Sermon Tone Analysis
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*WHAT IS THE POINT OF LIFE?*
*River Road Baptist Church*
*Ecclesiastes 7:24*
*January 28, 2007*
A first grader recently asked his mother "Where did I come from?"
The mother took a deep breath and went into a detailed, explicit explanation of the reproductive organs, conception and birth.
After about 30 minutes the bored first grader said, "Oh, Jimmy comes from San Diego."
The mother said, "I had the sinking feeling that I was answering the wrong question."
This Morning we're going to look at life's most important question, “What is the Point of Life”.
Ecclesiastes 7:24 asks it this way, “That which is far off, and exceeding deep, who can find it out”?
Or basically *"How can anyone discover the meaning of life?"*
It's important to know the meaning of life, because *when We don't* understand it, it causes all kinds of negative effects in our lives.
In Ecclesiastes 1, Solomon says there are five negative results that happen in your life when you don't know what the purpose of it is.
*1.
**Life seems useless (vs.2-4) (NIV).
*
* *
2 *“Meaningless!
Meaningless!” says the Teacher.*
*“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”
*
3 *What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun?*
4 *Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever*.
* *
Meaningless, and useless.
You spend your life working and what do you have to show for it.
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.
The word here is the same word used for soap bubble, cotton candy.
* *
2. *Life seems tiresome (vs.
5,8a) (CEV).*
*3.
**The sun rises, and the sun sets, and then it hurries back to where it rises again.*
* *
4. *Everything is boring*, *so boring that you don’t even want to talk about it*.
We seem to be spinning our wheels, running in circles.
We're like a treadmill; we're at a rat race.
The sun rises and goes down.
He uses the rotation of the earth as an illustration.
The cycles of weather -- the wind goes round and round.
The cycles of evaporation and rain -- it rains, runs into the river and into the ocean then evaporates.
Life just seems like one big circle.
Just about the time you take down the Christmas lights it's time to put them back up.
We're just going in circles and it seems tiresome -- everything leads to weariness.
5.
*Life seems un-fulfilling (vs.
8b, 10).*
6.
*The eye is not satisfied with seeing, Nor is the ear filled with hearing*.
10 *Is there anything of which one might say, “See this, it is new”?
*
* Already it has existed for ages, Which were before us.*
"No matter how much we see, we're never satisfied; no matter how much we hear, we're not content.
Nothing is truly new."
No satisfaction.
No matter how much we see, we're never satisfied.
No matter how much we hear we're not content.
History merely repeats itself.
People are restless.
They leave before the service ends.
*/If you don't realize how restless people are give them a TV control!/* I’ve heard that the average person will change channels 350,000 times in their lifetime -- some of you may have already passed that!
Solomon says, history repeats itself, there's nothing new.
I've seen it all, I've heard it all, and I’m bored.
Its useless, tiresome, un-fulfilling.
7.
*Life is insignificant (vs.
11) (GN).*
*"No one remembers what has happened in the past, and no one in days to come will remember what happens between now and then."
*
Life seems insignificant when you don't know the purpose of it.
No one remembers what's happened in the past and no one is going to remember in days to come what's happened between now and then.
This is the surety of obscurity.
Fame is fleeting.
Your name may be in lights today but nobody is going to remember you tomorrow.
You set the records on the track and tomorrow somebody else breaks them and you're forgotten.
There are people who spend big bucks to get their names on buildings trying to preserve their name.
Most of you who went to college went to a school where every building had a name on it.
Did it matter to you? No!
Who cares?
Life just seems insignificant when you don't know the purpose.
8.
*Life seems uncontrollable (vs.15).*
*15 * *No one can straighten what is bent.
No one can count what is not there.*
You can't straighten out what's crooked.
You can't count the things that aren't there.
He's referring to situation beyond our control.
Have you ever tried to straighten out something that was crooked?
A relationship 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 and 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 comes to the conclusion in chapter 1 that if you don't know the purpose of life (v.
14) it's just all meaningless.
When you don't know the point of life, you have three options:
*1.
You can try to 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.
People say, "I'm in to ... “ 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, and you're going to nothing."
You were a cosmic accident.
They also said, when you die -- that's it!
There's nothing left.
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.
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