The Fear of the Lord
Ecclesiastes Sermon Series • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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· 1 viewtwo principles that prepare us inwardly for worship. First, we need to recognize the Holiness of God. Secondly, we are required to acknowledge the authority of God.
Notes
Transcript
1 Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they are doing evil. 2 Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few. 3 For a dream comes with much business, and a fool’s voice with many words.
4 When you vow a vow to God, do not delay paying it, for he has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you vow. 5 It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay. 6 Let not your mouth lead you into sin, and do not say before the messenger that it was a mistake. Why should God be angry at your voice and destroy the work of your hands? 7 For when dreams increase and words grow many, there is vanity; but God is the one you must fear.
Many Christians shared through social media a video clip of Victoria Osteen saying,
When we obey God, we’re not doing it for God … we’re doing it for ourselves because God takes pleasure when we’re happy.… When you come to church, when you worship Him, you’re not doing it for God really, you’re doing it for yourself.
That clip was paired with a scene from the film Billy Madison where a man says, “What you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard” (Blair, “Victoria Osteen”).
When we hear a religious figure say out loud that we do not worship God for God, we know that is patently absurd. It is a complete reversal of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Instead of saying that “man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever,” now contemporary Christianity seems to say that God’s chief end is to glorify man and enjoy him forever.
While it is easy for us to give Mrs. Osteen a hard time, the problem is we all think this way sometimes. Our thoughts may not be as overt as Mrs. Osteen’s, and we may not utter them out loud, but American Christianity has become me centered rather than God centered. We consume devotional books that are chock-full of tips on how we can have a better day but say little about the transcendent glory of God. Bible study lessons abound that act like we are the main characters of the Bible and need to become brave like David, strong in prayer like Daniel, or a better father than Eli. Even preaching has become less about God and more about five ways to be a better husband, six ways to manage your money, and three tips to a godly sex life in marriage.
Note: “It is possible today to go to Church and hear little about God and Much about you.”
Unfortunately, many times worship has become all about me - my desires, my likes, my preferences, what I want - and that is nothing less than idolatry. When you go to visit a church for the first time what are you looking for. For many people if we do not feel that all of our needs are being met, we are likely to never return to that church.
The Cat and Dog Theology
A dog says, “you pet me, feed me, shelter me, and love me; you must be God,” but a cat says, “you pet me, feed me shelter me, and love me, I must be God.” So much of modern Christianity looks just like those. God is no longer the Almighty Sovereign King of the Universe, He is a personal shopper, life coach, homeboy, and genie all rolled into one.
Ultimately we see God as a means to an end and not the end that say’s God is the beginning and the end in Himself. We use God to get what we really want. Some come back to church, start giving money regularly, and have perfect attendance in community group Bible study because the hope that God will take their cancer away, fix their family problems, provide for them financially.
I remember the first Church I served at in Cisco Texas. We had a man who was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He had hardly darkened the door of the Church for years, however, after the diagnoses he was there every Sunday. We prayed fervently that God would heal this man. Guess what, this man was healed. Gradually the man who was healed began to drop out of Church life until eventually we never saw him again. He did not want God. He wanted what God could do for him.
The Preparation of our Worship (v.1)
The Preparation of our Worship (v.1)
Religion has become a means to use God for what we really want rather than an experience of standing in awe of the living do. Solomon exposes that kind of religion as meaningless.
Up to this point in Ecclesiastes Solomon has repeatedly exposed the meaninglessness of this world and all this cursed life has brought to creation. If this is all there is to life then nothing can ever truly have any meaning at all.
How Do You Prepare for Worship?
How Do You Prepare for Worship?
Exalting Jesus in Ecclesiastes (Offerings (5:1))
“Just because you go to church and worship God does not mean you are not a fool” (“Guarding Your Steps”). What is so bad is that the fool is ignorant that he is doing wrong, angering God, and adding to the separation. He is not helping a thing. He may actually be making things worse.
God, through His prophets, repeatedly criticizes this mind-set. In 1 Samuel 15:22 Samuel says,
Does the LORD take pleasure in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the LORD? Look: to obey is better than sacrifice, to pay attention is better than the fat of rams.
Think about the process of going to Church on Sunday mornings, especially if you still have children living at home. Many Sunday’s we were just thankful if Troy got to church with shoes on his feet.
And once you get to Church, if you are serving on one of our teams, you must prepare for guests, the worship team is in preparation for leading the music portion of the service, the pastor and leaders are doing numerous things before worship ever begins. You can almost feel the sigh of relief in the morning when all the people take their places and begin the worship service.
There are two precepts given for preparing inwardly for worship.
1). We need to recognize the Holiness of God.
1). We need to recognize the Holiness of God.
The first requirement for our time in worship is that we must Guard our Steps when we go up to the House of the Lord. Or in other words, approach God with great caution and care. Why you might ask? I thought God created man to have a relationship with God? Yes, but, man’s rebellion against God severed that relationship.
It is clear in Genesis 3 that God cast Adam and Eve out of the place of intimate communion with God and placed the cherubim outside with flaming swords to keep humanity out of paradise.
However, we do know that God still loves and desires a relationship.
The Tabernacle, and in Solomon’s day the temple-the house of God-was the place where God lived among His people to reverse the effects of what happened in Eden, if only in a small and initial way.
How Do we Recognize the Holiness of God?
We must recognize the Holiness of God. God is not only Holy, He is really, really, Holy. To ‘walk prudently’ is inwardly to obey the command given to Moses, ‘Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.’ In many parts of the world, the Christian preacher is required to remove his shoes before he enters the pulpit.
When you come to worship, do you see the ground you are standing on as Holy Ground?
The Day of worship was a day of consecration to the Lord. So, you had the DAY of WORSHIP; the PLACE of WORSHIP, the OFFERING of WORSHIP, the priest and the worshipers were all to be made Holy before the Lord.
This is not just an Old Testament teaching, we read about how Jesus drove the money changers out of His Fathers house, the Temple in Jerusalem. Paul commands for believers to examine themselves before coming to the table of the Lord, lest they eat the bread and drink the cup in an unworthy manner. (1 Cor. 11:27-28) We this same aspect of Worship in Hebrews 12:28-29
28 Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, 29 for our God is a consuming fire.
And of course this command is given in Leviticus 19:2
2 “Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.
And Peter reminds us of this same command in 1 Peter 1:15-16
15 but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, 16 since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
Note: Christ does not just save us from our sin, though, he saves us so that we might become holy (Eph. 1:3-4). The Bible could not be clearer on the subject of holiness.
Kevin DeYoung says:
“The reason for your entire salvation, the design behind your deliverance, the purpose for which God chose you in the first place is holiness.”
HOLINESS IS ASSOCIATED WITH SEPARATION FROM THE ORDINARY OR PROFANE THINGS OF THE WORLD AND A CONNECTION WITH GOD OR THE DIVINE.
You Must Make Holiness Your Purpose
Of all the goals we have for our life, the most important is to pursue holiness because it is God’s goal for our life.
As Oswald Chambers said,
God has only one intended destiny for mankind—holiness. His only goal is to produce saints. God is not some eternal blessing-machine for people to use, and he did not come to save us out of pity—he came to save us because he created us to be holy.
If we truly love God we will commit to making holiness the primary purpose of our life.
Unfortunately, we often reduce worship to merely singing, but worship is all of life (Rom 12:1–2). Worship has to do with whether you obey the revealed will of God laid out in the Bible. You can come to as many worship gatherings as you want and raise your hands high in the air, but if you cannot obey God’s Word, then you have a worship problem.
2). We must Acknowledge the Authority of God.
2). We must Acknowledge the Authority of God.
We are now commanded to draw near to hear. When Jesus explained the nature of true worship to the Samaritan woman, he revealed that it must be ‘in spirit and in truth’ (John 4:24).
It is impossible to experience true worship without the proclamation of God’s word. The ‘sacrifices of fools’ is ignorant worship in the flesh.
Drawing Near to Hear is Active Listening
Most people in culture today are not active listeners, they are passive listeners. Even as you are listening to this message today I venture to say many are passively listening. Active listeners are constantly listening for the voice of God as they hear His word proclaimed.
Passive listeners fail to engage the word of God and truly understand it’s deeper meaning for their lives. Passive listeners of God’s word like the garnished dish more than they like the food; this is to desire to be pleased rather than edified.
If God’s word is faithfully being proclaimed, then he will be speaking to His people. However, too much emphasis is placed on the way the message is produced and delivered. How many conversations have you been a part of or heard following a worship service that were centered around pleasing the hearer. The purpose of our worship is to draw near and to hear, not merely to give us what our itching ears want to hear. We must come to worship prepared to draw near and hear the word of God.
The Presentation of our Worship (vv. 2-3)
The Presentation of our Worship (vv. 2-3)
*The Command
*The Command
This section begins with a command to bridle the tongue. The pagan religions were noted for their lengthy incantations and mantras. These may well have crept into the worship of the living God - for Jesus warned His own generation.
7 “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
How we Treat Prayer
This is an indictment on the presumption that how a person prays, what they pray, or how many words they use that God will be favorable toward them. Some people think they must pray in the King James language for God to actually hear and answer them. Some people think they have to be more casual and informal referring to God as their “Daddy.”
The point is that what you say, and how you say it is not the issue. The issue is a matter of your heart. But we so often think that God is like our earthly fathers who can be asked at the right time or in the right way and we can get the answer we want to hear.
For example: A child wants a chocolate chip cupcake, but instead of coming to the parent and asking, “can I have a cupcake?” to which the response probably would have been “no, you will spoil your dinner,” the child responds, “Do you think that I ought to taste test that chocolate cupcake to make sure I like it before you pack it in my lunch on Monday?” After we had a laugh, we say, “sure. You can have the cupcake..”
Here is the problem, we think that God can be manipulated in the same way. The answer to your prayer does not depend on what you say, how you ask it, how many words you use, or even the formality or casual way that you ask. Rather it depends on the heavenly Father who knows what is best for you. We do not barter with God. We just ask Him with a humble heart and trust that He knows best.
*The Reason
*The Reason
We must grasp and understand the gulf between a completely Holy God and His creation. Notice the reason that is stated, “God is in heaven and you are on the Earth.”
Job received a similar response from God:
1 Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:
2 “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
3 Dress for action like a man;
I will question you, and you make it known to me.
4 “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
5 Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
6 On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone,
7 when the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
We must remember that the very act of worship is firstly the gracious action of God in bridging the gulf between himself and the worshipper through the sacrifice of His son Jesus Christ on the cross who has now become our Great High Priest.
*The Picture
*The Picture
The preacher now draws a picture by comparing the foolishness of the over busy mind.
(A Picture (v. 3))
As Otto Zockler says, as an ‘exciting and anxious occupation of the mind produces the phenomenon of confused and uneasy dreams by which the sleep is disturbed, soon the habit of an excess of words, causes the speech to degenerate into vain and senseless twaddle.’
The unconscious mind can be a dangerous thing when it makes bizarre interpretation of the things that have occupied it during a busy day - relating current events with distant memories and often producing a scenario that would not seem out of place in a science fiction movie.
Much work also leads to sleep and dreams, but dreams are not real. We must be like the tax collector who beats his chest in Jesus’s parable and says, “God be merciful to me a sinner” (Luke 18:13-14). Just like our children, when they are hurting, do not have to manipulate us to get us to bend down and help them, neither do we have to manipulate our heavenly Father. He know the things we need even before we ask Him.
The Promises of our Worship (vv. 4-7)
The Promises of our Worship (vv. 4-7)
We see this sentiment recorded by Solomon in Proverbs 20:25
25 It is a snare to say rashly, “It is holy,”
and to reflect only after making vows.
*The Place of our Promises
*The Place of our Promises
“When you make a vow do not delay in fulfilling it,” because “God does not delight in fools.”
Vows: vows were pledges that worshipers would make to God as part of the of the offering or sacrifice process. The vow was made so that God might answer a specific request. Deuteronomy 12:11
11 then to the place that the Lord your God will choose, to make his name dwell there, there you shall bring all that I command you: your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and the contribution that you present, and all your finest vow offerings that you vow to the Lord.
Overview of Vows in Scripture
The place of the promise is the very alter of God. Each Sunday, when you come into this place to worship you are making a vow to God. Israel continually made vows to the Lord for His favor. The worshiper offered sacrifice, money, or property in exchange for God meeting a request. It was more like a, “I will do this for you if you do this for me.” (Deuteronomy 23:11-23)
Another example is barren Hannah, who asked the Lord for a child and vowed that he would be a Nazarite. When she weaned Samuel, she took him to serve at the Tabernacle with Eli (1 Samuel 1).
Even today we see these same promises made to God. “God, if you will come through for me in this area of my life then I will do this for you in return.”
*The Responsibility of Our Promises
*The Responsibility of Our Promises
Vows that Christians Have Made to God.
All who are set apart and have recieved the saving benefits of Salvation are in a covenant relationship with God. (counting the cost)
All who have been baptized in Christ have been set apart as a God’s people in covenant relationship with each other. (serving the Church)
All who are in a Biblical marriage make a covenant vow with their spouse before God. (serving our spouse in the one flesh union)
“It is Better that you should not vow, than that you should vow and not pay.”
How many idle promises do we make to God in the heat of the moment or in the charged atmosphere of a particular circumstance? How many have we fulfilled?
Jesus taught that it was better to say nothing and then do the will of God than to make an idle promise that would remain unfulfilled (Matt. 21:28–31). Peter was quick to say to Jesus: ‘Even if I have to die with you, I will not deny you!’ (Matt. 26:35); yet it was not long before his words were rendered meaningless (Matt. 26:69–75).
*The Fulfillment of Our Promises
*The Fulfillment of Our Promises
vs. 6 “Let not your mouth lead you into sin, and do not say before the messenger that it was a mistake....”
Words Matter to God
Make no mistake about it, the words we voice to God matter.
So your mouth dragged you into the sin of making a vow or promise that you could not keep, do not try to excuse yourself by saying it was a mistake. This will anger God more. He hears them all! People do thing with their vows all the time. Again, they do it with marriage.
“We were in sin and should not have gotten married. This is not a godly marriage, so we need to end it.” People do it with other vows and promises to God, and this leads God to destroy the works of their hands. Do not try to excuse your self; instead own it and confess it before God.
The New Testament recounts the heartbreaking story of Ananias and Sapphira who - during a time when many of the early Christians were selling property and giving the proceeds to God’s work - sold a possession but only gave part of the proceeds to the apostles, therefore, deceived - with tragic consequences.
Solomon exposes the hypocrisy of meaningless religion that tries to manipulate God. We try to bargain with God to get what we want. We think that if we do what God wants, then He will do what we want. This is not the gospel.
Note: the writer concludes this passage by again mentioning the fantasy of thinking that our words affect God, and then He calls us to fear God.
CONCLUSION
The Fear of the Lord
Our culture today struggles to understand the concept of the Fear of the Lord because we live in a world that has no reverence for authority. We no longer approach parents, teachers, coaches, Law Enforcement with respect.
We should humbly submit to and stand in awe of God who know all our sins and empty promises. People may try to object to this idea and say, “Well, that is just the Old Testament,” but Jesus warns us to fear Him who can destroy soul and body in hell (Matt 10:28). We are called to stand in Awe of a Holy God.
The only way that we can possibly approach the throne of Grace is through Jesus Christ alone. We are separated from God because of our sin, and the temple system gave specific regulations for approaching God. How every that system was temporary because it could never permanently wipe away the stain and blemish of sin on our lives.
Jesus is the better priest and the better sacrifice who can cleanse and reconcile us for all time! Not only for all our sins but for all of the empty promises and religious rituals we have piled up before a Holy God.
The veil that separated us from a Holy God has been torn from top to bottom in the temple. Now we come with confidence and awe before the living God of the universe.
19 Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, 20 by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. 23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.
Christ has changed once and for all how we approach the throne of God, and He has revitalized our religious rituals.
There are no sacred structures, but there is a sacred people that gathers together in worship. As Alister Begg argues, “there is nothing special about the building we gather to worship in except that God’s people are there.”
And now in Christ we let our yes be yes and our no be no (Matt. 5:37). We keep our word and make good on our promises to God.
Note: How incredible it would be if the Church was the one place where people kept their vows and made good on their promises?!
If that is not true of us, then we need to repent and confess. Let us stand in awe of our great God through the grace of Jesus Christ, and let us offer our whole lives and all or our words as pleasing sacrifices to Him.