Right Now Counts Forever - Ecclesiastes 12:14 Series

Ecclesiastes 12:13 When all has been heard, the conclusion of the matter is: fear God and keep His commands, because this is for all humanity. 14 For God will bring every act to judgment, including every hidden thing, whether good or evil.

Introduction

Summary of Ecclesiastes

After 16 weeks studying the book of Ecclesiastes, do you feel like you have a handle on the message of the book? Let me give you a quick summary. At the end of every section of this book he gives us the exact same conclusion: enjoy life. The purpose of Ecclesiastes is to get us to enjoy life. The problem is, this life is futile. We live in a fallen, cursed, futile world where horrible things happen all the time. So how can you possibly enjoy life in an environment like that?

1. Stop trying to gain control of life. Just use wisdom and then trust God with the things that are outside of your control.

2. Realize that enjoyment comes not from God’s gifts, but from God Himself, through His gifts.

3. Be alert to every instance where God is making that gift of enjoyment available through one of His gifts.

4. But when you do so, be very careful to enjoy those things the right way.

What is the right way? Enjoy them by living for God’s pleasure, and fearing His displeasure. That is the way to enjoy life in a futile, fallen, cursed world. So to put it even more succinctly, two E’s: Expect and Enjoy.

Expect the world to be fallen and broken and trust God with that.

Enjoy what can be enjoyed in life by using wisdom, fearing God, and living for His pleasure.

That is the message of Ecclesiastes. And if it has seemed to you like there has been an imbalance – too much emphasis on enjoying life and not enough emphasis on fearing and obeying God, he balances that back out at the very end, where he gives us the bottom line. In the closing paragraph he says, “Here’s the sum of the whole matter…” and he does not even mention enjoyment of life. He only mentions fearing and obeying God because of the certainty of Judgment Day.

Ecclesiastes 12:13 When all has been heard, the conclusion of the matter is: fear God and keep His commands, because this is the whole of humanity. 14 For God will bring every act to judgment, including every hidden thing, whether good or evil.

Fear and obey God because right now counts forever. Ecclesiastes is a book about this life – life under the sun - here and now. He never gives us a glimpse of the afterlife. The closest he comes is here at the very end when he shows us the doorway to eternity, which is Judgment Day.

Judgment Day

What I would like to do today is open that door. When I put this passage before you last week, it raised some questions, like, “How can God judge us for sins that are forgiven? And how can there be any kind of sorrow on the day that we finally meet our Savior face to face? Should we be dreading that day or looking forward to it? And when God judges us, what will the criteria be? What kind of Christian will do well on that Day and what kind will not do so well?

A Neglected Doctrine

There is a huge amount of confusion on those questions, because preachers so rarely teach on this topic. How often do you ever turn on the radio and hear a sermon on Judgment Day? If you went into Family Christian bookstore tomorrow and asked for a book about Judgment Day, I doubt there would be a single one on the shelves. In the article on Judgment Day in the Anchor Bible Dictionary the author points out that very little scholarly work has been done on this topic. Scholars shy away from it, pastors shy away from it, and so it is no wonder that people don’t know much about it.

Why is that? Some doctrines are hard because there are only a few obscure references in the Bible and we are not sure what they mean. But that is not the case with the doctrine of Judgment Day. Scripture is packed with information about the Judgment, and it is really pretty straightforward. I think I studied about 60 or 70 different passages that directly teach on Judgment Day just in the New Testament. Compare that to the doctrine of the rapture, which is mentioned in only two or three passages. And yet there are probably 100 books on the Rapture for every one book on Judgment Day.

A Despised Doctrine

The reason there is so much confusion is because in so many cases the church has just simply chosen to ignore this doctrine. Why? Why are scholars and pastors alike so squeamish about this topic? Do you think it has something to do with the fact that we live in a culture that hates the concept of judgment and despises anyone who talks about it? Nothing will make you more unpopular in this culture than talking about judgment as being a good thing.