Life with and Without God
G. S. Barrett, D. D. Ecclesiastes 2:17 Therefore I hated life; because the work that is worked under the sun is grievous to me: for all is vanity and vexation of spirit. Contrast this verdict of the Preacher with that calm, clear, victorious utterance of the great apostle, ringing like a clarion, as he urges the words, "Lay hold on the life that is life indeed," and you will have the subject of my sermon — life without God, and life with God — the misery and disappointment of the one, the fulness and satisfaction of the other; the one vanity and vexation of spirit, the other life which is life indeed. I. Let us look at LIFE WITHOUT GOD. Let me frankly acknowledge that there are some things in life even without God which are pleasant, and delightful and beautiful. First of all we begin life as "little children, and to children the next` pleasure is quite enough to make life worth living; their little hearts are not troubled with the deep problems of life, and God forbid they should be. And then I do not deny that there is some real satisfaction and pleasure, as every one knows, in all healthy activity. Then, too, no one can doubt that there is very much that is very beautiful in human love. Some young people in the golden days of their early married life, when love is very beautiful, and real, and fresh, bright as a spring morning, may be tempted to think that is enough. "We want no other life, this satisfies us." Now, I admit of this freely and frankly; but oh, it does not settle the question. The question comes back, "Does it satisfy?" There are very many indications in this present day that the world is finding out what this old preacher found out, that life without God is vanity and vexation of the spirit. Let me just give you one of them. Have you ever noticed the very remarkable fact that much of our higher poetry is unutterably sad? Take, for example, the poems of Matthew Arnold: they are Greek in perfection of form and in their faultless beauty, but how sad they are! That deep sadness that lay over the world of which he so pathetically sings broods like a cloud over his own poetry. And when you come to examine the reason why he so depresses you, the answer is because there is no living personal God in it — it is the loss of God which explains it all. Do not misunderstand me. I am not imagining that life is to be lived solely with religious aims and religious objects. I do not take a narrow view, I trust, of human life. God has given us various and ample powers, and each one of them has to find its own appropriate satisfaction. I do not condemn any of the generous ambitions of youth. I would not oven forbid the loss noble ambitions of life so long as they are kept subordinate to the will of God. Let a man earn knowledge or fame, or distinction, or wealth, or influence, and if he earn them honestly, well; but I do desire to impress upon you this one lesson — that it does not matter what the end you set before yourselves in life may be, whether it be pleasure, or intellectual eminence, or wealth, if you leave God out it will so disappoint you, miserably disappoint you, and you will have a time, in your own experience, when you will turn from it with the muttered curse, "All is vanity and vexation of spirit." II. LET US ASK WHAT LIFE WITH GOD MEANS. "Lay hold on the life which is life indeed." Shall I tell you what it is? "This is life eternal to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." Those are the words of Jesus: that is Christ's own definition of the life indeed — to know God, the true God, and Jesus Christ, whom He hath sent. No man requires demonstration that this is life indeed. It needs none: the mere statement of the truth is its proof. If there be an eternal and infinite God on whom I depend for all things, if He has created me and loves me with unspeakable love, if He has spent all the riches of His love to redeem me from sin, if I am to live with Him through eternity a life removed from all the conditions of time and space — then, of all the self-evident propositions you can put into words, this is the most self-evident and certain, that I am created and redeemed solely to find my life in God, I am too great to find my life in anything less than God. Ah, "He that hath the Son hath life, he that hath not the Son hath not life." This is the life indeed. And now you see the meaning of what we are so apt to call the mystery of sorrow, the mystery of pain. The other day I was reading the diary of a life which in many respects is most instructive and pathetic. It was the story of a man who had had unusual prosperity, and in looking through this diary I came across these words: "God has broken silence with me." Great crushing sorrow had fallen on him, and that man who had lived many years in the sunshine of prosperity without God, without ever speaking of God or hearing God speaking to him, suddenly in the darkness awoke to the fact that God was near to him, and that God had come to him in the great trouble of his life; and then he wrote these words, "God has broken silence with me." Ah, life indeed! That is its designation. I do not say it will not have its troubles, its disappointments, perhaps even its failures; but the troubles and disappointments of that life as little affect it as the storms that sweep across the Atlantic touch the deep Calm of the ocean beneath. It is life indeed! Nothing disturbs its central peace, for it is founded upon God. And then, when the end comes — as it will come to us all — and friends stand round the bed, and the last farewells are spoken, and the eyes are closed in death, and we make the last journey to that "bourne from which no traveller returns," and our feet touch the waters of the cold river — in that supreme and awful hour will the life indeed fill us then? Listen! The man who wrote these words, "Lay hold of the life which is life indeed," tells us what he felt on the verge of eternity: "I am now ready to be offered." (G. S. Barrett, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Therefore I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me: for all is vanity and vexation of spirit. WEB: So I hated life, because the work that is worked under the sun was grievous to me; for all is vanity and a chasing after wind.