<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Weimar University

Don Mackintosh

The Crucial Connection

And I want to thank my sister for this wonderful display of flowers for our Father for the memorial today.

And I want to thank Pastor Burkett for that wonderful dedication service today.

See if I can get to our message here today.

I wanted to consider this passage that was mentioned here in our scripture reading.

If I can find my notes here, oh there they are.

And the reason I chose the passage today was kind of two-fold.

And I actually want to add another verse to it.

Ecclesiastes chapter 12, verse 13 and 14.

So let's pray and then we'll just dive right in.

Father in heaven, thank you today for the opportunity to speak a word in season for you today.

We ask that you'd speak to us individually as each have needs today.

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter.

Fear God, keep his commandments, for this is man's all.

For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil.

So the reason I chose this was years ago, when I graduated from college, my dad gave me a Bible.

And I haven't used it in years because it's literally is falling apart, and I've had several Bibles since then But I looked and found it and took a picture of this Fly leaf where my dad gave me a Bible June 8 1986 College graduation lots of love to a wonderful son.

I was in rebellion against God, against my dad, and he gives me this Bible.

And I was so upset when he gave me the Bible that I literally threw it down.

I never looked at the introduction of it till this fly leaf till later.

And then I saw that verse, Ecclesiastes 12, 1 through 14, and I didn't read it.

Remember your creator in the days of your youth.

Solomon, in the book of Ecclesiastes, was written by the wisest man who ever lived.

And there are extra biblical sources that say he was the wisest man that ever lived.

It's not just the scriptures that say it, he was known in the surrounding cultures.

When we were in Egypt recently, they knew about Solomon in Egypt.

And he had put up pillars concerning the places he thought the Hebrews had traveled concerning the Exodus.

He was a well-known and powerful king and he was the wisest man that ever lived because when he was asked what he wanted in his prayer, he said, I'd like wisdom.

And in these verses, he's sharing his conclusion about life.

Now I'm not going to read the whole book of Ecclesiastes, but it was 1 of my favorite books when I was leaving God.

I especially like the first 11 chapters because They were all about life being vain and meaningless.

In fact, they looked like they were written by somebody who's a downright nihilist or a depressed person.

And I loved talking to my mother about, it says all life is vanity, Mom.

And she would say, you need to read the last chapter And when you read that last chapter it says, God says your life is not meaningless at all.

In fact it's so important that it will be brought into judgment.

Every moment of your life, every emotion in your mind, every joy you've ever had, every pain you've ever experienced or endured, every thought you have ever thought, every trial and error you've been involved in, every sin you've committed, and every sorrow you've experienced as a result of a sin of another are known and kept record of by God.

Every start or stop you've made, every rising up or sitting down, every act of obedience or disobedience, great or small that you've made, every work, Every secret thing, whether good or bad, is known and is important.

Solomon's conclusion, all your life is filled with meaning and it will be reviewed and considered.

The judgment indicates that your life is not insignificant.

It is filled with meaning and God wants you to have purpose and meaning in your life.

Now the book of Ecclesiastes up to this point does not present that view.

That view is in chapter 12, but the first 11 chapters talk about life under the sun.

Twenty-nine times in Ecclesiastes, Solomon speaks of living under the sun, life under the sun that does not consider the Creator of the sun, a life within a fixed, closed, under-the-sun system, all we see and are are but products of a mindless cosmic process.

The acknowledgments of such a system are seen by those who even today live with this philosophy, the naturalistic philosophy that is prevalent and gaining more prevalence in this and other nations.

Bertrand Russell years ago said this, ìThe universe is purposeless and void of meaning.

The entire sum of human endeavors is destined to extinction in the vast depth of the solar system there's no meaning there's no purpose More contemporary authors Richard Dawkins the universe we observe has precisely the properties we would expect if There is at bottom no design.

No good nothing, but blind pitiless indifference.

This is the message of the first 11 chapters of Ecclesiastes.

On this same hopeful note, here's William Provine.

There are no gods, no purposes, No goal-directed forces of any kind.

There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will.

This is the naturalistic philosophy of many today.

A life that does not consider the creator, life within a fixed system where there's no God or creator, where all we see and are is a product of a mindless cosmic process.

I'm gonna be a hope this is just not true.

And believe me, for a number of years of my life.

I was telling people this kind of stuff and I was downright depressing to be around And my mother and father could attest to that.

And that�s when my dad gave me this Bible with that verse in the fly leaf.

Such a life is meaningless, it is vanity, it is depressing, said the author of Ecclesiastes.

Your personal pursuits of the making of books, there is no end, and much study is wearisome to the flesh, it says in Ecclesiastes.

Knowledge without purpose is purposeless.

I talked to someone recently who said, I had a great car and I smashed it and my life is meaningless because my car is smashed.

Back to Menu

The Crucial Connection

Transcript

Sponsor

Recorded

Related

Thoughts on 1 Peter

Secrets For Having A Good Life - Thoughts on 1 Peter 3:8-17

44m

A Parallel between Daniel 3 and Revelation 13

1h

Thoughts on 2 Peter

Dogs, Pigs, Brute Beasts & Snakes in the Church

36m

Weimar - COVID-19

COVID 19 and the Fear of Death

58m

The Book of Revelation - Introduction

58m

Lessons from the Fall of Babylon

1h 3m

The Certainty and Need of Resurrection Hope

49m

The Crisis

55m

Morning Devotional

The Purpose of Surrender

44m

Trials & Temptations

42m

Steps to Christ

Faith and Acceptance

41m

Sound Doctrine