The Meaning Of Life

The Meaning of Life

Pastor Paddick Van Zyl

06-05-2018

Sermon Outline

Introduction:

What is life really all about? What is the meaning of life? Why are we living this life everyday? I hope that in this message we will find the answer to all these questions.

A Typical Average Life Span

What does the average lifespan* look like?

Someone calculated it as follows:

Sleep 23 years (.32.9%)

Work 16 years (22.8%)

TV 8 years (11.4%)

Eating 6 years (8.6%)

Travel 6 years (8.6%)

Leisure 4.5 years (6.5%)

Illness 4 years (5.7%)

Dressing 2 years (2.8%)

Religion 0.5 years (0.7%)

TOTAL 70 years (100%)

‘I am a Complete Failure’

‘In 1966, about a year before he died, the brilliant physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer said, "I am a complete failure!" This man had been the director of the Los Alamos Project, a research team that produced the atomic bomb, and he had also served as the head of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. Yet, in looking back, he saw his achievements as meaningless. When asked about them, he replied, "They leave on the tongue only the taste of ashes.”

The number of people who commit suicide after experiencing the fame and fortune of worldly success is astonishing: Multimillionaire George Vanderbilt killed himself by jumping from a hotel window. Lester Hunt, twice governor of Wyoming before being elected to the U.S. Senate, ended his own life. Actress Marilyn Monroe, writer Ernest Hemingway, and athlete Tony Lazzeri represent a host of highly influential and popular people who became so disenchanted with earthly success that they took their own lives.’**

Some interesting observations about life…. Let’s have a look at what the Bible says life.

Scripture Reference:

Ecclesiastes Chapters 1 to 2 and 12NKJV

Theme:

The book of Ecclesiastes

Sermon message:

The Bible is clear on the subject of life:

God created life and is the sustainer of life (Gen 1:29; 2:7; 9:3; Ps 145:16-17; Ps 146:6; Is 42:5; Acts 14:17)

Often, people ask the question: ‘What is the meaning of life?’

Here are the facts: There are some things in life we will not know this side of eternity and there are certain things in life and about life that we will not be in control of or be able to control, this side of eternity. This is the short and the long of it!

A careful study of Ecclesiastes and Proverbs, in fact the entire Bible, will answer this question and many other questions about life. Many get depressed when they read Ecclesiastes, they see it as gloomy and dark and would rather skip over it to another book yet, Ecclesiastes shows us the reality and the result of the curse.

Many try to cover up the effect of the curse with pleasure and work and by rewarding themselves in order to feel better and ‘create’ a superficial and non-enduring joy that can only come though Jesus.

The preacher in Ecclesiastes, tried everything to satisfy his longing soul. He withheld nothing from himself and yet at the end of his life he found that this was a vanity (a warm breath on a cold mirror which lasts but a few seconds before it disappears). This is the central theme of this book – without Christ we can never have lasting, fulfilled joy and peace and rest. We will work and work and work and toil and will show nothing of what we accomplished aside from Jesus Christ in our lives.

The words of Jesus in Matthew chapter 6 is a warning to all of us: 19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.” Matthew 6:19-20 NKJV

The preacher had everything he wished for at his disposal, only to find that nothing truly satisfies the longing souls, the vacuum that God has placed within each individual, and which only God can fill.

Why did God place you and me in a broken world? As Ryan Kelly notes: “It was kind of God to place you in a broken world so you will feel its brokenness. Do you know it was kind of God to not let us get infinite and lasting satisfaction from that which is not infinite or lasting. Only He is infinite and ultimate and lasting and in Him there is satisfaction.”***

God placed His own Son, Jesus, in a broken world so He could identify with what we are going through (Hebrews 4:14-16)

“You will show me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” Psalm 16:11 NKJV

Jesus came so we may enjoy life, have a good life: