“Life is Hevel (Ecclesiastes 9:1-12)" | 10/30/22
Ecclesiastes 9:1-12 | 10/30/22 | Will DuVal
One year for my birthday, when I was probably 8 or 9 years old - and despite the warnings of movies like “A Christmas Story” that I’d ‘shoot my eye’ out - my parents bought me a BB gun. And for a couple weeks I had fun shooting at the bulls-eye I had printed out and hung on a tree, or knocking tin cans off our back fence, before I decided to move on to more interesting targets.
And I’ll never forget the unusually warm, winter day when I invited my sister to go “hunting” with me in the woods behind our house, and the first living creature we stumbled upon was a beautiful songbird, perched on a low-hanging tree branch. And I’ll never forget my sister pleading with me as I raised the barrel of the gun. And I’ll never forget her scream of horror as we both watched the bird fall to the ground. But most of all, I’ll never forget that sickening feeling in my gut as I knelt over the lifeless body of that beautiful bird and 2 cold, hard truths began to sink into my young heart for the first time in my life: that 1) Death is REAL, and 2) Death is APPALLING.
Once we are confronted with these two realities, MOST people will spend the REST of their lives desperately trying to AVOID both those truths at all costs. We spend billions of dollars a year on anti-aging products, billions more on exercise equipment and gym memberships, and even billions MORE on healthcare costs, attempting to MASK, slow, and counter the process of DYING, but we’re really just delaying the inevitable. Because every moment since the moment that you were conceived in the womb, at a cellular level, you have been dying; every single ONE of us here this morning, in the most literal sense, is DYING… some are just closer to the cliff than others.
So what do we do when we can no longer keep the REALITY of death at bay - when we’re FORCED to attend a funeral, to visit the nursing home, to drive over that racoon carcass in the middle of the highway? We try and convince ourselves that maybe death just isn’t so HORRIFYING. We refer to it in softer euphemisms - “she left us”, “he passed on” - we comfort ourselves with the notion that the poor raccoon is now “in a better place”, or we tell ourselves that death is just a natural part of the beautiful “circle of life”. But no matter WHAT you call it, and no matter how strong your hope may be in the afterlife, the fact remains: that death is NOT natural - there is something deep within EACH of us, when we’re standing over that songbird, that open casket, that hospice bed - that cries out: “This is NOT the way it’s SUPPOSED to be!”
Death isn’t something we take lightly, and it’s not something we CELEBRATE (so throw away the Halloween skeletons when you get home). No, the Bible calls death our “ENEMY”. It is our “LAST enemy” (1 Cor 15:26), awaiting us ALL, at the end of a life filled with lesser foes. King Solomon has explored and lamented many of those troubles that plague our “vain lives” here “under the sun”, for 8 chapters of Ecclesiastes thus far; adversaries like oppression, folly, poverty, loneliness, suffering. But NONE of them compares to our “LAST enemy”. Life’s kind of like a video game, where every level gets progressively harder than the one before, and all the while you’re just anticipating, DREADING, that final level, that last enemy you must face, cuz you know it’s gonna be the toughest of all. I must have tried a hundred times in middle school to beat the last level of “Golden Eye 007” - where you finally square off face-to-face against Trevelyn on the satellite “cradle”; I never did beat it.
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But it turns out the game of LIFE - not the terrible board game, where the goal is to die with the most money; Ecclesiastes 5 and 6 proved how foolish it is to live that way! - no, I’m talking about REAL life, in life, our “last enemy” is far tougher than Trevelyn or a pretend estate tax; in fact, death isn’t just TOUGH to beat, it’s downright IMPOSSIBLE. Scientists estimate that some 117 billion people have walked our planet, and aside from the 7.8 billion of us still alive today, death has killed every single ONE of the other 109.2 billion; the scoreboard reads: “Death: 109.2 billion - Humanity: 0”. (https://www.prb.org/articles/how-many-people-have-ever-lived-on-earth/) Death is undefeated.
Or at least, death WAS undefeated. But I get ahead of myself.
Would you STAND with me… SCRIPTURE - Ecc ch9, vv1-12:
“But all this I laid to heart, examining it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God. Whether it is love or hate, man does not know; both are before him. 2 It is the same for all, since the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice. As the good one is, so is the sinner, and he who swears is as he who shuns an oath. 3 This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead. 4 But he who is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. 5 For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. 6 Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished, and forever they have no more share in all that is done under the sun.
7 Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do.
8 Let your garments be always white. Let not oil be lacking on your head.
9 Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. 10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might,[c] for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.
11 Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all. 12 For man does not know his time. Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them.”
This is the word of the Lord… Let’s pray…
Solomon has been tracing this theme of DEATH in every single chapter of Ecclesiastes thus far (1:4; 2:14-17; 3:18-20; 4:8; 5:15-16; 6:6; 7:1-2; 8:8), but this morning, he finally confronts death - this greatest of ALL “evils” under the sun - HEAD ON. In Solomon’s view, death has the power to nullify everything else in life, because NONE of it can survive our inevitable (and relatively speaking, our IMMINENT) death. We all come with an expiration date. Hence this morning’s culminating sermon title: “LIFE is hevel”. Remember, hevel is the Hebrew word repeated 38x in the 12 chapters of Ecclesiastes that literally translates as “smoke”, “breath”, “vapor”, “mist”.
And if you’re new this morning, SO far Solomon has told us that WORK is hevel, NATURE is hevel, KNOWLEDGE is hevel, PROGRESS is hevel, LEGACY is hevel, PLEASURE is hevel, TIME is hevel, MONEY is hevel, FOLLY is hevel, even WISDOM is hevel.
But this morning, Solomon sums it ALL up with his conclusion that LIFE is hevel. And from an eternal perspective, from a biblical perspective, that’s what our lives here under the sun really are: hevel.
Psalm 144:4 reminds us, “Man is like a breath (a hevel); his days are like a passing shadow.”
Psalm 102:3, 11 “For my days pass away like smoke (like hevel)… like an evening shadow; I wither away like grass.”
James 4:14 asks, “What is your life? For you are a mist (a hevel) that appears for a little time and then vanishes.”
And this morning, Solomon is gonna give us THREE reasons why life is hevel, before offering us three SUGGESTIONS for how we ought to live our “vain days” here under the sun, in light of that reality. But then we’re gonna END by zooming out, and reminding ourselves that Ecclesiastes ch9 falls in the middle of a book that falls in the middle of the BIBLE, of which we NOW know “the rest of the story”. For all his earthly wisdom, Solomon did NOT know… COULD not know… the most crucial, urgent, life-CHANGING truth that you and I NOW know, simply due to his time and place in redemptive history. So I promise to END with that glorious GOOD news, so don’t even think about leaving early! Let’s dive in.
First of all, Life is hevel because…
#1 - We are all SINNERS. (vv1,3b)
The opening of ch9 almost reads like a conclusion, like Solomon’s ‘reasoned deduction’ based on all that he has observed under the sun leading UP to this point, in chs1-8:
He opens v1: “But all this I laid to heart, examining it all”,
and here’s his conclusion:
“the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God.”
And for the 1.5 seconds it takes you to pause after that period, before we read Solomon’s next sentence, that sounds like a really comforting truth, doesn’t it? I mean, it was when we grew up SINGING about it in Sunday school, wasn’t it: [*SING*] “He’s got the whoooole world… [WHAT]?”
[“In His Hands”]
You don’t sing it in a MINOR key; that’s supposed to be GOOD news, that God’s got “you and me, brother… you and me, sister… in His hands.”
But Solomon isn’t so sure. He says, “Whether it [God’s REACTION to us being “in His hands”; whether THAT…] is love or hate, man does not know; both are before him.” Both are REAL possibilities: Sure, God may react with LOVE… but you may get HATE.
God declares in Malachi 1, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” (vv2-3)
Sure, Psalm 139:10 offers us comfort that “[the Lord’s] right hand shall hold me”... IF, like Jacob, we are among those “loved” by God.
But Hebrews 10:31 warns us that “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God”... IF - like ESAU - we are among those “hated”.
Psalm 11:5 “The Lord… hates the wicked.”
Psalm 5:5 “...You hate all evildoers.”
So as commentator Philip Ryken points out: “It is not enough to know that we are in God’s hands. Everyone is in God’s hands. The question is whether God’s hand is for us or against us?” (Ecclesiastes, 205)
That’s why the great revivalist Jonathan Edwards warned his congregation - and he would warn US still today - not to wait until it’s too late… don’t wait until your OWN Judgment Day… to realize that you are a “Sinner in the Hands of an Angry God”.
A perfectly HOLY, totally PURE, utterly RIGHTEOUS God will RIGHTLY, JUSTLY be angered by our sin. By ALL sin. Not just the “big ones” - not just murder, rape, adultery. No - that white lie you told your wife this morning to avoid an argument… your vanity, wife - spending more time this morning in front of the mirror on your OUTWARD appearance before others at church than you did in front of God’s word, concerned with your SPIRITUAL appearance before the Lord… kids: your sinful DEFIANCE of your parents’ authority - that EYE-ROLL you gave mom when she asked you to tuck your shirt in, because she’s so vain (that’s her sin! You don’t worry about her; she’ll stand before the Lord one day just like you will - your job is to OBEY her… RESPECT her nevertheless); did you know you coulda been stoned to DEATH in the Old Testament for that eye roll - Deuteronomy 21, look it up! THAT’S how serious God is about sin; how much he HATES it. ALL sin.
And that’s Solomon’s point here: that we are ALL sinners! Even the allegedly “righteous and wise”. Please don’t MISS this crucial truth here, right out of the gate in v1, friends, because otherwise, you may HEAR this warning and be tempted to go out and just try a little harder to “be a good person” this week. But Solomon is only considering the RIGHTEOUS and the WISE here in v1. When he says, “We can’t KNOW, conclusively, whether God’s response to our life is gonna be LOVE or HATE,” he only has “good people” in view.
In OTHER words, for those of you here this morning, who are counting on your “goodness” to SAVE you from God’s righteous, just WRATH against sin when you stand before His Judgment Throne, Solomon is asking you this morning: “How good do you imagine will be “good enough” for a truly holy God? A PERFECT God?”
Cuz that’s how most people today envision their Day of Reckoning going, isn’t it, if they believe in a God at all. They imagine that at Heaven’s Gate, that there’s some sort of “Moral Scale” that they’re gonna step on, that will weigh all of their good deeds against all of their bad deeds, and as long as the GOOD outweighs the “bad”, then the Gate will swing open for them. But Solomon asks, “Are you so sure you know the relative weight that God gives to one deed versus another?” Of course we all WANT to imagine God is like the P.E. teacher, whose JOB it is to give everyone an “A” to raise the school’s average GPA… but what if God’s more like the AP Calculus teacher? Who doesn’t grade on a CURVE. Who doesn’t give points for “trying your hardest” or “showing your work” - you either got the answer RIGHT, or you got it WRONG. And what if to get into Heaven, you don’t just need a “PASSING” grade (a “70”); what if you don’t just need an “A+” (a “99%”). What if Jesus really meant it, when he said in Matthew 5:48 that Heaven is the perfect home of a perfect God, and it’s reserved for perfect people, and therefore, you must “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” to get in? What if the BIBLE really means it, in James 2:10, when it says, “whoever keeps the whole law but fails in just one point has become guilty of all of it.” That just ONE SIN can actually keep you out of heaven forever. Anyone here SIN-LESS?! ZERO SINS, your whole life?! If SO, congratulations - you can get into Heaven on your OWN merit… but for the REST of us, you better listen up this morning, cuz you’re gonna need another way in.
No, Solomon reminds us of the TRUTH in v3; that “the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live”.
That - Romans 3:23 - “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”
1 John 1:8 “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves” - If you think you’re “good enough” to make Heaven’s cut, you’re KIDDING yourself!
As Solomon put it two weeks ago, in chapter 7: “Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins” (v20).
We are ALL sinners. And BECAUSE we’re all sinners…
#2 - We will all DIE. (vv2-3a)
See, the Bible explains in Romans 5 that “death… came into the world… through sin, and death spread to all… because all sinned” (v12).
It explains in Romans 6 that “the wages of sin - the PAYMENT… what is OWED the sinner, because of his sin - is death”.
Similarly, Solomon observes here in v3, that our hearts are “full of evil [SIN]… and after that [we] go to the dead.”
Every… single… ONE of us! V2: “It is the same for all, since the same event - DEATH! - happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice. As the good one is, so is the sinner, and he who swears is as he who shuns an oath.”
To the church attender… and those who skip.
To the one who PRAYS… and the atheist.
To the one who studies her Bible religiously… and those who don't even OWN a Bible.
It makes ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE - death is indiscriminate - it comes for us ALL!
And this painful reality GRIEVES Solomon to his core - v2: “This is an evil in all that is done under the sun [the GREATEST evil he’s observed, of all…], that the same event [DEATH] happens to all.”
And friends, it ought to GRIEVE us as well. Will there be tears of JOY shed at the funeral of a BELIEVER… who KNEW the Lord, and who we therefore know is now in Heaven with her Savior? Absolutely, tears of JOY. But will they be mixed with tears of SORROW as well? Tears of LOSS? Tears that testify to the truth that “it’s really NOT supposed to BE this way” - that we’re NOT supposed to have to say goodbye… that God really HAS put “eternity in our hearts” - Ecclesiastes 3:11 - because he MADE us FOR eternity with HIM, and if we hadn’t screwed up and sinned in the Garden all the way back in Genesis 3, that death wouldn’t have ever even entered the EQUATION - that’s it’s NOT part of God’s original, “very good”, perfect design of Creation; it is UN-natural, it is APPALLING, and it ought NOT to be this way - You better believe there will be THOSE tears shed at the believer’s funeral as well.
And yet those tears are still INFINITELY better, infinitely more HOPE-ful, than the tears shed at the UN-believer’s funeral. The person who died without knowing Jesus, personally, as their Lord and Savior. Which leads us to observation #3 here from Solomon…
That WITHOUT JESUS - cuz remember: Solomon lived and wrote Ecclesiastes 1,000 years before Jesus - and for every single person who lived in Solomon’s day, and for those still today, who don’t know Jesus, personally - without him, #3: We have no HOPE (in death). (vv4-6)
Solomon appraises the situation, and he concludes that without a Savior from sin, devoid of the MESSIAH - who we know is one day coming to set us FREE from the curse of sin and its consequence (DEATH) - but until that DAY, Solomon says in v4: “he who is joined with all the living has [at least SOME] hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion.”
The LION is the “king of the jungle”. And dogs weren’t cute, cuddly PETS back then; they were mangy, vulturous, despised PESTS. But according to Solomon, better to be a living DOG, than a dead LION. Death is that bad, that hopeless.
He goes on, v5: “For the living know that they will die, [SURE, we gotta live with the threat of DEATH constantly hanging over our heads, like an ominous, dark cloud; but it’s STILL better than…] the dead [who] know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. 6 Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished, and forever they have no more share in all that is done under the sun.”
Translation: Death means GAME OVER. There are no extra LIVES, you don’t get 100 tries to beat death, you get ONE chance, and it is a guaranteed DEFEAT. We are ALL born INTO this life knowing FULL WELL that death is the “last enemy” we must face, and that EVENTUALLY, one way or another, every single ONE of us is gonna lose that fight. You might win a couple rounds. We’ve got some folks here at West Hills that have gone toe-to-toe with death and lived to fight another round. Bryan West was given a year to live… 10 years ago. Brian Gaither was given a month or 2 to live… 10 months ago now.
Praise God! Keep on fightin’, brothers! But don’t forget: you WILL lose in the last round! You can kick death’s BUTT for 9 rounds, but He ALWAYS delivers the knock-out punch in the end. Sooner or later, you WILL end up like all the other 109.2 billion: DEAD.
And what’s true for Bryan and Brian is true for you and ME as well: when we step in the ring against death, we have ABSOLUTELY NO HOPE of walking out alive. Death WILL come for, and FINISH, us ALL.
SO: what can we DO about it? Solomon commends 3 things, 3 responses in light of death’s inevitability. And let me just say: Solomon’s advice is still GOOD advice for us today. Even though he lived 3,000 years ago and didn’t have the FULL PICTURE of God’s redemptive plan that WE now have in our completed Bibles, the fulfillment of God’s OT promises, nevertheless, there is still WISDOM in Solomon’s words here for us to live by today.
In light of life’s “hevel-ness”, its futility and TEMPORARINESS - because we all SIN, and therefore we all DIE, and without Jesus, we have no hope BEYOND the grave - in light of ALL that, how then should we live?
#1 - We should LIVE it up. (vv7-9a) PARTY! You heard me right: the Bible is giving you permission this morning - not just the permission; the COMMAND - to grab life by the horns, and milk it for all it’s worth (is that mixing metaphors? You get the point - LIVE IT UP!)
When we realize that we have but this one life to live, and we recognize how BRIEF it really is, that oughta inspire us to make the MOST of it! Carpe diem! YOLO! YEET! (I’ve been told that’s Gen Z slang for: “JUST GO FOR IT!”)
Or in SOLOMON’S words:
“Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart…”
“Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow, we…? [DIE!]” And ALSO because…
“...God has already approved what you do.”
Some of us grew up in such legalistic churches - First Baptist FOOTLOOSE - where they replaced God’s Commandments with their OWN: “Thou shalt not have any FUN!” - No drinking, no dancing, no gambling (which meant no cards or dice or fun games of any kind)... No sex (unless it’s between a husband and a wife, once a year, to make a baby, missionary position, with ALL the lights off, and you should STILL feel DIRTY about it afterward!) - but if they had “thumped” their Bibles a little harder, it might’ve fallen open to Ecclesiastes and they’d have to deal with ch9 here, and God’s COMMENDATION of our FUN - “Eat, drink and be merry, for God APPROVES”. They didn’t PREACH that one at First Baptist Footloose! (much LESS Song of Solomon!)
They didn’t preach 1 Timothy 4:4-5 “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.” Philip Ryken suggests if it’s not explicitly UN-holy according to the “word of God”, and if it’s something you can with a clean conscience be “thankful” for when you “pray” - “God: thank you for this thoroughly secular TV show that is nevertheless both entertaining AND edifying; thank you for this secular band who don’t seem to know you at ALL, but through whom I experience your beauty in music; God: thank you for the Chiefs: for overpaid, oversized men who smash into each other every Sunday for my viewing pleasure.”
Solomon says, “Go home this afternoon, crack open a beer, and watch the game with a merry heart, for God approves”.
Wives: while he does, go out and get that mani-pedi you’ve been wanting but telling yourself you don’t really NEED; of course you don’t. But we don’t “need” football either, or WINE in v7, or “oil for our heads” in v8 - their version of perfume; you don’t NEED perfume. But Solomon’s saying: “Treat Yo-self!”
“Let your garments be always white”, v8; Ryken explains (214): “White garments were the ‘dress-up clothes’ of the ancient Near East [for] festive occasions… They were worn by war heroes in a victory parade, by slaves on the day they gained their freedom, and by priests on the high holy days of Israel.” In other words: “put on your PARTY clothes!” Time to live it UP!
V9: “Enjoy life with the wife whom you love” → Enjoy your spouse; don’t just TOLERATE him, don’t just PUT UP with her… ENJOY them! Husbands: do you make it EASY for her to enjoy you? Do you LOVE her like Christ loves His Church? (Eph 5:25) Are you GENTLE with her (Col 3:19), do you treat her with RESPECT (1 Pet 3:7)?
Wives: do YOU make it easy for him to enjoy you? Do YOU respect HIM (1 Pet 3:1)? Do you do him GOOD and not HARM (Prov 31:12)? Are you a Proverbs 31 woman, or a Proverbs 19 woman: “a wife's NAGGING is like a continual dripping of rain” (v13)? Do you use SEX as a weapon against him (1 Cor 7:4)?
If you don’t ENJOY one another as a couple, you need to get into marriage counseling and FIX some stuff, cuz you’re breaking God’s LAW. Marriage is a good gift, from a good God, intended for our enjoyment. And so too is…
#2 - WORK. We should WORK hard. (vv9b-10)
V10: “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might”
Don’t just TOLERATE your 9-to-5 so you can “live it up” AFTER work; Solomon says, “Grab your CAREER by the horns as well!” Find something worth doing, and do it WELL. Put your heart and SOUL into it.
Colossians 3:23, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men”. Do your job like you would if JESUS were your boss.
PARTY ON, but work diligently too. As philosopher David Guetta put it: “Work hard, play hard”. But thirdly, and finally, Solomon advises…
#3 - We should Not get too ATTACHED. (vv11-12) Don’t get too attached to life here under the sun, cuz it’s nothing but a BREATH; you’re gonna BLINK, and it’ll all be OVER.
V11: “the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all.”
Life is UNPREDICTABLE. You would THINK that the fastest runner wins the race. That the stronger warrior wins the battle. That health, wealth, and happiness go to the wise and the righteous.
But what about the tortoise and the hare? What about David and Goliath? What about all the wise, righteous folks Solomon observed and lamented LAST week in ch8, who instead suffer the fate of evil FOOLS?! And vice versa - the “wicked to whom it happens according to the deeds of the righteous”. Life is UNFAIR. And it’s unpredictable.
And MOST unfair, and unpredictable of all, is DEATH: “time and chance happen to them all. For man does not know his time. Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them.”
One second you’re swimming along - flying along - free as can be, and the next second, “WHAM!” Your name gets called.
Like my grandmother, who died of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever from a tick bite when she was in her 60s. One day she’s strolling through the woods, enjoying retirement; a few weeks later, she’s gone.
Like COOLIO, who died in his 50s just last month. One minute he’s livin’ in a Gangsta’s Paradise down here; the next, he has a massive heart attack and he’s gone.
Like Sara Beth Whitehead. I was in youth group with Sara Beth growing up; she was in middle school when I was in high school. I was buddies with her older brother. She was a fun, sweet girl, one of those rare middle schoolers who EVERYONE seemed to LIKE. When she was a freshmen in high school, she wrote in her diary, “I want to set a record in Track & Field for shot put and hopefully go to State. I also would like to focus on school work and go on to a college that can educate me in Physical Therapy or Sports Medicine. In college, I would like to use my faith to reach out to people who don’t know Jesus. After college, I want to open my own athletic training complex. After I’ve completed those tasks, then I’ll think about marriage. I know God has set aside some one for me so when I find him and we’re happily married and have kids (no more than 3) then I’ll know that life is good. What do I hope to accomplish in the next 10 years of my life? I would like to see myself as a hard working mother, wife and friend.”
Three weeks after Sara Beth wrote that, she contracted viral meningitis, went to sleep one night, and never woke up. Her parents couldn’t wake her up the next morning for school, she was rushed to the hospital, and within 24 hours, she was pronounced DEAD. That diary entry was read at her funeral a week later.
Don’t get too attached. You are not promised your next breath around here, and you certainly don’t DESERVE it. Every day, every BREATH, is an undeserved gift from a gracious God. So enjoy it while you can. Because one day, perhaps far sooner than YOU planned, it will all be over.
And when it is, only ONE QUESTION will matter for the rest of your eternity: Did you ever find a SAVIOR, to deal with your SIN problem, we talked about back in point #1?
Did you find a CONQUEROR, who is even more powerful than DEATH, point #2?
Did you find a HOPE that can last you BEYOND the grave?
Solomon lived 1,000 years too early to meet him, but WE know His name is JESUS.
Jesus forgives sins, he defeats death, and he gives ETERNAL hope. Trust in Him today, and you will be SAVED. “Whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life” (Jn 3:16).
Trust in Him today, and you will be BLESSED. “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord” (Rev 14:13)
Trust in Him today, and you don’t have to fear death any longer. “Through his death [Jesus] destroyed …the power of death… and deliver[ed] all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.” (Heb 2:15)
Trust in Him today, and your hope can be SECURE in Heaven. “According to [God’s] great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you” (1 Pet 1:3-4).
Amen and Amen.