Studies In Ecclesiastes

Studies In Ecclesiastes Presentation 05

Taking God Seriously Chapter 5v1-20 Presentation 05

Introduction One of the hazards of listening to sermons is to think ‘this is what others we know need to hear’. Behaving in this way makes us sermon deflectors and we prevent God's Word from challenging our hearts. The sermon deflector defence is often used when we are exposed to the book of Ecclesiastes. A book addressed to secular man who has closed God out of his life and who lives his life ‘under the sun’. We reason, “This certainly can't refer to me for my presence in church shows that I give God his place.” But notice that this chapter is particularly addressed to the worshipper who may enjoy a good sing but who nevertheless forgets where he is and above all who God is. Three areas of danger are identified; our approach to worship, our approach to prayer and to vows. Presentation 05

Approach To Worship There is biblical justification for churches putting the poster in their Wayside Pulpit which reads, "Danger God at work!" We are told in v1 to ‘guard our steps’ or to ‘watch our step’ as we come to church. Why? Because going to church can be dangerous. When God sees us at worship he is entitled to assume that we take him seriously and have come to meet with him. It is possible to come to worship with a hazy notion of who God is. We can imagine that he is a million miles away hidden in some impenetrable fog. If we do then we could be in for a great shock when God draws near and addresses our heart. Presentation 05

Approach To Worship Think for example of the response of Jacob on his first real encounter with God after fleeing from the family home in fear of his life. As he went to sleep that first night in the desert God spoke to him in a dream causing him to say, "Surely God was in this place and I never knew it“ Gen 28v16. Or, think of the prophet Isaiah who on one temple visit was confronted with God causing him to say, "Woe is me for I am a man of unclean lips“, Isa 6v5. In both instances these are the reactions of men when confronted with the reality of God. A God of moral holiness and infinite majesty. I cannot think of a more sobering experience than that! Presentation 05

Approach To Worship Did you know that worship rises and falls with our concept of God? What is our view of God? Is our worship marked by a sense of awe and reverence or, have we belittled and demoted God to nothing more than the ‘man upstairs’? Have we robbed God of his majesty and holiness and shorn him of his sovereignty and power? Is God is real to us? Then surely we will attempt to prepare our hearts to meet him as we come to his house. Do we do that? We can spend ages ensuring that our external appearance is presentable but fail to spend any time preparing our hearts? Heart preparation reveals our attitude to worship. Presentation 05

Approach To Worship Worship does not begin when the minister says, "Let us worship God“ or when the worship leader reads a portion of Scripture. We can often use the time before the service begins to quietly prepare our hearts to meet with God. And during the service, when the choir sings or an organ voluntary is played, we can use that time to centre our hearts on God. We can marvel in who he is and in the grace and mercy that he has bestowed on us and thank him for the many benefits he has lavished upon us. Of course we do not only do this in formal worship situations but by doing so we are saying to God, “We want you to be the exclusive focus of our worship time.” Presentation 05

Approach To Worship A further way in which we demonstrate how seriously we take God has to do with the way we listen v1. Do we come longing for and expecting God to speak? Worship requires us to be as adult, as responsible, as serious, as concentrated in our thoughts as we are capable of being. You see our minds are so constituted that they cannot be focused upon God and at the same time contemplate what we intend to have for lunch, or where we might go afterwards. If we do not take God seriously then we will reduce worship to a kind of verbal doodling, letting our minds stray to anything except God. Presentation 05

Approach To Worship We are exhorted to listen rather than offer the sacrifice of fools. That is strong language! The bible uses the term ‘fool’ sparingly. Elsewhere, we read that ‘the fool who says in his heart that there is no God’, or better rendering is that he says in his heart, ‘no God for me’. Do you recall the story Jesus told of the farmer who gave all his time and energy to thinking about how best to provide for his retirement and who gave no time or thought as to how to prepare for eternity. The farmer was doubtless a worshipping Jew who took part in all the religious festivals. But he effectively had shut God out and Jesus tells us of the ringing condemnation which came to him from heaven, "Fool, this night your soul will be required” Lk.12.20. Presentation 05

Approach To Worship What then is ‘the sacrifice of fools’ v1?It refers to those whose religion is no more than a ritual, whose profession no more than a performance, whose worship no more than waffle! Oh these fools attended worship and brought their sacrifice while at the same time shutting God out. They hoped their religious performance would buy God's favour, while at the same time encourage him to keep his distance from them. People in worship settings do that today. They go through the ritual of attendance but desperately want to keep God at a distance. God declares such behaviour to be that of the fool. Little wonder M. L. Jones could write that ‘one of the most dangerous places for a man to be is in the church of the living God’. Presentation 05

Approach To Prayer Prayer can also be a dangerous business! And the worshipper is told in v2 not to be ‘quick with his mouth’! Someone has said that ‘saying prayers without praying is blasphemy’. To reduce prayer to a string of empty religious phrases betrays the fact that we have no real notion of the awful, living Majesty we are approaching. It is vitally important to guard against glibness in prayer for we then reduce prayer to no more than talking with ourselves. Luther called prayer the 'sweat of the soul' but we can reduce it to a 'trip of the tongue'. One of God's chief complaints against Israel were that they ‘drew near with their lips but their hearts are far from me’. It is necessary before turning to prayer to sit down quietly and let our thoughts centre upon God. Presentation 05

Approach To Prayer A second danger in prayer is to pray with our lips for something our hearts have little or no interest in. The writer is saying here, ‘don't let your prayers run away with you’. Before you start saying things to God remember that he will assume that you mean what you say. I sometimes quake when people tell me what they have asked God to give them no matter the cost. For often they have given no real thought to what it might cost? During the Clydebank Blitz a woman prayed that if God kept her and her partner free from harm during the bombing she would dedicate the child she was carrying to God’s service. The son born to her ended up serving God as a missionary overseas and only after he had made this decision did she tell him of her prayer. Presentation 05

Approach To Prayer John Newton, the hymn-writer and minister of the gospel, was once so dissatisfied with the quality of his ministry that he cried to God to bless him. The next year was the most traumatic of Newton’s life. He had prayed for blessing but it seemed as though God was sending him hardship after hardship, trial after trial. And then eventually it registered with him that this was God's way of answering his prayer, of building strength into his Christian character and of creating a deeper childlike dependency of faith in God in his heart. Presentation 05

Approach To Prayer A third danger in prayer might be described as one-way communication. Some commit the same mistake with God as they do with their friends - they do all the talking! And often their speech takes on the form of complaint. The importance of listening and not complaining or charging God with injustices is that we might take time to ask, ‘what is God saying to me through the sore circumstances of my life?’ The preacher says, ‘remember you are only a creature, God is the Creator, God is in heaven you are on earth so let your words be few’. Our attitude to God in prayer should be one of submission not that of an arrogant prosecuting counsel who does not have all the facts of the case at his fingertips. Presentation 05

Approach To Vows The final area of the preacher's concern is the heart attitude of the person who makes solemn vows to God. For our attitude to these binding promises tell us a great deal about how seriously we take God. We take formal vows when we join the church, when we get married, when we have infants baptised, when we take office in the church. But there are also the informal vows that we may make in our hearts often in periods of trouble or uncertainty, "get me out of this mess and I promise I'll be a faithful disciple!" This passage challenges us to ask, do we mean what we say, or are we merely going through some sort of religious mumbo jumbo, some meaningless ritual? Presentation 05

Approach To Vows Are we in fact playing games with God for that, says the writer, is a dangerous business. If we make a vow to God we must not delay in fulfilling it. It is better not to make a vow than to make it knowing you have no intention of keeping it. To break a vow is in fact stealing, it is to rob God of what we have promised him! Unfortunately, for many people, vows are like writing on the seashore, the first wave washes them away. Presentation 05

Approach To Vows Time and again people attempt to evade keeping the promises they have made God. They make vows rashly, perhaps because they have been momentarily aroused by a disturbing sermon, or because they find themselves in a tight corner and they consecrate their lives to God. But in the days ahead they employ all their ingenuity to free their consciences from the vows they have made. They complain that they made a mistake. They come to the temple messenger cfv6 or the minister and say, ‘I wasn't really thinking about what I was doing, my vow really meant nothing’. Presentation 05

Approach To Vows The situation is exacerbated when having wilfully broken one vow they come along and make another before God knowing they have no intention of keeping it either. Think of the person today who currently fails to keep their membership vows to God and in a few weeks time wants to make vows in a baptism service. What is happening? Oh such people are really playing games with God. They refuse to see the vow they have made to God as binding because they do not really take God seriously. Presentation 05

Conclusion Yes, coming to church can be a dangerous business especially if we have allowed ourselves to become influenced by the thinking of the secular world – a world that has no intention of taking God seriously, a world that has closed God out. But when we take God seriously we are not expected to approach him in craven terror but with the filial fear, reverence and awe. We are to recognise him for who he is. He is a holy, righteous, gracious, merciful, loving, faithful, trustworthy and true God. Presentation 05

Studies In Ecclesiastes