What is the Good Life?

Introduction

General

Does anyone know who Millard Fillmore was? (President, 1850-1853)

Who won the World Series in 1993? (Toronto Blue Jays)

What move won best picture in 1998? (Titanic)

What was the #1 song on the radio the year you graduated high school? (“Breathe” by Faith Hill)

Who was your great-great-grandfather, and what did he do for a living?

Do you remember what you had for lunch last Tuesday?

Personal: Then, what’s the point of it all? That’s the question raised by the Book of Ecclesiastes. Look at Eccles 1:1-11 (ESV).

Biblical: Solomon, son of David, King of Israel, author of Ecclesiastes…

Chosen by God to be king, wisest man to ever live, author of multiple books of the Bible, wealthy, wise, powerful, famous, good looking, a great leader, economic prosperity… by every measure a massive success.

How, then, could he write Ecclesiastes? Solomon knew it all, had it all, did it all, and what he found is that what people typically think of as “the good life” is nothing more than smoke and mirrors.

Subject: What is the good life? What’s the point of it all?

Body: Vanity of Vanities

Eccles 1:2… The Bad News: Life under the sun is pointless. Life on earth as we know it has no purpose, significance, meaning, or point.

Exposition

v. 3 — You work hard for money that is wasted by someone else after you die.

vv. 4-7 — Does anything ever really change? In spite of it all, the poor are still poor, the hungry are still hungry, and the sick are still sick.

vv. 8-11 — Looking for meaning in life is an empty search. Everything’s been tried before. It’s already been thought of, done, written about, and forgotten.

Nothing we accomplish will last or even be remembered for long. And that means that life under the sun is pointless.

Illustration

This is why atheists like Richard Dawkins say, “The universe that we observe has no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference” (River Out of Eden, 1995).

But what about loving my neighbor and helping those in need? If Dawkins is right, and the only thing that exists is the physical universe, then what difference will feeding starving children have made 14 billion years from now when our sun has burned out and all life on Earth is extinct?

Application: Bertrand Russell said life can be built “only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair” (A Free Man’s Worship, 1903).

The Good News: There’s more to life than what we see under the sun.

Exposition

The key to rightly understanding Ecclesiastes is the phrase “under the sun” (vv. 3, 9). It’s used 28 times throughout the book. It’s not that life is pointless but that life under the sun is pointless.

If all that exists is the universe we observe—“under the sun”—then Dawkins is right. But we know better. We serve a God who is over the sun.

God is the source of light and life and meaning… See Eccles 3:14.

Application: What we do is lost and forgotten. What God does lasts forever.

The Point: Life takes on meaning when we live in God’s light.

Exposition: Eccles 3:12-13… Work, money, family, friendship, religion, education, food, cooking, hobbies, building, trout fishing, texting… These things have meaning when they filled with God. Without God, they’re pointless. With God, they’re purposeful.

Illustration: Work… parenting… trout fishing

Conclusion: How do we live in God’s light?

1 John 1:5–7 “5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.”