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Ecclesiastes:
“Facing the Dark Side of Life” Ecclesiastes 3:16-4:16
Turn to the book of Ecclesiastes, in the middle part of your Bible, just to the right of the book of Psalms, and chapter number three. Ecclesiastes chapter number three. As you’re turning, I want you to listen to one man’s assessment of life. As I read this to you, I want you to try to connect with the emotion behind the words.
He writes: “A myriad of men are born; They labor and sweat and struggle for bread; they squabble and scold and fight; they scramble for little mean advantages over each other; age creeps upon them; infirmities follow; shames and humiliations bring down their prides and their vanities; those they love are taken from them and the joy of life is turned to aching grief. The burden of pain, care, misery, grows heavier year by year; at length, ambition is dead, pride is dead; vanity is dead; longing for release is in their place. It comes at last—the only unpoisoned gift earth ever had for them—and they vanish from a world where they were of no consequence; where they achieved nothing; where they were a mistake in a failure and a foolishness…a world which will lament them today and forget them forever. Then another myriad takes their place, and copies all they did, and goes along the same profitless road, vanishes as they vanished—to make room for another and for another…”
Now you read that assessment, and when I first read that, two questions come to my mind: Who? and Why? Who said that; who wrote those words? And why did he write them? Well, in answering the ‘who’ question, it might surprise you to know that the ‘who’ is an American icon. He is probably recognized as the greatest writer, and one of the greatest humorists, that America has ever produced. His official name is Samuel Langhorne Clemens. We know him more affectionately by his writing name, Mark Twain. And we think of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn when we think of Mark Twain.
Now we have to understand, Mark Twain isn’t a guy who just sat in a room somewhere and wrote books. He lived what you would consider to be a very full life. He was in his life a printer; he was a steamboat pilot; he was a gold prospector; he was a journalist, editor, and publisher; and he was a renowned storyteller…the best-known storyteller of his generation! And he experienced what we would often call ‘success’ in life.
While now knowing the ‘who,’ then we ask the question why? I mean, why would he write a summary of life like that? I think there’s two reasons. Number one, Mark Twain was a very careful and astute observer of life and that comes out in his books. He really looked carefully at life and saw things that many of us miss.
And the second reason why I think he wrote what he wrote is that he operated from a particular life assumption. That life assumption was that we don’t really need God. And the trouble with that is that there is dark side to life. When you come face to face with it, and you interact with it and there’s no God, it leaves you in some despair. To be honest with you, most of the time we like to close our eyes to the dark side of life. We just prefer to turn our head away and look in another direction. But Mark Twain didn’t do that and he didn’t seek to duck the deep questions of life. He didn’t seek to avoid the superficial world of unreality in which many people attempt to live. So, when he looked at everything carefully, when he was without God, he ended up in despair.
And there’s another man that we have been reading his words, his name is Solomon, who wrote the book of Ecclesiastes. In a very similar way Solomon does a candid exploration of what we like to call the “backwater regions” [remote regions] of life. And he doesn’t flinch in this book away from the Biblical and deep questions of life. He says that life is often unfair, and life is full of its share inconsistencies and uncertainties and perplexities.
The interesting thing about Solomon is he outstrips Mark Twain. I mean when it comes to being a careful, astute, observer of life, Mark Twain couldn’t hold a candle to King Solomon in the slightest. So, as he writes this book, which is a confessional autobiography that we have been studying, it’s a book written by a man who knew God, a man who drifted from God, and who lived most of his life seeking fulfillment apart from God. And he wants to tell you and to tell me, “Don’t come this way. Don’t go this way.” It’s a divine warning in this book against attempting to live a life of lasting fulfillment apart from God.
Now we have outlines of this if you are relatively new to this study, these are available out in the center, an outline of the entire book and we encourage you to pick one of those up. We do have a Plan of Attack of what we are going to be studying today. We are going to be looking at “Facing the Dark Side of Life“. Basically, it falls into two parts. The first part, what we’re going to look at today, is when we talk about the dark side of life, he’s going to look at Injustice and Oppression. And then after we’ve looked at those two dark areas of life, we’re going to get some Life Perspective from Solomon.
And then the second part of what we’re going to look at is the Folly of Overwork and the Fickleness of Fame…those are some dark areas of life. And after he talks about those two, then we’re also going to see again some more Life Perspective. So that’s the outline of where we’re going today. Two parts, we’re going to look at Injustice and Oppression and then have some Life Perspective on those, and then we’re going to look at the Folly of Overwork and the Fickleness of Fame and then we’re going to look at some Life Perspective on those.
Now, you’re in chapter three, I want you to notice verse sixteen, and I want you to notice how that verse begins. He says, “Furthermore,” because he’s talked about the seasons of life in the first fifteen verses that we looked at last week. He says, “Furthermore, I have seen under the sun.” He says, this is what I have observed from all of the wisdom that God gave me as I just looked at life under the sun…just looked at life on the human plane. He emphasizes his observations throughout this entire section that we’re going to be looking at today. In chapter four verse one he says, “I looked again and I saw.” In chapter four verse four he says, “I have seen this.” In chapter four verse seven, he says “I looked again.” And in chapter four verse fifteen he says, “I have seen this.”
Really what he says to you and to me, is I have been reading the book of mankind, and I want to tell you what I see. And what I’m going to share with you in not some half-baked, shallow conjecture. It’s going to be solid observation that comes from the wisest human eyes that ever lived on this planet, apart from the God-man Jesus Christ.
So, we’re going to be looking at Facing the Dark Side of Life, and the first thing that comes to the surface as he looks at the dark side is Injustice. And what he wants to point out, regarding injustice, in verse sixteen, is that the wrong guys win too often. Do you ever notice that in life? The wrong guys win too often.
Notice verse sixteen says, “Furthermore, I have seen under the sun (in this human life) that in the place of justice there is wickedness, and in the place of righteousness there is wickedness.” Instead of justice we see wickedness and instead of righteousness we see wickedness. And this is true in our generation too. You have corporate officers of large corporations who act irresponsibly, and yet they reap millions of dollars. We see people who brutally murder people, and then they are protected by the court system for decades. That’s not justice, that’s really wickedness! We see abortionists who kill hundreds of babies in a month and pad their bank account with five- six- seven figures on a regular basis. We see a man who leaves his wife and family for a younger woman, and society just winks at him.
You know, this is a true story: I personally knew a man in this community who was a deacon in this community in an evangelical church. And while he was in that church, he began an affair with a widowed missionary. He ended up eventually divorcing his wife and marrying the former missionary woman, and they moved to another evangelical church where immediately she began playing the organ in the worship service. You know, you see that and you go “where’s the justice? Where’s the justice in this?”
I mean, we would prefer that if a man leaves his wife for a younger woman—if there was justice, he would end up being impotent. Right ladies? Okay, sure! I mean if there was justice! If there was justice that lady who cuts us off on the highway—if there was justice, her transmission would go out as soon as she exited the interstate. That’d be justice! Are you with me on that?
But it’s not always that way. Instead of justice, there’s wickedness, instead of righteousness, you see, there’s wickedness. He says, when I look out and I observe, I see that the wrong guys win too often.
Secondly, regarding injustice, he says that death puts us on the same level as the animals. Look at verses eighteen to twenty-one of chapter three. He says, “I said to myself concerning the sons of man, ‘God has surely tested them in order for them to see that they are but beasts.’ For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same. As one dies, so dies the other. Indeed, they all have the same breath. There is no advantage for man over beast for all is vanity. All go to the same place. All come from the dust and all return to the dust. Who knows that the breath of man ascends upward and the breath of the beast downward to the earth.
He is saying, if you leave God out when you just look around—in just human observation on life down under—is there really much difference between us and the dogs, that is what he’s saying. Is there really a lot of difference? I mean, the dogs die, they decompose, and they turn into dust. We die, we decompose and turn into the same pile of dust. Apart from divine revelation, he says, just looking at humanity: we don’t really know (verse twenty-one) whether the life of man ascends upward and the life of the beast descends downward to the earth.
He says, when you just look around you, you see that, you know, there’s this discontent that we have over death. We have a discontent. I don’t think my dog sits around ever even thinking at all about death, but we think about death. We’re reminded about death. And it’s interesting how the cemetery keeps adding people. They never are subtracting people there, have you ever noticed that?
And a clue to why death bothers us, in the sense of justice, is found (as we saw earlier in chapter three verse eleven) when he says that God has set eternity in our heart. See we have eternity in our heart; we have a sense that this can’t be all there is. This can’t be the whole explanation that we just keel over like dogs do and end up in the same kind of pile of dust. There just seems to be an injustice to that in the human heart. It seems to be unfair!
So, the first part of darkness, the dark side of life, that he looks at is Injustice. The second part of the dark side of life that he looks at is Oppression. Oppression. And here he observes that evil people abuse others. And we see that in chapter four verses one to three. Notice verse one, he says, ” I looked again at all the acts of oppression which were being done under the sun, and behold I saw the tears of the oppressed and that they had no one to comfort them. And on the side of their oppressors was power, but they had no one to comfort them.”
Tommy Nelson tells a story of Simon Wisenthal, many of you might have heard about him, he tracked down more than one thousand Nazi war criminals. And you think: what motivates someone to do that? And part of his motivation, he tells the story, came out of one of the death camps where Wisenthal was. Simon says, “This is what happened that particular day. One day, two Nazi officers rode to the site where the prisoners were excavating rock. One of them grabbed a Jewish man and made him stand back-to-back with another Jewish man. He had a guard bind the two men together with ropes. Then, just as calmly as if he were swatting a fly, he pulled out his gun and shot through the first man’s head into the head of the man behind him, killing both of them with one bullet. And then he turned to the other officer and he said, ‘See, I told you we’ve been wasting 50% of our bullets.’”
You just look around at life and you see this kind of thing going on. Look at Saddam Hussein, I mean, you know, sometimes we forget what this guy is really like…the ruthless dictator that he really is. Do you know that he rose through the ranks of the military in his country because of his extreme efficiency in torturing people. That’s what got him to rise to the top. Saddam Hussein has executed more than fifty-plus political and military people who were leaders, including members of his cabinet, and when he was asked about the proof of their unfaithfulness to him, he said “I don’t need proof, suspicion is enough and I’ll just wipe them out.” Since 1975 he’s destroyed four thousand villages in Iraq. He has launched the worst chemical weapons attack on a civilian population in the history of the world. He’s killed at least 100,000 Kurds. And you know what, Solomon says I had people like that in my era, too. People who were oppressive and that’s part of the dark side of life.
Notice what Solomon goes on to say in verses two and three of chapter four. He said, So I congratulated the dead, who were already dead, more than the living who were still living. But better off than both of them is the one who has never existed, who has never seen the evil activity that is done under the sun. And what he’s saying is that some of this oppression is so vile and so evil, it’s just better if you’ve already died and gone on and you don’t have to experience it. In fact, it’s better if you’ve never been born and you don’t have to experience this. He says, that’s a dark part of life…a dark part of life. And we have it in our day. In fact, we’re always going to have men like that with us.
Well, having looked at those two elements of the dark side, he wants to give us some Perspective. In the face of the injustice that we see, in the face of the oppression that we see, what perspective does he have for us? Well, the first part of the perspective is that God will judge. God will judge. We see that in chapter three verse seventeen. “I said to myself, God will judge”, you can underline those three words, “both the righteous man and the wicked man for time, for every matter and every deed is there.” See, no one gets away with anything with God. No one. Judgment will come in God’s time.
In Acts chapter seventeen verse thirty-one it says this, “He has fixed the day in which he will judge the world in righteousness.” He has fixed the day. It’s going to come.
Keep your finger in Ecclesiastes and turn back to Psalm 73 for just a moment. I want you to notice that this is an interesting psalm because as the psalmist writes this psalm and he is just upset that a lot of these evil, oppressive people—who are unjust and unrighteous and wicked—nothing seems to be happening to them. And the whole psalm is about how he gets understanding from God that, yes, I am going to take care of this. I just want you to notice in Psalm 73, in particular, verses eighteen and nineteen. This is what he comes to realize regarding these people, he says, verse eighteen, “Surely God, you set them in slippery places, you cast them down to destruction. How they are destroyed in a moment! They are utterly swept away by sudden terrors.” That day is coming. And so, as we perceive these things that are so upsetting to us at times; as we perceive the fact that there is this oppression that exists in the world; and this evil that exists in the world; this injustice that exists in the world, we need to remember, God will judge!
But there is a second part of perspective that he wants us to have in light of all this and that is that we need to Enjoy Life as we can. He mentions that in verse twenty-two of chapter three, and the backdrop of all this, the verses that lead into this, is that injustice of death thing, remember? We talk about how this death thing happens to all of us. And notice he says in verse twenty-two, “I have seen that nothing is better that man should be happy in his activities, for that is his lot .”
I think really what he’s saying to us, by way of perspective, as we look at even the injustice of death that comes to all of us, is, he’s saying to all of us: don’t become engulfed with lamenting over these things. Don’t just become involved with some sort of injustice syndrome: “It’s not fair, God!” And I’ll tell you something, when death is potentially facing you in the face, that’s the very first thought that comes out of your mind. Trust me, I understand that. Don’t get caught in that. Don’t get caught up in a pity party. Enjoy life as you can. So, he says, there is a dark side to life, and as he observed and he looked around he saw injustice and he saw oppression.
But there’s a second area, second part of what we want to look at today, two other elements of the dark side of life: the Folly of Overwork and the Fickleness of Fame. So, let’s take a look at those two as he talks about them. First of all, the Folly of Overwork, we see that in chapter four verses four to twelve. Notice chapter four verse four, “I have seen that every labor, every skill when you really just check it all out which is done as the result of rivalry between man and his neighbor, and this too is vanity, it’s emptiness, it’s striving after the wind.”
He says, when you just look at the whole work arena, the reality is—we think we invented this, and by the way we didn’t—it’s just ‘dog-eat-dog.’ Now he’s not down on healthy competition in the work environment, but when you carefully look at it, it’s truly dog-eat-dog. Everyone is out for themselves. They’re out to conquer; they’re out to devour; they want to chew you up and spit you out. I mean, how many people have you ever known who are more concerned about you getting a promotion than them getting a promotion? You know, it’s just very rare because in the world out there, everyone is looking out for themselves.
And when you talk about the whole idea of this dog-eat-dog world, people react differently to it. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this or not—people react differently to it. Some people react by dropping out: “It’s just too dog-eat-dog for me”. And often they become overtly lazy. Ever known anybody like that? They just sort of drop out. They think, “That’s just a little too tough for me. I think what I’ll do is I’ll just sort of drop out and become…”well, they don’t actually say, I’m going to become lazy, but that’s what happens! Notice verse five, he talks about that. He says, “The fool folds his hands and consumes his own flesh.” See the person who just becomes overtly lazy is foolish, because what happens is their resources eventually will dry up, their self-worth will vanish. That’s not the way to react to this problem of the dark side of life.
You might just jot down Proverbs twenty-four, verses thirty to thirty-four. Proverbs twenty-four, thirty to thirty-four, because there it talks about the sluggard and what results from choosing that particular reaction. So, when you have this dog-eat-dog world out there, some people react by dropping out and become overtly lazy.
Some people react in a different way, they react by gearing up and becoming overly industrious. See, that’s the way some people handle the dog-eat-dog thing. They just gear it up, baby, and they become overly industrious. They become totally ‘sold out’ to work. I’m just going to work, work, work. I’m going to sell, sell, sell. I’m going to go, go, go. And the question is, when you become all geared up and you become overly industrious, where does that take you?
And Solomon has an illustration of where it can take you and we see it in verse eight of the chapter. Notice what he says, ”There was a certain man” he’s telling a story about somebody he’s thinking of without a dependent, “having neither son nor a brother, and yet there was no end to all his labor. Indeed, his eyes were not satisfied with riches, and he never asked: and for who am I laboring and depriving myself of pleasure?”
Now notice those words again, and think, is there anybody who comes to your mind? There was no end to all his labor; his eyes were not satisfied with riches; and he never pulled back and asked questions like why am I so overly industrious?; he just kept plowing ahead; he blindly pours himself into his work. Does that remind you of anybody you know? I mean, sometimes you might say, “it reminds me of me.” Or it reminds me of so-and-so. Solomon says, that’s where you can end up when you react to the dog-eat-dog dark side of the world.
Chuck Swindoll has another illustration he shares with us. And it’s not just somebody who’s singularly into work because he doesn’t have any family connections like the man that Solomon was thinking about. Chuck Swindoll says, “Several months ago, I had the occasion to look into the face of a frustrated, anxious forty-seven-year-old man. His past life was strewn with the litter of the consequences of high- pressured competition. In the process of becoming “successful” his relationship with his wife and children had completely eroded. They were like a group of strangers living under the same roof (his precise description), passing each other like ships in the night. It must have been a hell on earth existence.
First there was a son who would no longer speak to him. Next a younger daughter had said to him rather bluntly, “I don’t like being with you anymore, Dad.” And his wife was afraid of him. Now keep in mind, he had made it to the top of his profession –a six-figure salary, numerous perks, influential position, country club membership, luxurious company car, private jet available to him…the whole package. He had everything, or so it seemed.
But he’d recently been caught stealing from his company. The company chose not to indict him and take him to court on embezzlement charges. Instead, he promised to pay the money back, even though he was immediately dismissed from his organization. He had lost his job, lost his reputation, lost the one thing that gave him identity, the only thing that he’d been trained to do. And don’t forget, his family was happier when he wasn’t around. He’d been working half days on Sundays, so that by the time they caught up with him, he was working six and a half days a week. And he admitted to me, ‘Had I continued, it would have been a solid seven days a week with at least twelve to fourteen hours a day. I was on my way. Your classic, driven workaholic.’
And then,” Swindoll says, “he looked at me, tears were streaming down him face. He sobbed ‘How do I build back a home?’ How do I relate to a son or daughter who doesn’t respect me and won’t talk to me anymore? How do I go back and do it over?’ Mentally, he’s a very sick man.” Swindoll says, “I was watching his personality disintegrate before my very eyes. It was frightening, He paced back and forth as we talked. A rather steady stream of profanity flowed from his tongue. One time, he reached up and literally swung in the doorway and hung there, full of anxiety, crying like a baby. What a pathetic sight! He had served a cruel task master—success at any price. Now he was like a leopard corned in a cage…dangerously near a complete breakdown.”
And when you get involved in this dark side of the dog-eat-dog world, one way to respond is to drop out and becoming overtly lazy. When you do that, you ruin yourself. Another way is to gear it up by becoming overly industrious and when you do that you burn yourself out, and you can burn your family out.
Solomon says, when I look around, I see the folly of overwork, and I also see, he says, the fickleness of fame. And that’s covered in chapter four verses thirteen to sixteen. You know, a goal of many people is just to be popular; to be somebody. Now, in verses thirteen to sixteen of chapter four, the reference is a little bit unclear of what’s going on here, but many people think it a reference ultimately to King David. You see, King David was raised in Israel and—if you don’t remember the story—he was just a nobody. He was a poor little shepherd boy, the bottom of the heap. He ended up going from there to become king. And when he was king, what was he? He was hailed, “it’s David, David is our King. All right, man! He is the guy!”
And then eventually, David passes from the scene and then Solomon comes along. And Solomon’s the ‘hot number’ in Israel. Solomon is the one that’s going to take us places that David never could before! He says in verse sixteen, the ones who will come later will not be happy with him. And then the idea seems to be, he says, “Look, I’ve watched the way this process works. You’re the hot number, and then later on you’re not the hot number. Then someone else becomes the hot number, and then later on they’re not the hot number and someone else becomes the hot number.” Fame is fleeting and popularity is short lived. Today’s hero is tomorrow’s bum.
Don Meredith, who was the quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys, for those of you who were a little bit older will remember, he once said “today, the penthouse, tomorrow, the outhouse.” And Dandy Don was the guy who was worshipped in Dallas for a while, then he faded from the scene. And then it was Roger the Dodger (Roger Staubach). You know, people don’t really talk about Roger the Dodger anymore. In fact, people don’t talk about the Dallas Cowboys at all anymore. Fame is fleeting.
Think about even Jesus Christ. He comes into town and they say “Hosanna in the highest” and a few days later they are saying “Crucify him.” Solomon is saying, why are we shooting for that? It doesn’t hang around. In fact, in verse sixteen, he says, It’s vanity; it’s emptiness; it’s futileness. It’s like striving after the wind trying to catch the wind, it just doesn’t deliver.
And so, when you look at these particular areas of the folly of overwork and the fickleness of fame, he gives us some Perspective again. We need that. And the first perspective is found in verse six, and that perspective is we need to balance work and contentment. We need to balance work and contentment. Notice verse six, he says there, “One hand full of rest is better than two fists full of labor and striving after wind.” Now, that’s a Hebrew way of saying, life needs balance to it. Work hard, but don’t make work your God. Work hard but take some breaks and have some fun.
I love a story that Ray Pritchard tells of some individuals that he knew. He said, ”The first one was a hard driving Type A corporate attorney and he happened to see this commercial fisherman that he knew from church. This particular afternoon, this high driving attorney sees the commercial fisherman from his church, the fisherman is there with his legs dangling off the pier as he’s helping his two young sons catch crabs. And the attorney walks up to the fisherman and he says, ‘Why aren’t you out there fishing?’ And the fisherman says, ‘Because I’ve caught enough fish for today.’ And the attorney says, ‘Well, why don’t you catch more fish than you need?’ ‘What would I do with them?’ responded the fisherman. The attorney: ‘you could earn more money and buy a better boat so that you could go deeper and catch more fish. Then you could buy a fleet of boats and soon you’d be rich like me.’ The fisherman said, ‘What would I do then?’ The attorney said, ‘Well, then you could sit down and enjoy life.’ And the fisherman says, ‘What do you think I’m doing now?'”
See, more work and more money cannot replace time with those that you love. It cannot do it. The perspective we need is, we need to balance work and contentment. Then the perspective we also need, he believes, is we need to remember that we need to keep relationships a priority. We see that in verses nine to twelve of chapter four. You can just write over these verses, the value of friendships.
By the way, this is probably the second most well-known portion of the Book of Ecclesiastes second only to the seasons that are listed in chapter three verses one and following. Really what Solomon’s saying is that there’s a dark side to life. Life is more than being a workaholic; life is more than trying to be the famous, popular one. Life by itself is cold and lonely.
He then gives us four values of friendships here, and I just want you to see these because we need to think through them and reflect on them. The first value of friendships and relationships is increased accomplishment. We see that in verse nine. “Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor.” The New Living Translation says, “They accomplish more than twice as much as one.” See, when you are in a friendship or relationship with people you just get more productive in life.
The second value in friendships is crisis support. We see that in chapter four verse ten. “For if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion, but woe to the one who fall when there is not another to lift him up.” When you fail, and you will; when you fall on your face, and you will; when you stumble in life, and you will, the question is: who catches you when you fall? Especially, I think, men we need to wrestle with that. Who catches you when you fall?
The third value of friendship is mutual ministry. You see that in verse eleven. “Furthermore, if two lie down together, they keep warm, but how can one be warm alone?” There’s a mutual ministry that goes on. Someone said this a number of years ago: “a shared joy is double joy; a shared sorrow is half a sorrow.” There’s a mutual ministry that goes on in friendship.
And then the fourth element value of friendship is greater protection. You see that in verse twelve, “If one can overpower him who is alone, two can resist him. A cord of three strands is not quickly torn apart.” Two friends are good, three friends are better; stronger. I know when our kids were younger, a lot of times, our girls—remember I had three daughters and one son—they would often want to go certain places, and we used to always say to them: “Hey, if you’re going to go to the mall, take three of you there. If you’re going to go to the fair, take three of you.” There’s just greater protection, you see, in that kind of environment. Life has a dark side, and friendships and relationships bring light to it.
You know, I can’t help but think about Mark Twain’s assessment of life and I have to ask myself how different would his experience be if he had heard and heeded Solomon? Well, it’s too late for Mr. Twain, but it’s not too late for me. And it’s not too late for you! God might be touching your heart as we’ve been going through this message, and I believe in the ministry of the Holy Spirit of God who moves in us and touches us about certain things.
He may be touching your life and your heart about many different things, but I want to talk about some Life Response in two arenas, and they revolve around the words “refresh” and “reflect.” The first life response is Refresh. I think one of the things that God wants us to do is to refresh our relationships. Relationships are vital; relationships are indispensable, especially when we are facing the dark side of life. And maybe what God wants you to do, coming out of this message today, is to refresh your relationships with your family. Maybe you just go and you have some fun together. How long has it been since you were dangling your legs off some pier somewhere catching some crabs with your kids?
Maybe he wants you to refresh an old relationship. Maybe He’s bringing to mind a relationship that was precious to you that has grown cool and He wants you to refresh that. Maybe He just wants you to refresh your friendship quotient. Maybe you just need to get involved with people, you need to get involved with an adult fellowship group on a Sunday morning, or a home community group where you can get closer to some people and let some more light back into your life.
So maybe He’s touching us on the area of refreshment, maybe also on the area of reflecting. You know, we’ve talked about injustice in the world this morning, but do you know the greatest injustice that ever occurred happened two thousand years ago, nothing’s come close. The only perfect person who ever lived was betrayed; He was tortured; He was crucified. Despite all of His obedience and all of His righteousness, He was executed. That’s injustice! What good came out of that? Well, the good that came out of that is that He took my penalty in my place, and he rose again triumphant from the grave.
You know, Mark Twain’s biggest mistake was he believed you don’t really need God. And the dark side will lead you to despair—without God. And the question I have for some of us here would be this: when are you going to heed God’s warnings? God has been warning some of us. When are you going to come to terms with the eternal issues of life? When are you going to turn to Jesus Christ? He is the answer to death for everyone.
Let’s pray together. Father, we just thank you for your Word again and we thank you for the power behind it. And we thank you for the Life Lessons that are in it. We would pray that you would guide us through your Spirit to be refreshing our friendships and relationships, as we have to go through the dark parts of life. And Father, for those who have never trusted in Jesus Christ—for those who just simply keep hearing the words about him and hearing his warnings about how judgment is only one breath away—may they reflect and see the need: in light of all the dark sides of life, to come to know the One, whom to know, is to know life forever… here on this planet and forever for eternity. We pray that they would make that decision. It’s the only one that makes sense, and we pray that they would do it soon. And we pray in Jesus’ name, Amen