters got in the car, did they really know what was ahead.? They didn’t really know what was ahead. As far as they knew, it was going to be a wonderful experience with the Billy Graham mission. Instead, it was a shortened life. And another sister in critical condition. We don’t really know what’s around the next bend.
I just want you to understand how candid and how accurate he is being. Man doesn’t know just what’s around the corner. And there is a
distortion afoot [in the Christian world] that has frankly fried my beads for a number of years. And that is the distortion in the church of Jesus Christ that says: If you love God, and you give money, and you have faith, nothing bad will happen to you. And that’s not true!! The whole thing goes: If you love God and you give money, and you have faith: you’re going to be wealthy, and you’re going to be healthy. That upsets me because the Bible doesn’t teach that. [In fact, we did a whole series of messages, if you would like to get them on that, that we entitled “Traitors in our Midst,” as we looked at the Gospel of the Good Life that is being promoted in the church today.]
Solomon says, we don’t know what awaits us. You know, what a travesty to the Lane family who lost one daughter and then had another daughter who was in critical condition. For them to basically say, well, somewhere you know, you broke down. Maybe you hadn’t given enough money, or maybe you hadn’t had enough faith, and that’s why something like this happens. No!! He says in verse 1, “Anything awaits us.” We know who holds tomorrow, even when we don’t know what tomorrow holds. But we don’t know what tomorrow holds. Life is uncertain, but death isn’t. Death isn’t.
He’s going to make two points here that we want to emphasize. First of all, he says, the same fate awaits all people. Every one of us in this room. Notice verse 2, “It is the same for all. There is one fate for the righteous and for the wicked,” remember he’s looking at life on the human plane, “for the good, for the clean, for the unclean, for the man who offers a sacrifice and for the one who does not sacrifice. As the good man is, so is the sinner; as the swearer is, so is the one who is afraid to swear.” The same fate, he says, awaits all people. You know what the number one indicator is that we’re not in control of our life? It’s death! That’s the number one indicator.
You know, we like to think we’re in control. But the prospect of death shows us we’re not in control. Psalm 89:48 says, “What man can live and not see death?” I like what Woody Allen said a number of years ago. He said: “I’m not afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” The trouble with that is—guess what? Woody, you ARE going to be there when it happens. The same fate awaits us all.
Someone said the statistics on death are quite impressive: one out of one people die. That’s pretty good, pretty good odds that you can count on. You know what I find interesting?—is that we often function in our life—and it’s true when you’re young and it’s true when you’re older—we function in life with this ‘avoidance mentality.’ Somehow, we just function in our life and we think, you know what, it’s other people who die, not really me. But that’s not true! We all have a death appointment.
Hebrews 9: 27, it is appointed to men…, and to women, and to young people, and to children, once to die. That’s the appointment that you have got, and that I have got. …and then comes the judgment. You know, I00 years from now, all of us will be gone. One hundred years from now I don’t know who will be sitting in here. It’s not going to be us. We’ll be gone. You see, men and women that is reality. And Solomon has said, if you’re going to really live life, and get the most out of it, you’ve got to come to grips with that reality. You need to be prepared for death. And you need to be aware of death. The same fate awaits us all.
Then there is a second point he wants to make in this section and that is that evil and insanity [quote, quote insanity] resides in men’s hearts. Notice he says that at the end of verse 3. The hearts of the sons of men are full of evil and insanity is in their hearts throughout their lives. Afterwards, they go do the dead.
You know, man, even though we have the prospect of death, we choose to cultivate sin in our life. Years ago, when I first started to the university in the area of radio broadcasting, I became familiar with something I hadn’t heard much about, and that was a lot of the old radio shows. And, you know, years ago, there was a radio crime fighter, actually from 1937, [t started in the Depression years] to 1954, called The Shadow. How many people have ever heard of The Shadow? Alright, a number of you. There was ’94’ movie made of The Shadow with Alec Baldwin. The Shadow character was a guy by the name of Lamont Cranston, very interesting guy. He had abilities to somehow confound men’s minds and really appear to be invisible to them. And he had the ability to read minds. And in the opening of the radio show, he would always go like this: Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men. The Shadow knows!!
I want you to just listen to the old radio entry. [a recording of The Shadow opening plays.]
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men. The Shadow knows!! Why did the Shadow know? Because he could confound people and appear to be invisible, so he could watch what they did, when they didn’t even know he was watching. He could read their minds. He knew what was going on in the interior. He knew what was going through their thoughts.
You know the ultimate source of trouble and tragedy—the sickness and death in this world—is the sinfulness and the rebellious nature of our hearts. Their hearts are full of evil and insanity is in their hearts. You get so many illustrations of that! You remember the Menendez brothers? Lyle, who was 21, and Eric who was 18. Remember the story? They shot-gunned their parents, Jose and Kelly, to death with multiple shotgun wounds in their $4 million mansion. And it was a ‘messed up’ family if you know much about it. But, of course, their defense in their trial was self-defense. When you have sleeping parents, and you shoot them multiple times with shotguns, and your defense is self-defense, that’s insanity of the heart.
You see the fruit of ‘insanity of the heart’ when you go to the airport. I don’t know the last time you went there, but you must go early because you have to go through multiple layers of airport security because of the insanity in some men’s hearts. There is evil in our hearts! And that’s why men walk away from their family. They’ll just walk away. That’s why—and I’ve seen this happen in the church—you can have a wife who will leave her children behind and go pursue something else. That’s why you have pastors who will rob banks, as we have had in our community. Because evil lurks in the heart of man. There’s insanity in the heart! That’s the reason why you have young people who will risk all the overwhelming evidence of the potentiality of getting a sexually transmitted disease. They’ll work around that to get involved with someone sexually outside of marriage. There is evil lurking in their heart. There is insanity in the heart.
Life is mysterious, but God is in Charge. And While Life is Uncertain, Death Isn’t. And it’s the sin—the evil in our hearts—that brought death to us. But he wants to not leave us ‘down in the dumps.’ He wants to point out, thirdly, that The Living have Hope. The living have hope! We see that in chapter 9 verses 4 to 6. Notice he says, “For whoever is joined with all the living, there is hope; surely a live dog is better than a dead lion.” That gets your attention, doesn’t it? The NIV says, “Anyone who is among the living has hope.”
A live dog is better than a dead lion. What’s a lion? Well, the lion is the king of the beasts. The lion is very regal. The lion is very powerful. The lion is very majestic. But a dog, it’s very different from that. Now, we have to understand something here. By the way, our cultural perception of a dog is very different from their cultural perspective of a dog. Dogs in the Old Testament era were NOT highly cared for, highly pampered house dogs. We must understand that. Dogs in their day ran wild. They would be matted, diseased, mangy mutts. Not worth a lot in most people’s eyes. And yet, he says right there, very clearly, “a live dog is better than a dead lion.”
When you’re just looking at life, you have got to realize that the living have hope. Notice what he says there in verse 5. He says, “For the living know they will die; but the dead do not know anything.” And then he says (verse 6), “Indeed their love, their hate and their zeal have already perished, and they will no longer have a share in all that is done under the sun.” In other words, the dead people—just from the human perspective of life as we see them—they don’t know anything. Their passions have been completely stilled. The dead see nothing; they do
nothing, he says.
Now you know we have in our midst, Phil Kemp, one our elders who works for the State Medical Examiner’s Office. And I’d like to ask you, Phil: is it true that the dead see nothing, do nothing, and say nothing? Is that true? [Phil responds, “That’s true.”] Thank you! There you have it! Dead people see nothing, do nothing, and say nothing. A live dog is better than a dead lion.
Now he’s not saying—I want you to understand that he’s not saying—that when you die you have no awareness at all after you’ve died. And you can go look in Luke 16, and it talks about those who have gone into Hades without God, and those who have gone into paradise who know God. He is looking at life ‘under the sun’, on the human plane as you view it. And he says—listen!—the living have hope!
See the living can still accomplish something. When you’re still alive, you can still touch other people’s lives. When you’re still alive you can hug somebody; you can kiss someone; you can affirm someone; you can encourage someone. In fact, when you’re alive you also have hope that you can prepare for death…and that you can prepare to meet God.
Keep your finger in Ecclesiastes 9 and turn a little bit to the left, past the book of Proverbs to the book of Psalms. I want you to notice Psalm 130 and verse 7. The living have hope! Where is their hope found? Well, look with us at what it says in Psalm 130 and verse 7. “Hope in the Lord.” That’s where our hope needs to be! “For with the Lord there is lovingkindness, and with Him [there] is abundant redemption.” That’s where our hope ultimately is focused: on Him, because that’s where we’re going to get kindness kicked back to us in the form of what Jesus Christ has done. And it’s abundant redemption! More than we could ever use.
Now that leaves us, if we go back to Ecclesiastes 9, remember he said that Life is Mysterious but God is in Charge. He said that while Life is Uncertain, Death Isn’t. And he said that the Living have Hope, the living have hope. But what is his Conclusion in all of this then? We’ll see that in chapter 9 verses 7 to 9. And here’s basically his conclusion: Go Enjoy Life. Go enjoy life.
Notice verse 7 starts with that little word “go”. “Go then, eat your bread in happiness and drink your wine with a cheerful heart; for God has already approved your works.” Go, delight in life! Now!! Eat your bread, drink your wine and do it with happiness; do it with a cheerful heart. Now he’s not promoting here debauchery. He’s not saying, you know, go get ‘bombed.’ That’s not what he’s saying. In fact, eating bread and drinking wine was what in this area of time? It was everyday staples! That’s what you did. You ate bread and you drank the wine. Really what he’s saying is that you need to enjoy the everyday staples of life. Go do that. Go enjoy that!
You need to enjoy the everyday events of life…having meals together, go enjoy that. Notice he says in verse seven, “For God has already approved your works.” It’s interesting to me that some people have the idea that it is unspiritual to enjoy life. I’m not quite sure where that came from, but that idea is out there: it’s unspiritual to enjoy life. Oh really?? What is Solomon saying?—the wisest human being who lived apart from Jesus Christ, who did all this investigation, with all of these resources, and all of the mental wisdom that God had given to him. You know what he said? Go enjoy life!! Go enjoy life.
See the time that God has given to us—the friends and the family that God has given to us—have been given to us to be enjoyed. Some people have written over this section this little phrase: Have a blast while you last! Have a blast while you last.
Ed Young tells a story of a company in Las Vegas by the name of ‘Thrill Seekers Unlimited.’ And they’re one of those places that specializes in these ‘adrenaline events’ that you can do. And the owner, Rick Hopkins, has all of these various things that he promotes. He promotes skydiving, bungee jumping, fire walking, paragliding, and rock climbing for, of course, the not so faint of heart. And Young goes on to say, “I like the spirit of men like S.L. Potter, a La Mesa, California resident who bungee jumped for the first time at age 100! Yeah! And his 2 children, age 68 and 74, tried to talk him out of it!! They thought he was crazy. A hundred-year-old guy and he climbs a 210-foot tower and successfully executes his jump off of it. The first words after he got down from the jump, “Give me back my teeth.” Yeah! You have to take those babies out beforehand; don’t want to lose them on the way down. 😉
Have a blast while you last! You need to go enjoy life. And you know, I think he says in verse 8 something very special that we need to know. And that is, we need to Enjoy Every day. He says, “Let your clothes be white all the time, and let not oil be lacking on your head.” The NIV says, “Always be clothed in white, always anoint your head with oil.” Now some would say that the white clothing is a picture of righteousness; that we’re to have a blast while we last and that we’re to do it in a righteous way and that’s possible. But in that day, white was the nature of the festive clothes they would put on when they were going to celebrate and have a good time. And I think, when he says, “you need to always be in white,” he’s basically saying you need to enjoy every day!
And the oil that’s talked about here…in Isaiah 61, it talks about putting on the ‘oil of gladness.’ I think he’s really saying that we need to enjoy every day, and that every day can be a special day. Every day can be a special day if you approach it with the right attitude.
You know having gone through the cancer issue with my life, I think I’ve understood that idea for the very first time. Because, you see, the potentiality is that your life may be shorter that you thought: suddenly you look at everything just a little bit differently. Even you can look at mowing the lawn differently. It’s amazing. We need to treat every day as a special day!
Tim Hansel he said this: “Have we forgotten how special Wednesdays can be? Have we forgotten how different November is, when the trees appear in the lean economy of leafless elegance? Have we somehow fallen into the rut where we think that all my days are dreary or that February is a difficult month? Are we in the habit of always putting off an experience until the time is right? Or until we know how to do it?” And then he concludes with this thought. He says, “Procrastinating over the joy of being alive is one of the burglars of life that I know.” We need to enjoy every day!!
You know, when was the last time you sat at a graduation, when you’re there for maybe someone in your family. And you’re thinking, “This is stupid, I’ve got to sit here among hundreds of people. What a waste of my time.” Enjoy it! You know, yesterday was my daughter’s—she’s on the JV pom at Norman North High School—and yesterday was Parents Day at Lloyd Noble. We got there at 8 am and left about 12:45 pm. My daughter danced about 3 times for about 3 minutes each during that time. And it’s real easy to be sitting there thinking: this is totally stupid, stupid, stupid! And I did have that thought some.
But I was also thinking that I want to enjoy every day. So, I just found ways to enjoy it: watching people and watching their reactions. You know, it’s just an attitude. It’s an approach that we can take to things. So, the next time you’re at one of your kids sporting events, enjoy it! Don’t be just thinking about what you need to be doing; what you’re not getting to as you watch the pitchers come in, and everyone’s striking out at everything. And don’t be just thinking: you know, it’s a real tragedy we didn’t win… …man, if we just won! Enjoy every day! And, by the way, it’s better to come to a complete stop and not have to pay $153! 😊 Enjoy every day!
The second thing I think he wants to do is he wants us to Enjoy our Family. Notice what he says in verse 9, “Enjoy life with the woman whom you love all the days of your fleeting life which He has given to you under the sun; for this is your reward in life and in your toil in which you have labored under the sun.” Now, you have to understand where this is coming from. I’ve expanded that a little bit already by saying enjoy your family. But this is Solomon who had more than one thousand women. And you notice what he says? Enjoy life with the woman, singular. He knew what the pattern was supposed to be. Enjoy your spouse. Enjoy your family!
You know it’s interesting to me how the Christian community always focuses, it seems to me, on how we are to avoid sex outside of marriage. And we get SO focused on that, we overlook the fact that we are to enjoy sex inside of marriage. And if you struggle with that just a little bit (enjoying sex in marriage), let me give you two places to go in the Bible. Proverbs chapter 5 verses 15 to 19 is a place you ought to camp on a little bit. Proverbs 5:15-19. And if that doesn’t do it for you, go ahead and take a cruise through the Song of Solomon, alright? Spend a little time there in the celebration of marital love!
Of course, he’s talking about more than sex here when he talks about enjoying your life with your spouse. You know Janet and I are going to have the privilege—it’s hard to believe for such a ‘young guy’ [talking about himself]—we’re going to have our 30th wedding anniversary this month. And we have been able to arrange for a timeshare, and we have enough frequent flyer miles that we’re going to spend a week in St. Martin for our 30th wedding anniversary. I want to tell you something: I’m going to enjoy myself. I’m going to have a good time there! I’m going to savor that time. I’m going to enjoy that time of my life.
You know, I’ve done a number of funerals over the years—24 years of them. Frequently, I’ve heard
people say at funerals, “You know, I just wish that I’d spent a little bit more time with _________ (fill in the blank), or that they’d spent more time with me.” I’ve never yet heard at any funeral service that I have ever been at, anyone say, “You know, I’m 100% satisfied with the time I’ve spent with my loved ones. I’m 100% satisfied with the way I enjoy the people in my family.” I’ve never heard that! And I don’t think I ever will. You need—I need—to enjoy family.
Now let’s get to some Life Lessons as we close our session today here. What life lessons would he have for us as we pull back from all of this and we try to put into a package that we can apply. The first life lesson I believe he has for us, is that we need to Choose Life. We need to choose life. What do I mean by that? Well, turn with me to the New Testament, one of the last couple of books, 1 John chapter 5. It’s the book of the 1 John, there’s first, second, and third John. And the first life lesson that God would have for us is that we need to Choose Life. If Ted Turner was here today, the answer would be exactly the same. And choosing life is laid out for us in First John chapter five, verse eleven where it says, “This is the witness that God has given to us, that God has given us eternal life.” And where is that found—“This life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.”
Men and women, death is inevitable. And one thing we need to do is Choose Life. And life, not only now, but for eternity, is found in the person of Jesus Christ. And if you’re here today and you don’t know Him, let me ask you a question. How much more time has He given to you in your life? And of course you have to say, I don’t know, because you don’t know. But are you ready for judgment? Do you know for sure that if you had to meet God that you could say, Jesus Christ is the one who represents me. See, death will separate us from many things, but it cannot win the one battle that matters most, and that is that it cannot separate us from the love of Christ because of Him dying for us. If you haven’t yet chosen life in Jesus Christ, you need to do that. You need to do that.
So, the first life lesson, I think, is that we need to Choose Life. We don’t know how long it’s going to go on, our life on this planet. But if we choose life in Christ, if we come to Him, we not only have forgiveness; we not only can have a fresh perspective on life here; but we can have eternal life to come.
The second life lesson, I think he has for me and you today, is that we need to Celebrate Life. We need to celebrate life. You know, difficulty is inevitable, but misery is optional. It really is. And we need to be celebrating life; we need to mentally wear white; we need to mentally be putting on the oil of gladness; we need to enjoy our family; we need to enjoy every day! Psalm 118 verse 44, “This is the day that the Lord has made, we will“—you can underline those two words—”we will rejoice and be glad in it.” We need to Celebrate Life!
‘If you knew that you only had thirty days to live, what difference would it make in your life? I’ve asked myself that question, and you know what I think? You know, what comes to you is, if I only had thirty days to live: I would be angry over less things than I tend to be. If I only had thirty days to live: I would hug some people more; I would spend less money on things, if I had thirty days to live. I’d watch less television. I’d tell more people about Christ. I’d pray more. I’d enjoy more. But why not now?? Nobody is guaranteed thirty more days.
Let’s pray together: Father, we just thank you again for this Word that is alive. There is something inside of our spirits that just resonates with all of this truth. We pray, Father, for any who may not know you, that they would choose to turn to Christ and lay down all their furtive efforts of living their life, and go to Him, and to come to know life eternal. And help us—as men and women who know you—to celebrate life. Let’s celebrate life! We pray these things in Jesus’ name, Amen.