4 WAYS TO REVERE GOD
Pastor KC Liu / Ecc 5:1-7 / Nov 1, 2015
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1 Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, who do not know that they do wrong. 2 Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few. 3 A dream comes when there are many cares, and many words mark the speech of a fool. 4 When you make a vow to God, do not delay to fulfill it. He has no pleasure in fools; fulfill your vow. 5 It is better not to make a vow than to make one and not fulfill it. 6 Do not let your mouth lead you into sin. And do not protest to the temple messenger, “My vow was a mistake.” Why should God be angry at what you say and destroy the work of your hands? 7 Much dreaming and many words are meaningless. Therefore fear God. |
Good Morning, everybody! How are you all doing this morning? If you are new with us here this morning, we are systematically going through the Book of Ecclesiastes. We are on Part 6 of our 12-part series. So we are halfway there guys! Since you are here, I want to encourage you to be fully present; listen with intensity to what God has to say to your life through His word. I really encourage you to take notes and write down anything that you feel applies to your life. Let’s dig in to the Word of God. Turn your bibles to Ecclesiastes 5: 1-7. Today’s message is titled “4 Ways to Revere God at Church”.
Just a little bit of review so we know the context of the passage. King Solomon, the wisest and richest king who ever lived, was born at around 1000BC. He started reigning the nation of Israel at the age of 30. He probably wrote this book towards the end of his reign. His audience was middle upper-class Israelites, who were religious but distant from God. Why were they distant? Because they used all their time and energy to chase after personal wealth and pleasure. They were not concerned with the things of God. Solomon, through his own experience of chasing wealth and pleasure, he found that in the end, all these things were meaningless as they don’t last. Like breath and vapor, they only last for a short moment. Then we loose everything, because one day we are all going to die. So as a result, Solomon is telling his people, don’t make the same mistakes as me. Fear God, revere him, stand in awe of him. Don’t be preoccupied with your own profits and pleasures. Take the things of God seriously and revere him. Okay, sounds good. But how? Solomon gives us 4 ways to revere God.
Here is the first thing he says: “Guard your steps when you go to the house of God…” The Israelites went to the Temple, but they failed to approach God with reverence. Worshiping God became a formality, a mere ritual. They were just going through the motions, without true worship in their hearts.
And also, in the time of Jesus, we see that there were merchants making profit from people going to the temple. Matthew 21:12 says that “Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves.” Why did Jesus get so angry? He said, “My house will be called a house of prayer,' but you are making it 'a den of robbers."
They used the temple for their own personal gain, and that made Jesus extremely upset.
Sometimes, people come to church without the proper reverence. Sometimes we come for our own personal gain, just like the merchants. Some people come to be entertained if they think the preacher is funny. Some guys come to check out the girls. If there are no girls to chase, they stop coming. Others come to socialize with friends. If their friends are not here, they stop coming. Some come to actually do business networking and to promote their products so they can sell stuff and make money. If they can’t make money at church, they stop coming. This is not acceptable to God. Think carefully about what we are doing. We are coming to the House of God.
Think of Moses meeting God at the burning bush. God said to him, “remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground” Exodus 3:5. Moses walked very carefully before God, for God is a consuming fire. Moses “Guarded his steps.”
Therefore, Solomon says, “revere God by guarding your steps”. Okay, that sounds like the right thing to do. But how?
Solomon explains it to us in the second part of verse 1. "Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, who do not know that they do wrong" Here, Solomon says that the one of the most important reasons why we go to church is to listen to God’s instructions for our own lives. Go near to God and listen to God’s will for your life.
As I counsel many young people, they often say that they will come to Friday Night Fellowship because it’s fun and they play a lot of games. But they will not come to Sunday service. They often say, “I don’t see the point of coming to Sunday. It’s boring. I don’t get anything out of it. Therefore, I am going to sleep in, and skip Sunday church.” If this describes you, please take the counsel of Solomon, “go near and listen.” Even if it is only one sentence that touches you or relates to you. Grab on to it, cling on to it and don’t let go, because that’s the very thing God wants to speak to you about. And if you act on that one thing, it will literally change your life. The Apostle Paul said the same thing, “faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the Word of Christ.” (Romans 10:17) In other words, your faith will not grow if you don’t come to the house of God to listen!
Next, Solomon says, “Don’t offer the sacrifice of fools.” What does that mean? People of Israel are fools when they bring to God what they cannot use themselves: blind, lame and sick animals. Instead of offering their best animals to God, they offer the worst. Like if they need to sacrifice a lamb at the temple, they will bring this one with a disease, basically worthless, since you can’t eat it nor sell it. Many Israelites kept the best for themselves. Can this happen in our church? Yes!
For example, maybe we are thinking about replacing the couch in our own house. It’s 20 years old, ripped beyond, repair missing a leg, it stinks because the dog sleeps on it, and perhaps our kids pee-ed on it as well. And we ask, “hey, does the church need a couch? I have one to donate”. That’s a fool’s sacrifice. If you see a need at the church for a couch, Solomon says, go and pick out something you want for yourself. Give God the best, not your leftovers.
Also, fools believe that their sacrifices will automatically cancel out their sins without the need for repentance. Fools are insensitive to their own sins. They do evil even when they go to the house of God. Even though we may serve God and sacrifice our time, we indulge in certain sins and do not even show remorse over them. We have grown numb to the sin. Solomon says that’s foolish. If that’s us, ask God to help us to turn from those sins.
Next, Solomon gives us the second way to revere God in church. "Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few". The second way to revere God is to be slow to speak. Why? Because “God is in Heaven, and you are on Earth.” Solomon wants us to remember there is a tremendous distance between God and us. God is far above us, far superior to us. God is the almighty Creator King. He alone is immortal and lives in unapproachable light (1 Tim 6:16).
Let me give an analogy. First, just imagine that God is the greatest of all Chinese Emperors. And at his palace, his servants and officials kneel before him. From the moment you step into the front door of the Forbidden Palace in China, there is still a huge distance between you and the Emperor. You are not even allowed to get any closer without the proper relationship or ranking. And even if you do get a chance to step inside to where the Emperor is, you can’t just say anything you want. You can’t just babble a random conversation with him. You need to think and choose your words wisely. In that way, you show your reverence to the Emperor.
Well, King Solomon knows exactly how that works. Solomon was the King of Israel. He had subjects bow before him, who chose their words carefully and were very slow to speak. Solomon understands proper distance, healthy boundaries. Therefore, “let your words be few”.
Here in verse three, Solomon supports his idea of “Slow to Speak”. "A dream comes when there are many cares, and many words mark the speech of a fool". If you are a very busy person with a lot of responsibilities, you will have a lot of things running through your mind constantly. You will worry about many things. And Solomon is saying, if you worry a lot, then you will also dream a lot. If you dream a lot due to stress, raise your hand. (I pray that God would release that stress in your life. In Jesus’ name, Amen.) There is cause-and-effect with the 'if' and 'then'. And in the same way, if you are a fool, then you will talk on and on and on. We should not be fools in the house of God, talking on and on and on about anything and everything.
The third way to revere God is to fulfill your vows to God. "When you make a vow to God, do not delay to fulfill it. He has no pleasure in fools; fulfill your vow." What is a vow? A vow is usually a conditional promise made to God. Have you ever said to God, “Please God, do this thing for me, and I promise I will do that thing for you”? Well, that is called making a vow to God. A person who doesn't keep his promises is a fool in God’s eyes. Who in the Bible made vows to God? Hannah did. She was barren, could not bare a child, but she wanted one desperately. So she prayed, “O Lord, if you will give me a boy, I will set him before you as a Nazarite until the day he dies.” (1 Sam 1:11). When God answered her prayer with a baby boy, Samuel, she kept her vow by bringing him to the House of the Lord. Hannah kept her vow. She was no fool. I also remember the most important vow I ever made to God. When I was 16 years old, as a non-Christian desperately seeking for the truth, I prayed, “God, if you are real, reveal yourself to me. If you do, I will follow you for the rest of my life. And I will never turn back.” God was so merciful in revealing himself to me. He answered my prayer, and I kept my vow of following Jesus.
Unfortunately, many Israelites broke their vows to God. When it was not convenient to keep their vows, when it was too costly, they just pretended like they never vowed. To this situation, Solomon says in verse 5, “It is better not to vow than to make a vow and not fulfill it.”
In the New Testament, there is an example of someone making a vow and not keeping it, and it made God incredibly angry. Who knows what I am talking about? Ananias and Sapphira vowed that they would give all the profits from the sale of their house to the needy. But they secretly kept a part of the profits for themselves. Peter rebuked them by saying, “It was your money in the first place. If you wanted to give just a part of it, just say so. Don’t vow that you would give it all, then keep a part of it!” What was the result? God struck them both dead, and “great fear seized the whole church and all who heard of these things”. (Acts 5:4, 11). Therefore, don’t make a promise to God that you can’t keep. God will hold you responsible.
The fourth and final way to revere God is this: Don’t let your mouth lead you into sin. "Do not let your mouth lead you into sin. And do not protest to the temple messenger, “My vow was a mistake.” Why should God be angry at what you say and destroy the work of your hands?" Solomon seems to be referring to people who make vows to pay a certain sum to the temple treasury. When they fail to pay what they had promised, a priest or a temple messenger would visit them to remind them of their vows. Then people might respond, saying that their vow was “a mistake”. They claimed that their vows were unintentional. Solomon says this is foolish. It’s a lame excuse. Did they really think they could make a financial pledge to God, then fail to keep it? Solomon asks, “Why should God be angry at what you say and destroy the work of your hands?” God will punish people for making vows and coming up with lame excuses.
The solution is, don’t make empty promises to God. Or else your mouth will lead you to sin. Of course, this principle applies beyond financial vows and extends to every part of our life. We can be praying on our knees, crying out to God, “God, if you will just give me a wife, if you will heal my body, if you will give me a job, if you will help me win my tournament, if you will help me pass my final exam, then I will...”. Be careful now. Do we really mean what we say?
Solomon concludes with Verse 7, "Much dreaming and many words are meaningless. Therefore fear God."Solomon again is reemphasizing his point. Stop dreaming and fantasying whatever you are thinking about at church; it’s not rooted in reality. Stop talking on and on, because they are just empty words.
To summarize this passage:
1) Reverence for God will cause us to guard our steps when we go to the house of God.
2) Reverence for God will cause us to speak slowly.
3) Reverence for God will cause us not to delay fulfilling any promises we have made to God.
4) Reverence for God will help us not fall into sin.
Let us bow our heads with a moment of silence. Let the reverence of God come upon us right now. Let’s just be quiet for a minute.
Just a little bit of review so we know the context of the passage. King Solomon, the wisest and richest king who ever lived, was born at around 1000BC. He started reigning the nation of Israel at the age of 30. He probably wrote this book towards the end of his reign. His audience was middle upper-class Israelites, who were religious but distant from God. Why were they distant? Because they used all their time and energy to chase after personal wealth and pleasure. They were not concerned with the things of God. Solomon, through his own experience of chasing wealth and pleasure, he found that in the end, all these things were meaningless as they don’t last. Like breath and vapor, they only last for a short moment. Then we loose everything, because one day we are all going to die. So as a result, Solomon is telling his people, don’t make the same mistakes as me. Fear God, revere him, stand in awe of him. Don’t be preoccupied with your own profits and pleasures. Take the things of God seriously and revere him. Okay, sounds good. But how? Solomon gives us 4 ways to revere God.
Here is the first thing he says: “Guard your steps when you go to the house of God…” The Israelites went to the Temple, but they failed to approach God with reverence. Worshiping God became a formality, a mere ritual. They were just going through the motions, without true worship in their hearts.
And also, in the time of Jesus, we see that there were merchants making profit from people going to the temple. Matthew 21:12 says that “Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves.” Why did Jesus get so angry? He said, “My house will be called a house of prayer,' but you are making it 'a den of robbers."
They used the temple for their own personal gain, and that made Jesus extremely upset.
Sometimes, people come to church without the proper reverence. Sometimes we come for our own personal gain, just like the merchants. Some people come to be entertained if they think the preacher is funny. Some guys come to check out the girls. If there are no girls to chase, they stop coming. Others come to socialize with friends. If their friends are not here, they stop coming. Some come to actually do business networking and to promote their products so they can sell stuff and make money. If they can’t make money at church, they stop coming. This is not acceptable to God. Think carefully about what we are doing. We are coming to the House of God.
Think of Moses meeting God at the burning bush. God said to him, “remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground” Exodus 3:5. Moses walked very carefully before God, for God is a consuming fire. Moses “Guarded his steps.”
Therefore, Solomon says, “revere God by guarding your steps”. Okay, that sounds like the right thing to do. But how?
Solomon explains it to us in the second part of verse 1. "Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, who do not know that they do wrong" Here, Solomon says that the one of the most important reasons why we go to church is to listen to God’s instructions for our own lives. Go near to God and listen to God’s will for your life.
As I counsel many young people, they often say that they will come to Friday Night Fellowship because it’s fun and they play a lot of games. But they will not come to Sunday service. They often say, “I don’t see the point of coming to Sunday. It’s boring. I don’t get anything out of it. Therefore, I am going to sleep in, and skip Sunday church.” If this describes you, please take the counsel of Solomon, “go near and listen.” Even if it is only one sentence that touches you or relates to you. Grab on to it, cling on to it and don’t let go, because that’s the very thing God wants to speak to you about. And if you act on that one thing, it will literally change your life. The Apostle Paul said the same thing, “faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the Word of Christ.” (Romans 10:17) In other words, your faith will not grow if you don’t come to the house of God to listen!
Next, Solomon says, “Don’t offer the sacrifice of fools.” What does that mean? People of Israel are fools when they bring to God what they cannot use themselves: blind, lame and sick animals. Instead of offering their best animals to God, they offer the worst. Like if they need to sacrifice a lamb at the temple, they will bring this one with a disease, basically worthless, since you can’t eat it nor sell it. Many Israelites kept the best for themselves. Can this happen in our church? Yes!
For example, maybe we are thinking about replacing the couch in our own house. It’s 20 years old, ripped beyond, repair missing a leg, it stinks because the dog sleeps on it, and perhaps our kids pee-ed on it as well. And we ask, “hey, does the church need a couch? I have one to donate”. That’s a fool’s sacrifice. If you see a need at the church for a couch, Solomon says, go and pick out something you want for yourself. Give God the best, not your leftovers.
Also, fools believe that their sacrifices will automatically cancel out their sins without the need for repentance. Fools are insensitive to their own sins. They do evil even when they go to the house of God. Even though we may serve God and sacrifice our time, we indulge in certain sins and do not even show remorse over them. We have grown numb to the sin. Solomon says that’s foolish. If that’s us, ask God to help us to turn from those sins.
Next, Solomon gives us the second way to revere God in church. "Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few". The second way to revere God is to be slow to speak. Why? Because “God is in Heaven, and you are on Earth.” Solomon wants us to remember there is a tremendous distance between God and us. God is far above us, far superior to us. God is the almighty Creator King. He alone is immortal and lives in unapproachable light (1 Tim 6:16).
Let me give an analogy. First, just imagine that God is the greatest of all Chinese Emperors. And at his palace, his servants and officials kneel before him. From the moment you step into the front door of the Forbidden Palace in China, there is still a huge distance between you and the Emperor. You are not even allowed to get any closer without the proper relationship or ranking. And even if you do get a chance to step inside to where the Emperor is, you can’t just say anything you want. You can’t just babble a random conversation with him. You need to think and choose your words wisely. In that way, you show your reverence to the Emperor.
Well, King Solomon knows exactly how that works. Solomon was the King of Israel. He had subjects bow before him, who chose their words carefully and were very slow to speak. Solomon understands proper distance, healthy boundaries. Therefore, “let your words be few”.
Here in verse three, Solomon supports his idea of “Slow to Speak”. "A dream comes when there are many cares, and many words mark the speech of a fool". If you are a very busy person with a lot of responsibilities, you will have a lot of things running through your mind constantly. You will worry about many things. And Solomon is saying, if you worry a lot, then you will also dream a lot. If you dream a lot due to stress, raise your hand. (I pray that God would release that stress in your life. In Jesus’ name, Amen.) There is cause-and-effect with the 'if' and 'then'. And in the same way, if you are a fool, then you will talk on and on and on. We should not be fools in the house of God, talking on and on and on about anything and everything.
The third way to revere God is to fulfill your vows to God. "When you make a vow to God, do not delay to fulfill it. He has no pleasure in fools; fulfill your vow." What is a vow? A vow is usually a conditional promise made to God. Have you ever said to God, “Please God, do this thing for me, and I promise I will do that thing for you”? Well, that is called making a vow to God. A person who doesn't keep his promises is a fool in God’s eyes. Who in the Bible made vows to God? Hannah did. She was barren, could not bare a child, but she wanted one desperately. So she prayed, “O Lord, if you will give me a boy, I will set him before you as a Nazarite until the day he dies.” (1 Sam 1:11). When God answered her prayer with a baby boy, Samuel, she kept her vow by bringing him to the House of the Lord. Hannah kept her vow. She was no fool. I also remember the most important vow I ever made to God. When I was 16 years old, as a non-Christian desperately seeking for the truth, I prayed, “God, if you are real, reveal yourself to me. If you do, I will follow you for the rest of my life. And I will never turn back.” God was so merciful in revealing himself to me. He answered my prayer, and I kept my vow of following Jesus.
Unfortunately, many Israelites broke their vows to God. When it was not convenient to keep their vows, when it was too costly, they just pretended like they never vowed. To this situation, Solomon says in verse 5, “It is better not to vow than to make a vow and not fulfill it.”
In the New Testament, there is an example of someone making a vow and not keeping it, and it made God incredibly angry. Who knows what I am talking about? Ananias and Sapphira vowed that they would give all the profits from the sale of their house to the needy. But they secretly kept a part of the profits for themselves. Peter rebuked them by saying, “It was your money in the first place. If you wanted to give just a part of it, just say so. Don’t vow that you would give it all, then keep a part of it!” What was the result? God struck them both dead, and “great fear seized the whole church and all who heard of these things”. (Acts 5:4, 11). Therefore, don’t make a promise to God that you can’t keep. God will hold you responsible.
The fourth and final way to revere God is this: Don’t let your mouth lead you into sin. "Do not let your mouth lead you into sin. And do not protest to the temple messenger, “My vow was a mistake.” Why should God be angry at what you say and destroy the work of your hands?" Solomon seems to be referring to people who make vows to pay a certain sum to the temple treasury. When they fail to pay what they had promised, a priest or a temple messenger would visit them to remind them of their vows. Then people might respond, saying that their vow was “a mistake”. They claimed that their vows were unintentional. Solomon says this is foolish. It’s a lame excuse. Did they really think they could make a financial pledge to God, then fail to keep it? Solomon asks, “Why should God be angry at what you say and destroy the work of your hands?” God will punish people for making vows and coming up with lame excuses.
The solution is, don’t make empty promises to God. Or else your mouth will lead you to sin. Of course, this principle applies beyond financial vows and extends to every part of our life. We can be praying on our knees, crying out to God, “God, if you will just give me a wife, if you will heal my body, if you will give me a job, if you will help me win my tournament, if you will help me pass my final exam, then I will...”. Be careful now. Do we really mean what we say?
Solomon concludes with Verse 7, "Much dreaming and many words are meaningless. Therefore fear God."Solomon again is reemphasizing his point. Stop dreaming and fantasying whatever you are thinking about at church; it’s not rooted in reality. Stop talking on and on, because they are just empty words.
To summarize this passage:
1) Reverence for God will cause us to guard our steps when we go to the house of God.
2) Reverence for God will cause us to speak slowly.
3) Reverence for God will cause us not to delay fulfilling any promises we have made to God.
4) Reverence for God will help us not fall into sin.
Let us bow our heads with a moment of silence. Let the reverence of God come upon us right now. Let’s just be quiet for a minute.