Important Questions — Leonard Ravenhill

The Personal Question of Life

I have a text tonight which is a question, and it's a question that we cannot answer collectively. It's a question you have to answer individually. You will never face a more challenging question than this text.

What is your life? And it replies, it gives a reply here in the text, it is even a vapour that appeareth for a little time. Now notice what it doesn't say, it doesn't say what is life, because if it did, nobody has an answer.

It doesn't say what is our life, otherwise we could fool all our thinking, it says what is your life? There are three main questions that come up in life. Children ask this question, where did I come from?

And somewhere, sometime, you better give them the right answer, because if you don't, somebody will give them the wrong answer. And then maybe at your age right now, you're asking another question, why am I here?

And then when you get further up the road, which I happen to be, you say, where do I go from here? So there are three basic questions about life. Where did I come from? Why am I here? And where do I go from here?

And you hear people say, well life isn't just, life isn't fair. One man said life is a feast, another wise man said life is a fast. One man said life is a paradise, another man said life is a prison. You see, the question here is very pointed, and maybe it's very personal, it is impersonal, maybe it's very painful.

The Fleeting Nature of Human Life

Maybe you could answer the question, what is your life? You say it's a failure. What is your life? A success. What is your life? It's a disappointment. But actually it's showing to us, by the very context, that life is like a vapor.

It's like the steam that comes off the kettle and you try and get a handful of it and it's gone. And in every case in the Word of God where life is referred to, that is this physical life, it's likened to something that's very swift.

It's likened, for instance, to a weaver's shuttle. It's likened to a tent that men wrap up and move on in the night. Isaiah likens our life to the grass of the field, which today is and tomorrow is cast into the oven.

The Failure of Human Progress and Materialism

Now, if this book is about anything at all, it's about life. I can remember in World War I, before World War I, so I'm not too young, there were a group of supermen around at that time. George Bernard Shaw ganged up with a bunch of fellows that were called the Fabian Socialists.

George Bernard Shaw gang was there. H .G. Weld was one of the leading spokesmen. Aldous Huxley was there and all the top-notch guys, you know. And they suddenly came to a realization that they had solved the problem of inequality, injustice, a way to empty prisons, a way to make this world a utopia.

After all, Christianity's had 2 ,000 years, they said, it hasn't done too well. So we don't need the church, we don't need the Bible. They said we can have a new race of men by intellectual and biological processes.

They didn't talk about repentance and sin, none the less, that's too theological. They talked about the adequacy of materialism, the inevitability of progress, and the sufficiency of man. And they began to tick off things they didn't need.

And they marched on bravely with their little cards, you know, saying utopia isn't far off and we will do all this. And the situation isn't better. And yet tonight, with all our progressive education, we have more sin, we have more darkness, we have more slums, we have more disease, we have more broken homes, more broken lives.

The world is a madhouse. You know, we learn from history. The one thing we learn from history is that we don't learn from history. If we did, we wouldn't be in the mess that we're in tonight. You'd think these politicians would give up.

What in God's name are they doing? Far from wasting money, wasting, dangling a carrot on the end of a stick, when all the time they know there's no hope. H .G. Wells had written his outline of history.

And he wrote his final book, and this was the title of it, The Man That Was Dreaming Great Dreams of a New World Order. And he had the answer, along with all his brothers who were so super-intellectual.

And his last book was called Mind at the End of its Tether. And he wrote the whole human race off and said there is no hope. No hope for the human race. Because, he says, man has a blank inside of him.

Man has a blank inside of him. In any state of thought. So you find a man saying, Youth is a mistake. Manhood is folly. And old age is a regret. Sure it is if you miss the one place to get life. And even in the days of his flesh, Jesus complained, He will not come to me that ye may have life.

Jesus Christ as the Way, Truth, and Life

Now do you remember his great statement, I am the way, the truth and the life. I am the way, without that there's no going. I am the truth, without that there's no knowing. I am the life, without him there's no growing.

But the whole thing is about life. Now if I'm going to live, I'm going to eat. If I'm going to live, I'm going to eat this world. Because Jesus says what? I am the bread of life. Man cannot live by bread alone, the only earthly bread.

But he can live by the bread which is Christ. He says I am the water of life. That's essential to life. You can't live without water. He says I am the light of life. And he says I've not merely come, isn't it?

Christ's Promise of Abundant Life

John 10 and 10 in which he says I've come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly.