Kenny Moorer - The Bottom Line Part 1_ Final Lessons from a Wise Man

5:54PM Jan 21, 2025

Speakers:

Kenny Moorer

Keywords:

Ecclesiastes

wisdom

life purpose

temporary happiness

relationship with God

perspective

joy

sorrow

youth

eternal destiny

spiritual application

pleasure

power

work

money.

I think it's important just to periodically just stop and ask myself, What is my life about? What? What am I trying to do? And if you don't take the time, and if I don't take the time to just stop and just ask myself, What is my life about? What am I accomplishing? What have I accomplished? If I'm so busy that I just continue the process of living, or maybe the better way to say that is existing. I think we do ourselves a disservice. And what you have in the book of Ecclesiastes is you have the content of a wise man who went on this life journey. And because he was wise, and because God helped him understand some things, God allowed him to live his life. And the book of Ecclesiastes is the conclusion, at least to some degree, it may not be everything that he concluded, but it is, to a large degree, everything I believe Solomon concluded about his life. And the advantage for us is that we don't have to live our lives to be able to go back and see how we should. I don't have to do that. I can understand by just simply reading the book of Ecclesiastes; here's the best way to live my life. And when I read the book of Ecclesiastes, and let me say it to you this way, I think sometimes I'm a fool. And if you really stopped and dissected, that's really what it's about. It's about, are you going to live foolishly, or are you going to live wisely? And what Solomon says is, I'm going to tell you how to live wisely so that when you get to the end of your life, you won't look back and wish you had lived a different way. And I will tell you that I think about that an awful lot now, especially. And I think those of you who are old, and I'll have more to say about this in a moment, but those of us who are older, well I think that's exactly what we do. We look at things differently because we're on the a different end than those of you who are younger. And if you are allowed by God himself, to reach an age that is older, you'll look back, and I can promise you that you'll see things differently than you'd see them now. May not, maybe not exclusively all the way, but there's going to be things that you look at that are different. And so what Ecclesiastes is about is about this day to day living and living your best life, and putting forth this kind of effort for this kind of outcome. And while it's spiritual, there is a spiritual application ,we'll look at the passage that I think at the end of the book that talks about the spiritual application of what this book is about. But I'll tell you what this is, it's a practical book. If I was just concerned about how to live day to day in the best way possible, regardless of any spiritual implication, here's what I would say, just read Ecclesiastes and read Proverbs and implement those principles and those ideas in your life. And your life is going to be, it's going to be better because you just implemented those ideas even --.

What he lacks wisdom and he shows everyone that he is a fool. I will tell you there are people walking around all around the world that when you look at the look at their life, there is one conclusion, you're a fool. And we, we won't say that. I'm not saying we should say that. But when you look at how they've lived their life, there's one conclusion, you're just you're a fool. "Understand that the words of the wise man's mouth are gracious, but the lips of a fool shall swallow him up. The words of his mouth begin with foolishness, and the end of his talk is raving madness." I mean, I love how he talks about this. I mean, it's not like you have to guess about what he's saying. Fools talk foolishly, and the end of his talk is raving madness. I don't want to be that. I don't want to look back at my life,I don't want you to look back in my life and go Kenny was a fool. What he said was foolish. What he said -- he didn't understand life at all. I don't want to be that way, and the writer of Ecclesiastes helps us understand that. So what he really tells us is there is a bottom line, and that's what we all want, right? We don't want to hear a lot of things. We just want to get to the bottom now, just tell me what I'm supposedcto do. Well, you finally got your wish. I'm going to kind of cut to the chase today and next week, and I'm going to talk about what I think is the bottom line that Solomon says this is really what we all want to know, because we often ask, what is it that I'm supposed to do? Don't give me the excess. Just give me; get to the point. So I want to do that. I want to do that.

How would you summarize life? If somebody said, how would you just summarize your life? What would you say? Let me give you. Let me give you an idea that I have. Okay, let me just give you this. I'd let you think about it. It's seasons and circles full of frustration and emptiness and some temporary reward. Now, I don't know how that comes across to you, but, but what that's saying is, is that life, it's full of frustration and it's full of emptiness, and whatever you think has value, it's just going to be temporary. That's the truth. Value, unless it is spiritual, it's temporary, it's going to go away, and that creates this frustration, and it creates this emptiness, but there's enough of this temporary reward that it helps us survive life, I think, and I think that's a valid way to put that. If you've lived (I don't know what that is) but if you've lived long enough this morning, you know what life is, you know exactly what it is, and you what you absolutely know this is without question. I think every I think I can say this to everybody in here. I can say this to everybody out there that pleasure and power and work and money bring no real happiness. They bring temporary happiness. They bring temporary reward, but none of that brings anything that is lasting. It's all momentary. It's temporary. And I don't think any older person would question that. You ask, I'll go to I go to an extreme. You ask a 95 or 100 year old person today, what brings ultimate fulfillment and happiness? Say money? They can't do anything. They can't go anywhere. Are they going to say money? Having a lot of money. Is that really what they're doing? No, they're not going to say that. They're not going to say that at all. The people of faith, who are in their right mind, who are 95 years old, are going to say a relationship with God, because it's the only thing that I see that's going to last, because all these other things aren't going to last. So it's about relationship with God. And you know what's interesting about that word is, you ask somebody who's not religious, even they're going to say it's about relationship. You ever thought about that? -- it's pleasure, they're going to say it's about my family. It's about relationships, it's about having somebody to talk to. I'm not suggesting that no one would ever say that. But I don't think anyone with a mind to think, no, I want all that stuff. I want all that stuff that I had when I was 40 or 50 years old. Is that what you want? No, no older person says, give me more pleasure. You know, I want more power. I want more work, and I want --. None of that is as relevant as it was. None of it is. Why is that? Well, it's unimportant because it's temporary. I love, I love the word temporary, because it says exactly what I'm trying to to state. It's just brief, none of that lasts.

So, so the bottom line that we're talking about has to do with this idea of perspective. It has to do with how I look at things, and what the writer of Ecclesiastes says you need to look at it this way as early as you can. The sooner you look at it this way, the better off you're going to be. So that's why he says at the end of the book, you need to hear the conclusion of the matter. "You need to fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man's all. Yes, God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether it's good or whether it's evil." So the question is whether you're three score and 10 or your four score and two or your two score and seven or your one score and four years. How do you view that? So what we're trying to say is, and I think what the writer is trying to say is, here's what I've concluded, but now go back and see what I had to say about all that. And so we're not going to go all the way back, even though we could, but that would be quite a series to go all the way back in and talk about all the things. So let's just go back a little bit and let's get to the bottom line. And when we hear what Solomon says, Don't question it. Don't say, Well, you know, is that really? Was that really true? Oh, it's true. The question is not, is it true. The question is are we going to hear it. That's the issue, right? It's always the issue. It's what he did so I don't have to.

And here are his results. The first thing he said, I think, as you think about it, he said, You need to rejoice. Verse seven of Ecclesiastes 11, "truly, the light is sweet and it is pleasant for the eyes to behold the sun. But if a man lives many years and rejoices in them all, yet let him remember the days of darkness, for they will be many. All that is coming as vanity. Rejoice, oh young man in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and in the sight of your eyes but know that for all these God will bring you into judgment." Rejoice. Why rejoice, Kenny? I'll tell you a good reason to rejoice because you were able to walk in here today. You need to rejoice because you're breathing. You need to rejoice because the light is sweet and it's good to see the sun, and it's good to be alive, and it's good to enjoy life, so rejoice. Be glad. Verse eight says, Be glad that you've been given years to live, and here's why, because darkness is coming. Be glad that you've been given years to live, because darkness is coming. And I think he's talking particularly to young people. Now, the application works. It works all the way through. I get that, but these last few chapters, specifically 11 and 12 is talking to young people, and what he's saying is you need to really understand this: darkness is coming. Your life is a gift. As a young person, you do need to seek pleasure, and I'm going to tell you why you do because now is when it's going to mean something to you. Because as you get older, those things become less important, and they become minimal, and it's tougher to find those things in your life, in the way that you found them when you were younger. But you need to regard God the whole time.

A younger person who says, You know what? I get all this God business. I understand what my parents were trying to help me see and at some point in my life, I'm going to do that. You are in for disaster, because too much can happen when you're young, when you don't value God, and when you don't insert God in those decisions and those lifestyles that you have when you're younger, you're in for disaster if you don't do that. So that's why this wise man says you need to you need to make sure God is a part of that. God is not some cosmic kill joy. He's not that. He is the place to fulfill your life. Listen carefully to this. God is the place to fulfill your life without destroying your life. There's way too many people who destroyed their lives. I mean, that may look, that may look differently with different people, but can I just say this as carefully as as maybe I can, but as forcefully as I can, there are people whose lives are destroyed, and there's not much they can do about it, but their life is pretty much destroyed. It's because they didn't give any thought to God and the things that God wanted of them while they were young in their life. I love this passage from Psalm 16. I think it says a lot the psalmist says, "you will show me the path of life." You see that? The path of life. You see that this is you. You will -- You will show me how to walk my life. "In your presence is fullness of joy." Okay, you see that? Fullness of joy there. There's some things. There's some things without God that are temporary pleasure. There are some things without God that are temporary joy, but they're temporary. The psalmist says though it's in your presence that I see the fullness of joy, everything that joy can be in the fullness of that where nothing's left out, that happens with you God, and it's at your right hand that I have pleasures, not just in this life. I have pleasures evermore. If you walk with God when you're young, you can have pleasure. You can have pleasure in this life. But if you walk with God while you're young and while you're old you're going to have pleasures, forevermore. Isn't this a great passage? This is, in a sense, this is kind of a summation in my mind, now that I've thought about it's kind of a summation of the whole book of Ecclesiastes. I want that. I want exactly what the psalmist said, fullness of joy, path of life, pleasures forevermore. That's exactly what I'm looking for. Isn't it you? You'll show me God. Psalmist said, You'll show me. Not anybody else, you will show me. Great verse to remember.

Well, let's go the second thing, the bottom line, second thing, you need to remove some things. Verse 10, because Ecclesiates 11, "therefore remove sorrow," some translations say vexation, "from your heart and put away evil from your flesh. For childhood and youth are vanity." You know vexation. If I didn't know what vexation meant, and you said, Kenny, what does vexation mean? I'd say I don't know, but it's bad. It's got a V in it. It's got an x in it's gotta be bad. It just sounds bad. Vexation. Well, semantically it kind of covers a wide range of thought. It covers, how about this list, anxiety, sorrow, worry, frustration, stress, grief and anger. That's all vexation. I don't want any part of. Well, the wise man said, You need to get rid of that. Somebody says, Okay, I'm all for it Kenny, but how in the world do you do that? Well, he says you can do it. Not only does he say you can do he says you need to do it. He doesn't say, think about removing sorrow from your heart. He says, remove it and put away evil from your flesh. That's the advantage that you have. He's not saying that life is without pain and it's without frustration. He's telling us to push through it. Push through it. Don't let it, don't let it dictate life. May I say this as kindly as I know how, and I'm talking to myself too. I get so frustrated sometime with life. And what he says is, get past it Kenny. That's what he's saying, that some of you need to get past it too. Get past the vexation. Get past those things that are holding you back. Life is too short to waste time focused on pain, worry and heartache. I'm not suggesting that we, we it just totally going to go. I get that. Don't think that I'm saying, well, you're talking about something. It's just not going to happen? Well, he said, it can. You can waste your life upset about how bad things have gone in your life, or you can get over it.

And, let me say this, you cannot change one thing about your past. Not one thing. Not one. I don't know, I don't know anything that I can change about my past. My past is my past. There's some of it I'm proud of, and there's some that I'm disgusted about, but I can't change it. So don't waste today focused on yesterday. Don't be swallowed up by the difficulties that the past have brought, so that it keeps you from doing the good that you ought to do. And again, I know I'm screaming and hollering and yelling and ranting and raving this morning, and I know that it just doesn't go away, and I get all that. I understand all that, but understand what he's trying to say, if we waste our time, we don't enjoy life. And that's kind of what I want to say today. You need to-- we need to get rid of that, get rid of those things, just as absolutely much as we can, and enjoy the life that he's given to us.

And then finally, he says, You need to "remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the difficult days come and the years draw an eye when you say, I have no pleasure in them." That will happen to you if you live long enough. The difficult days will come and the years will draw nye, and you will reach a point, at some point, where there's just not much pleasure left. And the pleasure, the correlation is, the pleasure that's left is the pleasure that you anticipate. It's not so much a pleasure that you have. It's the pleasure that you anticipate. Pursue God early in your life. Remember your Creator. Take your mind back all the way back. He didn't say, remember God. He didn't say, Remember Jesus. He said, Remember your Creator. Take your mind all the way back to when not you were created, but man was created, take your mind all the way back and remember who the creator was. He's not just the Creator, he's your Creator. And why is that important? Why is seeking your Creator important early in your life? Because what happens in life. And what happens in life is what he says in the next few verses, "while the sun and the light the moon and the stars are not darkened, and the clouds do not return after the rain and the day when the keepers of the house tremble, the strong men bow down, the grinder cease because they are few, and those that look through the windows grow dim when the doors are shut, the streets and the sound of grinding is low, when one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of music are brought low, afraid of height and of terrors in the way. When the almond tree blossoms, the grasshoppers are burdened. Desire fails for man go see his eternal home, and the mourners go about the streets. Remember your Creator before the silver court is loosed, or the Golden Bowl is broken, or the pitcher shattered at the fountain, or the wheel is broken at the well, then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it. Vanity of vanity, says the preacher, all is vanity." You know, we're all breaking down. I don't know if you've thought about that. I don't even know if you felt that. Listen, this is ironic, we're breaking down, but we're breaking up too. I've y'all thought about that. We're not only breaking down, but we're breaking up. And what he's saying is you need to seek God while you while it's all together, because the time will come when your hands and your legs tremble, your back is hunched over, your teeth wear out, your eyes are dim, you don't have any strength, you can't sleep late. You can't sleep alone, and then all you do is sleep, right? I mean, it's this sleep business is crazy, isn't it? You can't hear you're afraid everywhere you look dangerous. Your hair turns gray, you lose energy, your sexual desire fades. And he uses all those metaphors to say, if you get old and you don't have God, you're in trouble. That's basically what he says. You need to remember your Creator. You need to fully devote your life to him before it is too late. Remember him while you can respond to him favorably.

And the bottom line is, verse seven says you need to remember God before your spirit returns to God who gave it. Your your physical body will end and your spirit returns to God. It is not your physical body that's going to go somewhere, it's your spirit that goes to God, and it's your spirit that will house your eternal destiny. So he says, Don't waste your life on living life without God. He says, You need to rejoice remove and remember. So that's not just what happened at the end. That's how you live life. That's the bottom line. You need to rejoice, be glad you're here. Remove sorrow from your heart, remove the stress and the anxieties. And he talks about, Jesus talks about, that a lot of places. Remove that you and then just remember, remember the Lord.

I don't know that it's my favorite verse in the New Testament, but it's one of them. It's a verse that you've heard me talk about probably I think many times. It's found in Second Corinthians four. I'll just read it to you because I think it summarizes what I want to say at the close of this lesson. Paul said, "we don't lose heart." Another way to say that might be we don't let the burdens of this life get us down. We don't let it take control of us. We don't let it, we don't let it destroy the joy that we have. No. "Even though our outward man is perishing, the inward man is being renewed day by day, For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. We do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal." Most people can't see that. Isn't that odd? I think maybe intellectually, they see it. I mean, as they get older, they see that, how they've invested their life, if they've lived it without God they I think they can see how that's just not that important anymore. I don't know if they know how to, how to get it back on track, but I don't have any doubt that as they get older, they see, you know, what's that mean? You know, you can go, just go, listen to, listen to all these people talk about, you know, they had all this early in life, and now they're later in life, and it just doesn't mean as much. In some cases, it just doesn't mean anything. And there are a lot of people who have. I watched the a minute video this past week by Scottie Pippen. That's a name that some of you will remember from the sports world, and that's basically what he said. You find all sorts of people that's had a whole lot of stuff and had a whole lot of power and had a whole lot of fame, had a whole lot of money, and at the end of life, they just say, you know, it just doesn't matter, and that just doesn't matter, and it doesn't.

Here's a final point that I just want to bring to bring to your attention today. You know, if you're, if you're alive today, which we are right now, in this moment, we're alive. If you're alive, you can change course. I don't care how old you are, all you have to do is make that decision. I'm not going to live for this world. I'm going to live for God, and you can change that. I don't care how old you are. If that's not what you've done, you can change that. Isn't that a great thing? It's a great thing about God. He's always, he always gives you this. He's always there to welcome you back. He's always there to say, anytime you want to make the decision to come to me, you can. Isn't that a great thing about God? I love that, and that's why, as I've told you many times, I love, I love knowing that if God allows me to live another week that next Sunday. I love this. I love knowing the fact that if I'm alive, and if you're alive, and you come here and I come here, I love the fact that I'm going to get to tell you more about this God who loves us with all his heart and who wants us to be saved. That excites me. That gets me pumped. I cannot wait to come back, not because I'm the one telling it because, but because I'm the one that sees it and you see it, and when we talk about it together, it strengthens us. It gives us the kind of hope and the confidence and even the outlook on life that we ought to have. And I pray that you have that. If you don't, you can, you just have to commit to him.

Would you do that today? Or or if you've committed and yet you've, how shall I say, wondered away, you've been led astray, you've gone off the deep end, or you've gone off the shallow and you've just gone off. Just commit, recommit to knowing, knowing what you ought to do, knowing you have to do that. You need to do that you you don't want to be lost. You want to be saved. We'd sure like to help you with that. We don't know how best to do that until you make us aware of that. But if you would come in a moment when we sing this song and just let's talk about it, I'll talk to you briefly. One of the elders may talk to you briefly as well. Andlet's find out what this group can do to help you to get back on track, to get back on life lived for God. We can help you with that. Come as we stand and as we sing.