“Carpe Diem”5 Great Reasons to Seize the Day

Ecclesiastes 9:1-12(Part 13)

Carpe Diem | Reason #1 (9:1-3)We Can’t Control the Future.

So I reflected on all this and concluded that the righteous and the wise and what they do are in God's hands, but no man knows whether love or hate awaits him. All share a common destiny--the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not.

As it is with the good man, so with the sinner; as it is with those who take oaths, so with those who are afraid to take them.This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun: The same destiny overtakes all. The hearts of men, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterward they join the dead.

Carpe Diem | Reason #1 (9:1-3) We Can’t Control the Future.

Carpe Diem | Reason #2 (9:4-6)We Can’t Start Over.

Anyone who is among the living has hope--even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!

For the living know that they will die,but the dead know nothing;they have no further reward,

and even the memory of them is forgotten. Their love, their hate

and their jealousy have long since vanished;never again will they have a part

in anything that happens under the sun.

Carpe Diem | Reason #3 (9:7-10)Our Present is All We Really Have.

Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful

heart, for it is now that God favors what you do. Always be clothed in

white, and always anoint your head with oil. Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun—

all your meaningless days.

Carpe Diem | Reason #3 (9:7-10)Our Present is All We Really Have.

For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor

under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave,

where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.

Carpe Diem | Reason #4 (9:11)The Future is Full of Twists and Turns.

I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift

or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant

or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.

Carpe Diem | Reason #5 (9:12)Our Death Will Come Unexpectedly.

Moreover, no man knows when his hour will come:

As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are

taken in a snare,so men are trapped by

evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them.

James 4:13-17 Come now, you who say, "Today or

tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit." Yet you do not know what your life

will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.

Instead, you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.”

But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. Therefore, to one who knows the

right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.

Mark 8:34-38 And He summoned the crowd

with His disciples, and said to them, "If anyone wishes to come after Me,

he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life

for My sake and the gospel's will save it. For what does it profit a man

to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?”

Mark 8:34-38

“For what will a man give in exchange for his soul?

For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation,

the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father

with the holy angels.”

“Carpe Diem”5 Great Reasons to Seize the Day

Ecclesiastes 9:1-12(Part 13)