You Only Have Twenty Four Hours to Live! Ecclesiastes 12:8-14

You Only Have Twenty Four Hours to Live!
Ecclesiastes 12:8-14

INTRODUCTION:

1. Christmas has paraded by, a time of joy, love, giving and excitement.

a. The shopping is over except for a few sales, and those who are exchanging Christmas gifts.
b. In a few days the decorations will be down and stored away for next year.
c. Now we turn our attention to the years end and to the reality of our daily lives. It is a time of recalling the accomplishments and failures of this past year. TV and magazines will be running articles about what happened in 2002.
2. At New Years we become more aware of the pasting of time.

a. The reality of how insufficient and fallible we really are. Some have referred to our lives as like a ship on the sea, for a few moments there is the wave of its pasting and then no sign at all.
b. We think of loved ones or friends who have passed on or take out some memento our loved one left.
c. We realize were are getting older, time is passing by.
3. 2006 - The Bad New - The Good News
-The year is typical of this and past centuries. There is much talk of progress, for more advanced technology and moving forward....yet man himself has not changed.
-There are more gadgets, food, clothing, entertainment, education and the world has every known.
-Materially we are more advanced in history, yet it does not take much looking around to see that our society is sadly morally and spiritually bankrupt.

a. The family is being destroyed by divorce which is now over 50% in all marriages including among those who profess to be Christians.
b. Abortion was bad enough in killing over 12 million infants, but now we have partial birth abortions that make Nazi concentration camps look like a girl scout camp.
c. TV is filled with every gross act of murder imaginable and gets worse ever year. The biggest hits at the box office are the most violent films.
d. Homosexually is in vogue everywhere in our society. It is attacking our children in our schools. Our current president who professes to be a Christian....takes no stand against the perverts. In fact it is illegal to say what I just did.
e. Our government is involved in scandal after scandal until hardly anyone even pays any attention. Lying to the public is the rule of the day in American politics. Honesty, morals, integrity are gone and few seem to even care.
f. The cults and every false religion and false Christian movement is going daily and most of our churches are not concerned. The mood today is to forget sound doctrine, ignore the Bible, put aside doctrinal differences and lets all come together to serve God. Folks you can not serve God apart of truth and purity of doctrine and live style. God says we are to worship Him in spirit and truth. Lots of spirit today in modern churches, very little truth.
g. Our young people are confused and disillusioned and being tossed around like twigs in a stormy sea. Our education system is bankrupt and turns out illiterates with diplomas .
h. Our government has passed laws that openly attack any absolutes, any standard of morality or decency and is seeking to destroy all Bible believing churches. Yet, you can teach pornography, Marxism, humanism, evolution, any pagan or animalistic religion or cult, but you cannot mention the God of the Bible, Jesus Christ or post the ten commandments on the walls of public buildings.
f. The Bible is under attack and almost every year a new version, Or better "perversion", that is supposed to make the Bible easy to read and understand is published. There is Bible for gays, for feminist, for those who deny the blood atonement of Jesus Christ, for the Promise Keepers...and one to accommodate every false and corrupt thought the liberals and those who reject God's words have.
h. Is this then the whole picture? The answer is a resounding NO! No, this is not the whole picture. Even as God told Elijah, there are thousands scattered around the world who have not bowed their knee to Baal! They are not in the majority, but they are there.

-Many can deny God's existence and past laws in an effort to destroy God's truth....but God's truth will prevail!
- The Word of God is not nullified by the millions who deny it. False dead preachers, standing in the pulpits of corrupted churches do nothing to change the fact of God's truth and plan of Salvation.
-Their lies and doctrines of demons do nothing to hinder God's plan.
-Christ Jesus our Savior and God will soon return. He will purge the world of sin and nothing can change or alter this fact.
-In time, Christ will rule the world and God's children will be with Him for all eternity in heaven.
- Let us turn to today...seek our task and responsibility in the chaos of this world that is headed for destruction.

4. The writer of Ecclesiastes (Solomon) had similar thoughts and under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit wrote a whole book on the subject of the passing of time and the worth of a person's life. He addresses the subject of "Why are we here and what are we to do."

PROPOSITION: Our lives will have meaning and worth only if we serve the Lord. As verse 8 says there are still a few preacher stand for God's word, love God's people and preach God's truth. "The preacher sought to find out acceptable words: and that which was written was upright, even words of truth
I. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO FEAR GOD. V13-14. The conclusion of it all. "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." (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14)

A. Godly fear realizes that the earth and all in it including you and I are God's creation. We belong to God.

1. Food, air, life itself comes from God and he sustains us.

a. 1 Cor. 6:19-20, . "What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's." (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)
b. The man who blasphemes God does it in the strength that God gives him.
c. Those who openly reject Him and His salvation, God's mercy sustain
s them. The man who sins...sins with the mind and body that God gave Him.
d. John 1:3 and 10. Col. 1:17 Tells us that God made us.
2. If we were created by God, and we are His He must have a reason of it..some purpose. Clearly God is Love...and that love is demonstrated in that Jesus Christ, God incarnate in flesh, came to earth and suffered and died for our sins. Why? That we might be free from sins, that He might forgive us if we will let Him. You see He wants the best for us and He has done for us what we could not do for ourselves so that we could be free of sin and have heaven when we die.
3. Psalms 139:13-16. God knew us even before we were born.
4. What then is your purpose?

B. A FEAR OF GOD IS TO RECOGNIZE SIN AND ITS DESTRUCTIVE INFLUENCE IN OUR LIVES.

1. Isaiah 6:1-5, says that when Isaiah saw God, he saw himself as he truly was. That is why many men do not want to see God , to believe in Him and accept His truth. They are content and satisfied with this world's sorry and worldly pleasures and God has no place in their life
. 2. Today the world has such a light view of sin. Many churches are guilty of the same sin. The thief, murder have no remorse. We laugh at sexual sins. The criminal is not responsible for what he does it is his parents fault...on someone else.
We fail to see the reality that sin is a cancer that destroys lives and damns the souls of men. We are like an ostrich who buries its head the sand not wanting to see the tornado that is baring down on them. Sin isn't cute, or something to laugh at. Yet, the TV presents sin as something to be entertained with.

C. Sin separates us from the love of God. God is holy and separated from sin, all sin. Sin keeps a person from living an abundant life and robs us of peace and joy.

II. GOD INSTRUCTS US TO KEEP HIS COMMANDMENTS. V13 The real question is WHY? Why does God tell us to live a godly life, to serve Him, to be faithful to our local church.

A. Christ told us in Matthew 22, that the law was to love God. On that hinges all the law and prophets.

1. As we separate ourselves from sin we learn to love more. 1 John 1:7 "But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.
2. We study the Bible and learn more of how to live our lives to the fullest.
3. As we pray and commune with God, God answers our prayers, if they are right for us.

B. We love our neighbor as ourselves.

1. As we get closer to God, we will get closer those around us. We learn to truly love.
2. Love serves.

a. Have you considered that Christ served men, by dying for the sins of the world on the Cross.
b. The only way to serve God is to serve your fellow man.

C. Can you think of even one way a person can serve God that does not involve serving our neighbor.

Conclusion:

1. We do not know what the future holds.

The late John R. Rice, said, "No matter what your past, your future is spotless."
God is the God of forgiveness, of Grace and Mercy. His plan of salvation, is to forgive us and then change our lives.

2. What if I told you that I would deposit in your name each day $10,000, but at the end of day what ever you and not spent you would lose....what would you do?

Of course you would try and draw out as much as possible. Each day we should live like that...a day carries no balance. When it passes it gone and can not be recalled.
The question is how are you spending your life that God has given you.
First have you believed and in simple faith trusted Christ as your Lord and Savior.
Then afterwards, are you living your life, as a witness of God Grace and Love.

ILLUS: While I was in college one of my professors told of a lady from his church who was in the Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem, NC. She had cancer and had most of her intestines removed. Her food had to be specially prepared and cost over $1000.00 a month. She told a friend,
"We worked so hard all our lives, and just when we are beginning to get ahead this happens." ....She was a Christian. We have no assurance of tomorrow. The Bible says that now is the acceptable day of salvation. (2 Cor. 6:2)
Jesus instructed us to "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: (Matthew 6:19-20)
"But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." (Matthew 6:33)
ILLUS: T.T. Martin was an evangelist who preached the Gospel for many years. He and his brother grew up together, but went their separate ways. T.T. accepted Christ as his Savior and became a preacher.
His brother went he way of the world. He became a lawyer and after many years his brother became very successful. However, he contracted tuberculosis and was dying.
Knowing he soon would die, he called his brother TT who had witnessed to him many times in his life. TT's brother then accepted Christ as his Savior, but he then realized that he would go to Heaven empty handed. He realized how he had wasted his life.
He dictated a letter and TT wrote it down and then as instructed mailed it all the people his brother knew in business. In the letter his brother told them of Christ and their need to by faith be saved. By this letter a number of his friends were also saved. You see when he saw eternity, he wanted to do all he could to see others come to Christ.
What about you? Are you wasting your life, the only life you will ever have, or are you living it in the Will of God, serving Him and preparing for an eternity in heaven? Living a clean life the best life you can...living for the Lord.