Leo Tolstoy wrote what the Encyclopedia Britannica describes as “one of the two or three greatest novels in world literature”-War and Peace. But he also wrote a book in 1879 called A Confession, which tells the story of his search for meaning and purpose in life. Rejecting Christianity as a child, Tolstoy left his university seeking pleasure. In Moscow and Petersburg, he drank heavily, lived promiscuously, and gambled frequently. His ambition was to become wealthy and famous, but nothing satisfied him. In 1862, he married a loving wife and had 13 children; he was surrounded by what appeared to be complete happiness. Yet one question haunted him to the verge of suicide: “Is there any meaning in my life which will not be annihilated by the inevitability of death, which awaits me?” Nicky Gumbel, in the Questions of Life, explains what triggered Tolstoy’s conversion:
He searched for the answer in every field of science and philosophy.
As he looked around at his contemporaries, he saw that people were not facing up to the first-order questions of life (“Where did I come from?” “Where am I going?” “Who am I?” “What is life all about?”). Eventually he found that the peasant people of Russia had been able to answer these questions through their Christian faith, and he came to realize that only in Jesus Christ do we find the answer. A hundred years later, nothing has changed. Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of the rock group Queen, who died of AIDS at the end of 1991, wrote in one of his last songs on The Miracle album: “Does anybody know what we are living for?”
This is the question I’d like us to address today..no matter how you phrase it, the meaning is the same..
‘What is the point of life?’
More than 3000 years ago the wealthiest man in the world went on a journey not unlike Tolstoy’s journey.
This was a man so rich that even today his wealth is the legendary. He was a man of intelligence, wisdom, respect, admiration, power and influence. A leader of leaders. And his name is Solomon. In the book of Ecclesiastes Solomon writes about the futility of life. Ecclesiastes 7:24, “How can anyone discover the meaning of life?”
At some point every one of us will have to answer this question. “Why am I here?” “What is the meaning of life?” In Ecclesiastes 1, Solomon, says there are five things that result
1. WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW THE PURPOSE OF LIFE.
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A. Life seems useless.
The Message paraphrase reads, Ecclesiastes 1:1-4, “Smoke, nothing but smoke. There’s nothing to anything – it’s all smoke. What’s there to show for a lifetime of work, a lifetime of working your fingers to the bone? One generation goes it’s way, the next one arrives, but nothing changes.”
If you don’t know the meaning of life why not just sleep in? What’s the use?
The world just stays the same. It’s empty. Then Solomon says,
B. Life seems tiresome.
We seem to be spinning our wheels, running in circles. We’re like a treadmill; we’re in a rat race. Ecclesiastes 1:5-8, “The sun comes up and the sun goes down, then does it again, and again -the same old round. The wind blows south, the wind blows north. Around and around and around it blows, blowing this way, then that-thee whirling, erratic wind.
Have you ever used this argument, “Why do I have to clean my room, it’ll only get dirty again?” Just about the time you take the Christmas lights down, it’s time to put them back up again.
Life seems like an endless circle.
C. Life seems un-fulfilling.
No satisfaction. No matter how much we see, we’re never satisfied. No mater how much we have, we’re not content.
Ecclesiastes 1:8-9 , “Everything’s boring, utterly boring-no one can find any meaning in it. What was will be again, what happened will happen again. There’s nothing new on this earth. Tear after year it’s the same old thing.”
D. Life is insignificant.
Life seems insignificant when you don’t know the purpose of it.
Ecclesiastes 1:11, “Nobody remembers what happened yesterday. And the things that will happen tomorrow? Nobody’ll remember them either. Don’t count on being remembered.”
Fame is fleeting. Your name may be in lights today but nobody is going to remember you tomorrow. You set records on the track and tomorrow they’re broken by somebody else, and you’re forgotten.
There are people who spend big bucks to get their name on a building trying to preserve their name. Most of you went to a college to a school where every building had a name on it. But did it matter to you? No! Who cares?
Life just seems insignificant when you don’t know the purpose.
E. Life seems uncontrollable.
Solomon writes,
Ecclesiastes 1:15, “Life is a corkscrew that can’t be straightened. A minus that won’t add up.”
He’s referring to situations beyond out control. Have you ever straightened out something that just refused to be straightened out? Have you ever tried to solve a problem that you just couldn’t figure out?
Change somebody, or a circumstance, you just can’t do it?
He says eventually we’ll all come to a point in life and say, life is uncontrollable. There are some things in life, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t fix it.
Solomon was a man who had the time, the money, the energy to take the journey of a lifetime. No restraints.nothing to hold him back.
Solomon recorded his observations in a journal we call the book of Ecclesiastes. This journey he took, while mind boggling, left him deflated, depressed and disillusioned. EMPTY. His favorite and most often repeated description ..VANITY OF VANITIES, ALL IS VANITY. In vs. 14 he writes, “Everything under the sun is meaningless, like chasing the wind.” To use his words it is an UNDER THE SUN perspective.
Time after time Solomon mentions his horizontal – strictly human viewpoint. In every major section of his journal he uses the words “under the sun,” and “under heaven.” Because he seldom looks above the sun, life seems drab, and depressing, hopelessly meaningless. Because he left God out of the picture, nothing satisfied. It never will!
A COUPLE OF PRACTICAL OBSERVATIONS:
- If there is nothing but nothing under the sun, then our only hope must be above/beyond it.
- If a man investigated everything visible.then the one vital missing piece must be the invisible.
Solomon had everything, explored everything, yet found no satisfaction.
Let me tell you what I believe:
Satisfaction in life under the sun will never happen until we have a meaningful relationship with the Lord above the sun.
Friends, we don’t have Solomon’s money. brains .. so we couldn’t go to the depths he went to, even if we tried. That’s even more reason to listen to a man who has been there. He says I’m anxious to tell you what I experienced
He is going to say:
- it’s not worth it to go into drugs.
- give yourself to booze.
- that affair won’t make you happy .
- if you think the answer is some high powered business or money or great athletic achievement — you will one day wonder why you thought it was such a big deal.
If your life is being lived strictly on the horizontal plan . it won’t bring you lasting happiness!
Solomon would say – The fact is that the world is not wonderful.
The world is wicked, corrupt, and depraved. Work isn’t enriching and fulfilling; its tiring and futile and it blows up in your face. People aren’t kind and generous; people are selfish and cruel. Life on planet earth isn’t a great big bowl of cherries; its the pits. It is boring, it is empty. It is a grind. It is chasing the wind.
That’s true if you’re educated or untaught. young or old. professional person, or blue collar worker . live in a penthouse or a garage apartment . it won’t be different if your circumstances change. Don’t believe me . believe God.. and instead of blaming Him, realize HE HAD A REASON FOR OUR HORIZONTAL LIVES BEING SO VOID OF PURPOSE.
2. WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW THE POINT OF LIFE, YOU HAVE THREE OPTIONS:
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A. Make up some meaning.
A lot of people do this.
We were made to have something at the center of our life. If people don’t have God at the center of their life, they try to put something else there. They end up being addicted to making money, or sports, or having fun, or work. They are trying to fill their life with meaning.
People frantically try to find meaning for their life. But inside they know that it doesn’t work. This is the fallacy of humanism.
Three of the greatest minds in western civilization were Marx, Freud, and Darwin and all three of them said the same thing. They all said, “You came from nothing, you’re going to nothing.” We all came from this primal ooze and you’re just some evolutionary blob, you weren’t created, you were a cosmic accident.
It’s the theory of evolution, and Frank Peretti calls it, “from goo to you by way of the zoo.” The humanist comes along and says, “You came from nowhere and you’re going to nowhere but while you’re here on earth your life has meaning and value and dignity.”
WHAT?
That is why I have no respect, intellectually, for humanists. It is intellectually dishonest to say, I didn’t come from anywhere — it was an accident — and I’m not going anywhere — but while I’m here I matter! No, it’s not true.
If there is no God, no eternity, no day of accounting we’re not accountable for our lives. If God didn’t create us and there’s not any eternity, then please have the intellectual guts to admit that your life doesn’t matter! It just doesn’t matter if those things are really true. You’re just a complex germ. I don’t believe those things are true, because the Bible tells differently.
The Bible says you do matter.
But when people don’t know the purpose of life they just try to make up some meaning and it doesn’t work.
A second option is to .
B. Escape.
If life has no meaning, then just escape from it. Use TV, become a couch potato. Use food, sex, drugs, movies. The ultimate escape is suicide. Suicide is one of the largest killers of people in America — the second largest killer of teenagers.
Why? If you don’t know the meaning of life, the ultimate thing is despair. What am I doing? Life is useless, pointless, repetitive, unfulfilled and insignificant.
What are the alternatives?
· Try to make up some meaning? That doesn’t work.
· Try to escape? That’s a cop out.
The third option is to.
C. Discover the real meaning of life.
Fortunately, God told us. He told us what the meaning of life is.
Ephesians 1:4-5, “Long ago, even before he made the world, God chose us to be his very own through what Christ would do for us… with his love. His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into his own family by sending Jesus Christ to die for us. And he did this because he wanted to!”
What is the point of life? What was God’s purpose in creating the world? In creating you and me? It says here that you were made to be loved by God. You were created as an object of God’s love. God made you just to love you.
The Bible says that God is love.
It doesn’t say he has love. It says he is love. If I have love but don’t bestow it on a person or thing or animal, that love is useless. The Bible says that you were created by God simply to be loved. And to “Adopt us into his family”.you were made to be part of God’s family. But that’s not all of his plan. Paul tell us more in vs. 10. God’s plan is.
Ephesian 1:10, “and this was his purpose: that when the time is ripe he will gather us all together from wherever we are-in heaven or on earth-to be with him in Christ forever. (Living Bible)
Forever! History is moving toward an appointed destiny and you personally are moving toward an appointed destiny.
Life is not a cycle, just round and round in a treadmill. There was a beginning and there is a point of destiny. There is eternity on the other side of that. Life is not circular; it is linear.
The Bible says that you are moving toward an appointed destiny.
God first made you to love you, He wants you to be a part of His family and He says that one day He’s going to gather everybody who is a part of His family and we’re going to live forever with Him. Forever!
If you don’t get anything else, get this:
LIFE IS PREPARATION FOR ETERNITY.
Ecclesiastes 3:11, “He has set eternity in the hearts of men.”
You were made to last forever. IT is an understatement to say that God has long range plans for your life.
It’s not for the 60, 70, 80 years you live here but forever and forever and forever. You were made to last forever.
Life is a prep school, a trial run, a dress rehearsal for eternity. It’s not just here and now that matters. You need to realize what you’re doing now is preparation for forever.
God has a plan, a purpose for your life. God wants you to do four things that will prepare you for all the rest of eternity.
3. 4 THINGS GOD WANTS YOU TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE
A. Get to know God.
Establish your relationship with God. That’s the first step.
How?
John 1:12, “To all who receive Him, Christ gives the right to become children of God.”
Jesus Christ has already done for you what is necessary for you to get into God’s family. You establish a relationship with God by receiving Jesus Christ..asking his forgiveness, committing your life to him. To have a relationship it involves knowing the person, trusting the person, sharing with the person, enjoying the person, listening, spending time with the person.
Communicate. You establish a relationship with God the exact same way. Spending time with Him, talking with Him, listening to Him through His Word, the Bible. So many people are misled in their thinking that to get to know God you need to get into a religion.it’s not about religion, it’s about relationship.
B. Become like Christ.
Once you’re in the family, God wants you to spend the rest of your life developing family characteristics. The Bible teaches that life is a school of character development. God wants to use everything that happens in your life to build character in you for eternity. Honesty, integrity, thankfulness, love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self control. God wants to build character into y our life. He wants to make you like Jesus Christ.
This has been God’s goal from the very beginning. It’s not anything new. In the first chapter of the Bible, Genesis 1, God says when He created the world, “Let us make man in our image.” From the beginning of time it’s been God’s plan to make people like Himself -not little gods, but Godly, and having the characteristics of God. That plan has never changed.
From the beginning of time, God has wanted to make man in His own image. We kind of messed it up with win. Christ came and He offers us a way to restore that image. The Bible says that everything that happens in your life, once you are a believer, God is using to help you get to know Him and become like His son, Jesus Christ. Romans 8:28-29, “For those who love God everything that happens fits into a pattern for good, for God chose us to bear the family likeness of His son so that He might be the eldest of many brothers.” Everything that happens to you is not good, but it fits into a pattern for good.
That pattern is to make me like His Son Jesus Christ. That’s what God wants to do in your life.
You need to understand that so that when things are unfair in your life and things are painful and things don’t count in your life and you can’t understand it, it’s all confusing, then you can realize what God is doing. He’s working on your life to make you like Jesus Christ. That purpose has never changed.
You say, “Doesn’t God want me to be happy?” Of course He does here and now. But not at the expense of preparing you for eternity. And God is far more interested in your character than He is in your convenience and comfort.
C. Practice serving.
I can prepare for eternity by practicing serving. God has some plans for you in eternity. He has plans for you to serve. He has a place for you to serve.
You’re not just going to set up in heaven and strum harps. That idea is not in the Bible. The angels might play harps but people don’t. You’re going to be working in eternity. And you’ll enjoy it. It will be perfectly suited to you. You’ll find fulfillment and meaning in it.
God says you’re going to serve in eternity. He wants you to practice serving while you’re here. He wants you, while you’re here on earth, to learn to think of other people and not just yourself. He wants you to learn to be a giver and not just a taker.
Ephesians 2:10, For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (NIV) If you don’t do this then you’re missing the point of life.
This third thing Gold wants you to do – practice serving. God has given you talents and abilities and He wants you to develop them. Meaning in life comes from serving.
Jesus said, “If you try to save your life you’ll lose it, but if you give your life away, you’ll find it.”
Most people live just for the here and now. They go to work, pay the bills, spend time with the family, a few friends, but they never consider that life is not about the here and now.it’s about eternity. There is a term for living for just the here and now. It’s SECULARISM
SECULARISM = “the here and now”.
Secularism comes from the Latin word meaning “the here and now.” If you think it doesn’t get any better than this” – Wrong! It does get better.
And you need to understand God made you to know Him, to become like Him, to practice service. Get an eternal perspective on life.
John 8:23-24, (The Message) “You’re tied down to the mundane,” Jesus once said. “I’m in touch with what is beyond your horizons. You live in terms of what you see and touch. I’m living on other terms. I told you that you were missing God in all this. You’re at a dead end.. You’re missing God in your lives.”
D. Share this purpose with other people.
Have you ever noticed how many people are willing to try everything before they’ll try Christ. They’ll try being good, doing good, eastern religions, and it’s very common today for people to make and mix their own set up beliefs.
Why do people resist God’s love in Christ? Larry Crabb writes about a therapist who used to assemble a group and play a game he called TOP SECRET. He’d ask the people to write out the one ting about themselves that they were the least inclined to share, the one thing nobody knew about them, and then to return the paper unsigned. Over the years, one answer consistently emerged as the most frequently admitted top secret: “I feel utterly worthless. No one would want me if they knew me.” There can be little sense of ultimate purpose apart from the understanding that God made you, he loves you, he has a plan for your life, and you are a person of incredible worth.
The Bible says, you are a precious child of God.
I John 3:1, “Consider the incredible love that the Father has shown us in allowing us to be called ‘children of God.'”
Wrote the apostle John. “And that is not just what we are called, but what we are.”
I am absolutely convinced that the number need in the life of every unbeliever is the need to be loved. The need to be told they are a person of worth. And that God has a purpose for their lives.
Last Sunday I attended the funeral of my father, and I gained a new perspective on life. You see, my father taught me that there are just a few things that are worth investing your life in. One of those things is God’s Word. Dad was a student of the Bible, he loved it like no other book. It was truly precious to him, and dad taught me to love the Bible. Another thing dad taught me to invest in is people.
Dad was a very private man, but he freely gave his life away to invest in the people of his church and community. Our entire family was blessed to be together the week just prior to Dad’s funeral. We heard the testimony of people whose lives have touched by my dad.
Flowers, and food, and cards, and phone calls from all over the country, from people who wanted us to know that there life was forever changed by the ministry of my dad. Dad pastored for nearly 40 years, and taught a Sunday School class up to the week before he died. At Dad’s funeral more than 400 people came to honor the life of my father and celebrate his passing into eternity of my father.
In the receiving line at the visitation, just prior to the funeral I stood with my mom. I remember one lady, a woman who did not know Christ, saying, “I am so sorry for you, this is such a sad occasion.” In the midst of tears held back, mom responded, “Oh, but this is not a sad occasion, this is a celebration. Charles is not here, he is in heaven with Jesus.”
I share this with you not so much to honor my dad, although he is a man with honoring. I share this because I want you to understand how absolutely vital it is that every one in your circle of influence hear this good news.
That Jesus Christ died for their sins, and lives today to give them a purpose for living.and a life for eternity. Let me ask you to bow your heads for just a moment, and as you do, would you consider this question..
Are you living your life in accordance with God’s plan? Are you living with a perspective on eternity?
God, sometimes life has seemed useless or tiring or un? fulfilling.
Sometimes life has seemed out of control. But I realize today this is not the end of it all but there is more to life than just the here and now. I realize that you made me to love me. I thank you for that.
Today I want to take the first step in preparing for eternity and I want to get to know You. I want to establish a relationship. I want to accept what Jesus Christ has done for me. I don’t understand it all but I want to get to know you. Then I want to ask you to help me start becoming the person you want me to be and to practice serving. And finally, I ask that you would help me to overcome whatever barriers there are to sharing this purpose with others.
Today I want to take that first step of commitment. Amen.