Looking Beyond This Life

The Vital Nature of the Church

Ecclesiastes 5:8-20
1 Timothy 3:14-16
1. Truthful/Heavenly Perspective on God (1-7)

Knowing God is your single greatest privilege as a Christian,

and the one that sensitizes you to every other issue of
importance.

But is this the issue that lies at the center of your thinking?

Sinclair Ferguson
1. Truthful/Heavenly Perspective on God (1-7)

2. Truthful/Heavenly Perspective on Government (8-9)

1. Truthful/Heavenly Perspective on God (1-7)
2. Truthful/Heavenly Perspective on Government (8-9)
3. Truthful/Heavenly Perspective on Gain (10-17)
 So what is the advantage of your toil as you
choose to neglect the things which matter most to
God
to gain what matters little to God?

That’s Solomon’s wisdom for living for the Lord.

 From God’s point of view, we are to worship Him in
spirit and truth while avoiding certain heart-attitudes and
actions which are sinful and which work to promote a
casual, flippant, or superficial approach to God.

Solomon begins with ‘you guard your steps’

when approaching God—or we might say,
‘you need to watch your step.’
1. Truthful/Heavenly Perspective on God (1-7)
2. Truthful/Heavenly Perspective on Government (8-9)
3. Truthful/Heavenly Perspective on Gain (10-17)
4. Truthful/Heavenly Perspective on Good (18-20)
Here’s the tension Solomon is creating between a life
lived for the here and now, contrasted with a life lived
looking beyond this life: What is good for us to pursue?
What is God’s view of what is most worthy of the
efforts of our lives? How do you and I experience what
is truly good about this life under the sun?
This is God’s view of what is good as we live our lives and
cultivate companionship with Him as our highest effort:

“. . . to eat, to drink and enjoy oneself in all one’s labor in

which he toils under the sun during the few years of his
life which God has given him: for this is his reward.”

Enjoying the fruits of your labors is God’s reward to you,

but it all must be kept in truthful perspective.
Knowing God is your single greatest privilege as a Christian,
and the one that sensitizes you to every other issue of
importance.

But is this the issue that lies at the center of your thinking?

Sinclair Ferguson
“Furthermore, as for every man to whom God has given
riches and wealth, He has also empowered him to eat from
them and to receive his reward and rejoice in his labor;
this is the gift of God.”
Ecclesiastes 5:19

That perspective is one of looking beyond this life

to God who is the Giver of life.
 Your life is a gift from God,
so that your life is a gift to God.
“For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have
not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled
with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and
understanding, so that you will walk in a manner worthy of
the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every
good work and increasing in the knowledge of God;
strengthened with all power, according to His glorious
might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience;
joyously giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to
share in the inheritance of the saints in Light.”