God’s beauty last forever Ecclesiastes 3:11 & Ecc 8:17

Brothers and Sisters, we can allow God to beautify us freely of His grace and it will last forever or we can spend a huge amount of time and money to beautify ourselves with fake beauty that fades away; Ecclesiastes reminds us of our limitations and boundedness, it also teaches us that life under the sun is often empty, ineffective, yet it does not run us into the rocks of despair either. We must learn to beautify ourselves God’s way.

You see God’s divine purpose for man is reveal is this verse which is the planting of eternity in the human heart. This means we can never be completely satisfied with earthly pleasures and pursuits. Because we are made in the image of God, we have an inborn inquisitiveness about eternal realities. We can find true peace only when we come to know our eternal Creator (God); even then we know God here on earth only in part as Paul mentioned in 1 Corn 13:12.

The notion of Paul in 1Cor 13:12, is that we see only a glimpse of God’s perfection of his creation; we cannot see into the future or comprehend everything that is why in creation, God has built in human a restless yearning for the kind of perfect world that can only be found in his perfect rule. Hence all things are made beautiful only in his time.

Every human soul has a God-given awareness that there’s “something more” than this world; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. Ie in their fallen state, men senses there ought to be something more than this world so, fallen men are left to wonder because they are predetermined.

That is why we may be puzzled at how each event that God allows to take place at its own appointed time & place can be said to be ‘beautiful’.- Otherwise, how can war, mourning, death and all the other unpleasant things mentioned in 3:2-8 be sources of delight? We may not understand it but is this not what the apostle Peter is thinking of when he advices believers to rejoice in their suffering? (see 1Pet 4:12-16). The eternity of God’s dealings with mankind corresponds to something inside us; we have the capacity for eternal things, we are concerned about the future, we want to understand things ‘from the beginning to the end’ no wonder the first Adam fell because of the lost for the desire to be equal with God.

Charles Spurgeon said “life is short; eternity is long. It is only reasonable that this short life be lived in light of eternity” Yes, eternity is long therefore, it makes sense that the greatest business of this life is to determine where we will be in the next life; and an important factor in making this determination is to consider that eternity is, indeed, very long. Eternity is long enough for the unredeemed or unbelievers to experience the depths of mankind’s immorality. Eternity is long for the redeemed or believers to experience the heights of mankind’s destiny.

Brothers & sisters, God has set a particular number of people for eternity; when that last person to receive Christ is done, in that eternal moment Christ will return. Christ will remove from this world, Satan, all who rejected Christ, Satan’s influence & all Satan’s worshippers. The devil & his people will be cast into the lake of eternal fire; where the torment of hell will continue for all eternity.

“For indeed, the day is coming, burning like furnace, when all the arrogant and everyone who commits wickedness will become stubble. The coming day will consume them, ‘says the Lord of Hosts, ‘not leaving them root or branch. But for you who fear My Name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings, and you will go out and playfully jump like calves from the stall (Mal 4:1-4).

According to Eaton ‘God have made us for himself, and our hearts are restless until they can find peace only in God’ However, those who have submitted themselves to God are to go through life a day at a time and enjoy each day even though they might not know God’s plan from beginning to end. Therefore, humanity is to return to God and receive the fulfilment of life as a gift from God. (se 3:12-13, 22; 5:18-20)

Nothing can be added to or taken away from what God has done; and God’s purpose in what He has done is so that men will worship him. Thus we ought to realize that both our desire to understand all of life as well as the limitations on our ability to do so, have been ordained by God.

Eternity will offer opportunities to live a fulfilling life because this is God’s original plan for human-beings. Imagine the quality of life that awaits us with sin no longer being a problem for the human race!

My brothers and sisters, you are not broken beyond healing, damage beyond repairs & wounded beyond recovery! God can transform your ugly situation into something more beautiful than you can ever imagine. He can take our mess and turn it into a message for His glory, our past do not defines us; He can turn our shameful situation into a thing of glory and finally God can bring beauty out of our ashes.

Note at the glorious Beautiful gate is a man with an ugly situation of which all he did is to hand all his heart to God and God turned this man’s ashes to an atom of beauty because our God has made everything beautiful in its time; blessed be God Amen.