A Man Who Had Done It All

I want you to do something worthwhile today, friends. I've done it myself and I can promise you you'll get something rewarding from doing this exercise. I want you to drive to a nearby cemetery today.

If you have the time, park your car and get out and then go take a walk among the graves. I don't want you to be in any hurry but take your time to carefully read each of the stone grave markers and reflect on the lives of those who are buried there. Lives once full of life, vibrant, full of hopes and dreams, now silent in the grave.

Notice that death came to the young as well as to the old. Then, as you were standing there among the dead, I want you to recite Ecclesiastes 1-4 out loud. One generation passeth away and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth forever.

Life is short and uncertain. Eternity is forever. The book of Ecclesiastes is one long sermon.

Why? The very title of the book is Translated Preacher. It's a universal message to man. King Solomon is the author of the book.

And listen, there is a photo of Elvis Presley I saw one time that reminds me of King Solomon. Elvis is older and there's a dead look in his eyes, a deep look of sadness. Elvis and Solomon were men who had had it all, seen it all, done it all, and were sick of it all.

There is a message from the preacher here in this little book and we need to pay attention to it, friends. It's from a man who began well and finished poorly, but by God's grace he came to a place of repentance before he died. And it was after that time of repentance, reformation, and reflection that Solomon wrote this warning to each of us.

It's the picture of a man floating in a boat downstream down the river of life, enjoying the ride, stopping here and there to taste all its pleasures along the way, completely unaware that up ahead is a boiling chasm of a cliff waterfall that he will soon pass over into death. Then you'll be too late. Solomon's sermon should be entitled A Solemn Warning, for that's what it is.

A solemn warning to each of us to take inventory of our life right now and weigh it in the balance of eternity. Are we living for ourselves and this present world like the young Solomon did, or have we been awakened to our course of sin in indifference to the things of eternal worth? Ecclesiastes chapter 12 and verse 1 states, Remember now, thy creator, in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them. I couldn't relate to that verse when I read it as a young man in my 20s, but now that I'm an old man, I can sure relate to it now.

When you get to the stage in life where your health is gone and all that is ahead of you is a steady physical decline, then you start thinking more and more about your mortality and what lies ahead in eternity. For those who are born-again believers in Christ Jesus, there's the hope of heaven and the promise of God for all eternity. But for the unsaved, unconverted, lost person, there's only the waiting torments in the lake of fire that burn forever.

Solomon had been on a long journey under the sun, and he saw life was only futility and emptiness apart from God. All the things he worked for in this life, in the accumulation of wealth and material things, was just done for selfish gain. And in the end, they were unimportant, pointless, and futile, because they were of the earth.

And all men go the way of the earth into an awaiting grave. All that matters, friends, in life, are wrapped up in the last two verses of the preacher's sermon, where his voice rings with clarity down through the ages to us today. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter.

Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil. In other words, friends, only one life will soon be passed.

Only what's done for Christ will last.