Ecclesiastes 9:1–12
The sermon text. One fate comes to everyone, and time and chance happen to all. Then verses 7 through 10 tell you to go eat your bread with joy anyway.
The Teacher looks straight at death. What does he say the living have that the dead do not?
He remembers that we are dust. The same fact the Teacher keeps circling, spoken here as tenderness rather than frustration.
Verses 7–10 are commands. List them. What kind of life is he telling you to live?
It is appointed for people to die once, and after that comes judgment. Ecclesiastes tells you the first half; Hebrews finishes the sentence.
“The dead know nothing.” Is that a doctrine of the afterlife, or an observation from under the sun? The phrase in verse 3 decides it.
You do not even know what tomorrow will bring. James says the same thing about the vapor and then tells you how to plan anyway.
Whatever your hand finds to do, do with all your strength. What have you been doing at half strength?
The Teacher says the dead know nothing and their love and hate have perished. Jesus stands at a tomb and says I am the resurrection and the life.
Say Martha’s confession out loud, then name what you are trusting him with today.
What are the Marks and the 3 Circles?
The Marks of a Disciple
Each week names one of these — the practices we are cultivating in each other.
- Daily Devotion
- Time with God every day, in the Bible and in prayer.
- Prayer
- Not only a set appointment, but a life of prayer at any hour, for anything.
- Generosity
- Giving your effort and your resources to this church and to God’s kingdom.
- Service
- Giving your time and talent to the church and its mission in the community.
- Witness
- Seeking people far from God and telling them about Jesus and about your own finding of him.
- Worship
- Weekly praise together, and a life presented daily to God’s service.
- Spiritual Disciplines
- Fasting, solitude, study, sabbath — the old practices of the faith.
The 3 Circles
How we tell someone about Jesus — simple enough to draw on a napkin. Each week names the part of it that week’s reading sits in.
- God’s Design
- The world and your life as God made them to be.
- Sin
- The arrow out. We each go our own way instead.
- Brokenness
- Where that leaves us. Ecclesiastes spends most of twelve chapters here.
- Repent & Believe
- Turning from our own way and trusting what Jesus did.
- Gospel
- Jesus lived the life we could not and died the death we deserved.
- Recover & Pursue
- The way back toward the life God designed.