Ecclesiastes 7:1-4 New King James Version
The Value of Practical Wisdom
7 A good name is better than precious ointment,
And the day of death than the day of one’s birth;
2 Better to go to the house of mourning
Than to go to the house of feasting,
For that is the end of all men;
And the living will take it to heart.
3 [a]Sorrow is better than laughter,
For by a sad countenance the heart is made [b]better.
4 The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning,
But the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.
Word of God for the Children of God
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen.
“For this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart.” – Ecclesiastes 7:2
This is one of those verses in the Bible that serves as a sober reminder to all of us that we will, one day, die, and that day could be any moment of any day.
It could be today for any one of us.
Now think about James 4, which just reminds us that our life is a mist, it’s a small gust of wind, barely visible vapor. It’s here one second and gone the next.
That’s part of the picture in Ecclesiastes 7, “This is the end of all mankind,” and listen to this phrase, “The living will lay it to heart.” Those who live who are wise, remember Ecclesiastes, this is a big part of wisdom literature in the Bible.
Reminded of God’s Wisdom
Ecclesiastes 7:1-4 The Message
Don’t Take Anything for Granted
7 A good reputation is better than a fat bank account.
Your death date tells more than your birth date.
2 You learn more at a funeral than at a feast—
After all, that’s where we’ll end up. We might discover
something from it.
3 Crying is better than laughing.
It blotches the face but it scours the heart.
4 Sages invest themselves in hurt and grieving.
Fools waste their lives in fun and games.
There is wisdom that’s found in living daily, with the reality that none of us is going to be guaranteed any more tomorrows, and so we make the most of today.
Doesn’t this just lead us like, “Oh, just think about how this leads us to pray and then to live”?
What if you knew today was your last day, how would that change the way you love the people around you, the way you then speak to those people around you, the way you prioritize, rationalize, reprioritize any number of different things?
Now, obviously, there’s a sense in which that kind of thinking falters a bit. I mean if you knew today was the last day, you might not go to work, or do email, or this or that in the same way that… Well, we need to do sometimes on a daily basis in our jobs as we faithfully follow the Triune God and provide for families.
Ecclesiastes 7:2 Helps Us Honor God
Psalm 23 The Message
23 1-3 God, my shepherd!
I don’t need a thing.
You have bedded me down in lush meadows,
you find me quiet pools to drink from.
True to your word,
you let me catch my breath
and send me in the right direction.
4 Even when the way goes through
Death Valley,
I’m not afraid
when you walk at my side.
Your trusty shepherd’s crook
makes me feel secure.
5 You serve me a six-course dinner
right in front of my enemies.
You revive my drooping head;
my cup brims with blessing.
6 Your beauty and love chase after me
every day of my life.
I’m back home in the house of God
for the rest of my life.
We go to school, raise our families, whatever it might be, but it is good to think, “Okay, how can I live, love, work today in a way I’m ready to see Jesus’ face?
How can I relate to others today in a way that I’m ready to see Jesus’ face, and they are ready to see Jesus’ face?”
It changes the way you live when you lay it to heart, your life is a vapor, a mist.
So we pray, God, help us today to make the most of the day we have.
And if we’re listening to this prayer tonight, tomorrow, to make the most of each moment, each day with you.
Before you God, we want to be found faithful before you, when we want to stand before you on that day.
And if it’s today, hear you say, “Well done, good, and faithful servant.”
Ecclesiastes 7:2 Leads Us to Pray for God’s Grace
Isaiah 40:8 The Message
6-8 A voice says, “Shout!”
I said, “What shall I shout?”
“These people are nothing but grass,
their love fragile as wildflowers.
The grass withers, the wildflowers fade,
if God so much as puffs on them.
Aren’t these people just so much grass?
True, the grass withers and the wildflowers fade,
but our God’s Word stands firm and forever.”
God, we pray for your grace to live before you, that could happen today, and to live before others like this.
Triune God makes echelons more sense, not that it didn’t before, but your great commandment. Still covenanted to love you with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and I love others as ourselves.
Triune God, help us to do that today, help us to love you wholeheartedly and love others selflessly, and seems like the wisest way to live today if we knew it was going to be our last. So, God helps us to do this, help us to love you, love others, care for others, speak to others in a way that points them to you, walk in holiness before you, share the gospel, to share the good news that has all of the power to transform people’s lives around us for all of eternity.
Called to Share the Gospel with Urgency
Acts 2:14-21 The Message
Peter Speaks Up
14-21 That’s when Peter stood up and, backed by the other eleven, spoke out with bold urgency: “Fellow Jews, all of you who are visiting Jerusalem, listen carefully and get this story straight. These people aren’t drunk as some of you suspect. They haven’t had time to get drunk—it’s only nine o’clock in the morning. This is what the prophet Joel announced would happen:
“In the Last Days,” God says,
“I will pour out my Spirit
on every kind of people:
Your sons will prophesy,
also your daughters;
Your young men will see visions,
your old men dream dreams.
When the time comes,
I’ll pour out my Spirit
On those who serve me, men and women both,
and they’ll prophesy.
I’ll set wonders in the sky above
and signs on the earth below,
Blood and fire and billowing smoke,
the sun turning black and the moon blood-red,
Before the Day of the Lord arrives,
the Day tremendous and marvelous;
And whoever calls out for help
to me, God, will be saved.”
God, we pray that you would help us to live like that, knowing that the people around us are not guaranteed tomorrow either, that they could be gone tomorrow.
And so help us to share the gospel with urgency today as we pray for unreached people all the time.
God, we pray for the spread of the gospel to billions, three billion-plus people who have little to no knowledge of the gospel right now, many who will not make it to tomorrow, without ever hearing the good news of your grace.
Help us in our lives and our families and churches to make this gospel known among all the nations in the little bit of time you’ve given us on this earth. God, we pray you’d help us to live with the end in mind and to lay all of this to heart today. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.
Why is it better to go to a funeral than a party?
Why is a funeral better than a party? Because it reminds us that everyone dies, and the living need to take this to heart.
Seeing someone ready to be buried makes us think about life’s brevity. We realize death is coming for all, and this should affect how we live.
What does it mean sorrow is better than laughter?
The New Living Translation says that the reason why sorrow is better than laughter is because “sadness has a refining influence on us.”
As unenjoyable as sorrow might be, it actually has the power to affect me in a profound, life-changing way that laughter has never been capable of doing.
Book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament written by King Solomon, the wisest man that ever lived. He wrote much of the Book of Proverbs as well.
He had experimented in his youth with living life to the fullest.
Chasing after all kinds of pleasure: food, drink, women; trying to find the meaning of life in his riches or in his great accomplishments.
But he always came back to the same theme – You have heard what he wrote: “Vanity of Vanities, all is vanity.” It is all Chasing after the Wind.
He knew life was empty and meaningless and futile when viewed “under the sun” = without a personal relationship with God who alone can give meaning to our lives.
So in this short verse he gives us God’s perspective on dealing with our mortality.
Laughing and feasting provide a escape from the pressures of life but they do not prepare us for death.
Something about contemplating death turns our thoughts towards the eternal rather than the temporal and makes us ask the tough questions.
What are some of those tough questions?
Remember Solomon tells us it is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting.
1) Tough Question #1: What’s so valuable about coming face to face with death?
Somehow what we are experiencing together today, despite the mourning, the grief, the sorrow, is more valuable than times of feasting and happiness.
How can that be? There’s an illustration in the Bible that I think provides the answer.
Apostle Peter writes in his second epistle people in our day will end up mocking the promise of Jesus coming back to earth, will hold men accountable.
Where is the promise of His coming? People scoff.
We are just eating and drinking and having a grand old time. We don’t have to answer to God.
But Peter points back to the days of Noah – just before God brought judgment via a worldwide flood – people were ignoring God in similar fashion. Forcing us to face the reality of death in a service like this helps prevent God’s judgment from taking us by surprise.
2) Tough Question #2: Why are we all headed for death anyway?
Death entered into this world back when sin entered into this world.
Death physically is the separation of the body from the spirit.
But even more importantly, death spiritually involves our separation from the God who created us who is perfectly holy.
We are all sinners. That should be no surprise to anyone here. I have been blessed already with 1 grandkid. I love them to death. But I’m not surprised to find that they all can be selfish and disobey their parents. You have to teach kids to behave and share their toys; you don’t have to teach them how to sin.
So it’s no surprise that as adults we wrestle with selfishness, with pride, with various appetites of the flesh.
No matter how hard we try, we are not going to escape sin.
The wages of sin is death.
Wages are what you get for what you do. [I’m retired now, so I don’t get any more financial wages. I hope that doesn’t mean I’m not doing anything.]
After death comes the judgment where we stand accountable before God.
There is no escaping that accountability.
We can deny that reality.
We can hide behind a life of pleasure – of escapism – of trying to avoid the unpleasantness of death.
We can even try to stay young by watching our diet and exercising.
But we won’t escape death.
3) Tough Question #3: How can we be prepared to face God? How can we who are sinners end up spending eternity with a God who is holy?
Here’s where people have invented all types of humanistic and religious systems to attempt to erase their sins and wipe the slate clean.
They all center around some type of works approach to do enough good so that we can earn God’s favor. But the truth is we can never be good enough.
It’s not about going to church. It’s not about being baptized or confirmed.
It’s not about reading your Bible and praying.
Don’t get me wrong; those are good activities. But they can’t save you.
What you need is to enter into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
In the name of God, the father and God the Son and God, the Holy Spirit,
Praying …
Psalm 84 The Message
84 1-2 What a beautiful home, God-of-the-Angel-Armies!
I’ve always longed to live in a place like this,
Always dreamed of a room in your house,
where I could sing for joy to God-alive!
3-4 Birds find nooks and crannies in your house,
sparrows and swallows make nests there.
They lay their eggs and raise their young,
singing their songs in the place where we worship.
God-of-the-Angel-Armies! King! God!
How blessed they are to live and sing there!
5-7 And how blessed all those in whom you live,
whose lives become roads you travel;
They wind through lonesome valleys, come upon brooks,
discover cool springs and pools brimming with rain!
God-traveled, these roads curve up the mountain, and
at the last turn—Zion! God in full view!
8-9 God-of-the-Angel-Armies, listen:
O God of Jacob, open your ears—I’m praying!
Look at our shields, glistening in the sun,
our faces, shining with your gracious anointing.
10-12 One day spent in your house, this beautiful place of worship,
beats thousands spent on Greek island beaches.
I’d rather scrub floors in the house of my God
than be honored as a guest in the palace of sin.
All sunshine and sovereign is God,
generous in gifts and glory.
He doesn’t scrimp with his traveling companions.
It’s smooth sailing all the way with God-of-the-Angel-Armies.
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen.
https://translate.google.com/?
Loving God, Living God, Loving Hope, Living Hope, Loving Living Life His Way! "Many things are possible for the person who has hope. Even more is possible for the person who has faith. And still more is possible for the person who knows how to love. But everything is possible for the person who practices all three virtues." - Brother Lawrence (1605-1691), Practicing the Presence of God (1692). 