Worship with Wisdom (Pt 1)

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

Well, you can take out your copy of God’s Word this morning and turn to Ecclesiastes chapter 5. And this morning our goal is to look at verses 1 through 3. Now I tell you, one of the benefits that comes from verse by verse study is being forced to think about what the author was intending to get across by not only what he said, but in what order he says it.

Mr. Sarr, in fact, Mr. Sarr and I are reading a book by Spurgeon. It was lectures to some of his students at his pastor’s college. And one of the chapters that we recently read talked about how to select a text, how to pick a passage that you were going to preach from. And one of the things he talks about is, you know, selecting different passages from all over to cover all kinds of different things. And both Mr. Sarr and I were talking about it and there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. But there are so many benefits that come from sticking with verse by verse by verse, going in sequential order. Number one, you pretty much know what your passage is for the next week. That obviously makes it a little bit easier. So far as picking a passage, well I know what passage is next when you go verse by verse.

But even more than that, what it really forces you to do is think about what the author was trying to communicate. And it’s not that if you just selected any random verse from anywhere in Scripture that you couldn’t figure out some context and figure out some background and talk about those kinds of things, but really, the verse by verse that we’re doing really forces us, or at least should encourage us, to consider why he’s talking about what he’s talking about when he’s talking about it. And so, for example, as we move into Chapter 5, remember that originally there were no chapter breaks, there were no verse divisions anyway.

So this comes immediately as Solomon is writing it at the end of Chapter 4, which we’ve just looked at. And he moves into an entire different discussion or so it would seem. And I tell you, I was struggling with this through the majority of the week. Why in the world is Solomon talking about this now? What in the world kind of connection is there between what we find in this paragraph and what we just studied last week about that poor and wise youth versus the old and foolish king, and the fact that popularity and fame last for maybe 15 minutes and that’s it. What does this new stuff have to do with that at all?

Specifically, he’s gonna talk to us about worship. Ecclesiastes 5, 1 through 3 specifically addresses how we worship, and I think is encouraging us to worship with wisdom. Next Lord’s Day, Lord willing, and it’s virtually impossible that I’m going to finish talking about this paragraph before our small groups anyway, but we’ll either finish what we have left to do on this one, or at least move into the next section. Verses 4 through 7 relate to our worship as well, specifically our relationship with God. But how does this discussion on worship fit into or flow from all that he’s just talked about in Chapter 4? For example, in Chapter 4, he talked about all the problems in the world of oppression.

The people with the power are always pushing it down on the people with no power. And you’ve got the haves and the have-nots, and there’s always tension and always fighting. The haves are always oppressing the have-nots and the have-nots always want what they don’t have, what the haves have. So he started out talking about the problems of oppression. Then he moved into the realm of work, the world of work, and he says everybody works just because they wanna have more than what their neighbor has. Everybody’s trying to keep up with the Joneses or the Smiths or whatever your next door neighbor is. They got something so you want more than they got so you get better at your job so that you can make more money so that you can get more than your neighbor.

Everything is motivated by envy and rivalry. So you’ve got the world of oppression, you’ve got the world of work, then he started talking about the world or realm of relationships and about how it’s no good to be alone. It’s especially no good to do all of that work and then have nobody to share it with. In fact, to be so busy doing all that work that you don’t even stop and ask the question, why am I doing this? That’s ultimate uselessness and vanity if you don’t even have anybody to share it with. And then, specifically last week, we talked about all the problems that come from the world of fame or the world of popularity.

What’s really interesting is that all throughout Chapter 4, Solomon is making these observations on the various problems that he sees. But as we move into Chapter 5, I think he’s going to address another problem, but he doesn’t do it by way of an observation, he does it by way of admonition. And I think that’s really important for us to recognize here that there’s a difference. In fact, this is the very first time now in the book that Solomon is going to give us some admonition, some imperatives, some commands for what we ought to do. Everything else has pretty much been his observations. He sees this, he tells us about it, and what he kind of does is he gives us some instruction through the back door about those things. All those sarcastic remarks, kind of snide remarks he makes as he sees oppression, as he sees loneliness, as he sees the passing popularity and fame.

He kind of makes some sarcastic observations about those, but he doesn’t really tell us something that we really ought to go out of our way and do about it. But when it comes to chapter 5, there’s no sarcastic remarks, no snide remarks. Instead of coming through the back door, he comes right through the front door and punches us right in the throat with this instruction on worship. In verses 7 through 12 of chapter 4, we saw the person who was so absorbed building his riches that he didn’t have time to share with anybody else. Then in chapter 4 verses 13 through 16 we saw a person who was so absorbed in building his kingdom that he didn’t have time to listen to anybody else. And here in chapter 5 verses 1 through 3 we see a person so absorbed in himself that he doesn’t even have time to listen to God. This is not just an observation that Solomon makes. This is an admonition that he gives us because he takes it so seriously that we can’t mess up when it comes to this realm or this world of worship.

The fact is disregard of God in daily life is one thing. When you blow off God and his position in how you treat one another, in how you work, in your relationships, in your pursuit of fame. That definitely is one thing. And you know what? To do that, to disregard God in your daily life is to experience a vanity and an emptiness and a meaninglessness like nobody’s business. There’s nothing good to be ahead in disregarding God in your daily life, but you know what? To disrespect God in his house, literally, in his house, is a brazen, bold, proud mocking of God that is totally unacceptable. It isn’t really, ultimately acceptable to disregard God in your daily life. It is definitely, so far as we see the pattern of how even Solomon is talking about it and the admonitions that he brings to us, disrespecting God in his house is not the position you want to be in. No sarcastic or snide observations. He gets our attention, comes right through the door and tells us to get serious and get ready when we come to worship our Father. Solomon was serious

and took worship at the temple in his day serious. And really what we’re gonna talk about this morning are worship reminders 101. These are not anything probably life shattering or life altering or changing. Those of you who are here this past summer as Micah, the intern, did a series on preparing for worship and what that means. You can go and most of those are not online yet because I’m still trying to find the actual audio files for them. But once I do, they’ll be on there. Or maybe you can email Micah and ask him for his notes specifically. But Micah did an entire series on worship this past summer. And much of what we’ll talk about this morning is just this basic instruction to worship with wisdom.

Two elements in our paragraph. Number one, approach worship with vigilance. This comes from chapter 5 verse 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. And first we see in the very beginning part of the verse is the admonition itself.

your steps when you go to the house of God. Now the phrase house of God was actually used multiple times throughout the Old Testament and it didn’t refer to just one place. I’ll give you these references, you can write them down, you can look at them later, or you can just believe me. Either way, I look them up, this is legit. For example, in Genesis chapter 28 verse 17 as well as in verse 22 of the same chapter, when Jacob was out in the wilderness and then he had the vision of the ladder where he saw angels of God ascending and descending. You remember that story? When he wakes up in the morning after seeing that vision, seeing that dream, he actually says this surely must be the house of God. Now as far as I can tell, there was actually no building there. The house of God at that point referred to a place where God was manifesting his glory, where he was revealing himself and showing himself to one of his people or to a group of his people.

So Genesis 28, 17 describes the house of God where he reveals himself to Jacob. In Exodus chapter 23 verse 19 the tabernacle was described as the house of God. The tabernacle was a very fancy tent that they could pack up and move with them as they were traveling on their on their journey as they wandered, as the Israelites wandered, the tabernacle was a place that was central to worship, but it wasn’t actually a house, it was more like a tent. But nevertheless, it’s a place that is described where God revealed Himself to His people and showed Himself off to them. Then in Judges 18, verse 31, we see another example that there were other places or other sanctuaries, again Judges 18, verse 31, that were called the house of God. It was any place that God went out of His way to show His people, His greatness, His supremacy, His majesty. Now of course with all that said, there’s no doubt in my mind that what Solomon had in mind when he was writing this verse was the temple. He had finished building the temple. I don’t know how many years there had passed

between the finishing of the temple and his writing of Ecclesiastes, but undoubtedly, he was done with the temple. The temple was the place, the geographical place and location where a godly Israelite would think about, this is where I worship God. This is where I go to see God’s greatness, to interact, to worship and praise Him. Now we are not limited in exactly the same way to one place of worship like the Israelites were. We’re not limited just to one temple, even though like I say, House of God referred to any place like that, but as Solomon was probably thinking about it, he was thinking about the one temple, we’re not limited to just one geographical place like that. And you know what, I think that’s to our advantage and to our disadvantage. It’s obviously to our advantage because that means we can worship where? Anywhere. That’s an advantage because we don’t live very close to Jerusalem. And so if we still had to worship at the temple in Jerusalem that could get awful expensive and we really maybe would be able to do that

once or a few times in our entire lives. And so we understand that our worship is not restricted to just one place, but I think while that’s an advantage for us, that also brings with it a disadvantage. Because while we then know as Christians that we can worship anywhere, That also means that we’re tempted to not let anywhere be special. We’re tempted to not be serious about anything or any place. I think that that’s a mistake. There is nothing mystically, supernaturally special about this particular classroom. In and of itself, and even based on the majority of hours during the week, it’s used for something other than God worship specifically, a corporate gathering of His people. And yet, I promise you, if you don’t get serious about what we do during this hour and a half on Sunday mornings and the time we spend together on Wednesday nights in this room, you are bringing an attitude that is unacceptable to our Lord. Same goes for the worship center.

by various names up on the east part of the campus, the church. That’s what we’re talking about about the church is really not the building, the church is the people, so we talk about it as being the worship center where the church gathers to praise, honor, sing, study from God’s word, pray to him, all those kinds of things. There is nothing magical about that place. There is nothing divine about 830 to 10 o’clock on Sunday morning, which is when we would go to first service or second service hour or the 6 o’clock to 730 p.m. service. There’s nothing inherently special about those except for the fact that that is when our local body of believers has decided to corporately gather to go out of our way as as a group to give praise to God.

And we can definitely be giving praise to God all throughout the week, you bet. You ought to be giving worship to God tomorrow morning when you’re at school, when you’re in class. How you eat and drink, whatever you do can bring glory to God. So yes, there definitely is an element where as an individual and as a family, you can be bringing glory and worship to God wherever you’re at, whenever it is. However, there is something special about our corporate time together. There is a way that the harmony through the diversity of giftedness and people and backgrounds, there is a kind of worship that we can give to God together as a group that you can’t give to God all by yourself.

And if you then come to that time of corporate worship and blow it off, disrespectful, namely to God, when you come and you’re not prepared in your heart, when you’re not prepared physically, there’s all kinds of preparation that I’m talking about, when you come and can’t keep your eyes open. When you come and can’t stop thinking about everything else, whether it’s physical or spiritual, you’re not prepared. That is unacceptable. And so Solomon gives us this admonition at the beginning of verse 1 where he says, guard your steps when you go to the house of God. We don’t ever talk like that. We sing the song, Oh Be Careful Little Feet Where You Go. For the Father up above is looking down at the love, Oh careful of the feet where you go. That’s not necessarily the point. Guarding your steps or paying attention to what you’re doing is what he’s saying. Guarding your steps would be to make sure that your path before you, that you’ve cleared out the obstacles, you’re paying attention to any dangers and you’re seeking to

avoid them. So this is a figurative way to describe that we ought to proceed with care. We ought to go forward into our times of worship with a carefulness and even as I’ve suggested a vigilance. To be vigilant is to be careful and to watch out for our attitude and our perspective so that we are ready to to acknowledge God as He deserves. The rest of this paragraph describes how we ought not then to disrespect God by failing to consider and guard our steps. I know that Micah, this is one of the things he talked about, was preparing to come and gather for corporate worship. I know he He talked about that and I know that some of you were really impacted and you decided that what you needed to do was change some things on Saturday night or maybe you even needed to change some things on Sunday morning.

How are you doing with that? Have you forgotten your need to prepare yourself to come and give the best that you have for God while we gather together as a group to praise and honor our Lord and God? your steps when you go to the house of God. Obviously Solomon was thinking about the Israelite going to the temple, but it has application for us as we come and meet together with other believers to worship. You ought to be vigilant. You ought to be careful. You ought to be ready and prepared to do that. He gives us an illustration of one of the ways to do this in the second part of verse 1 when he says, to draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools. This is an illustration of the attitude that we should bring to worship, namely a readiness to listen which implies a readiness to obey. It is to to hear and obey.

There’s a direct connection between those two things. It’s not just that you come and hear the words that the preacher or the speaker is saying, but that you hear those words to then desire to put them into practice, to apply what it is that you’re learning. The word sacrifice, to draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools, is the Hebrew word zevach. Yeah, you got that guttural in there, zevach. The zevach is one kind of sacrifice offered in the Old Testament. There are multiple kinds, but specifically this was an offering that was killed in sacrifice and then you would use the rest of this zevach sacrifice. You’d use the rest of it for a meal.

This is unlike many of the other offerings in the Old Testament in particular, one of the whole burnt offering where you gave this offering and the whole thing was consumed by fire. The Zevach offering was one, again, where part of it was used for the offering, part of it was used for a meal, and perhaps what we find here is that they offered their sacrifice And then the rest turned into a party for them. The same word is used in Proverbs chapter 7. I want you to look at that just for a moment. Proverbs chapter 7. This is a warning against the strange woman or against the adulterous. And look down at chapter 7 verse 10.

We’ve got the young man, the idiot who is in the wrong part of town. The woman comes out to meet him, verse 10, behold the woman meets him dressed as a prostitute wily of heart. She is loud and wayward, her feet do not stay at home, now in the street, now in the market, and at every corner she lies in wait. She seizes him and kisses him, and with bold faith she says to him, I had to offer sacrifices Zevach. I had to offer sacrifices and today I have paid my vows. I’ve just been worshipping. Now what does she say? So now I have come out to meet you, to seek you eagerly and I have found you. She’s trying to seduce him and lure him into some immoral relationship. After After proclaiming, she just offered sacrifice and she just fulfilled her vows.

She was just at church and just sang the songs and just had great conversation at small group and immediately went to one of the things that almost all of us would agree is a very obvious, wicked and evil thing. And yet, we do the exact same thing. Maybe it’s not trying to have some kind of a moral relationship with somebody. We go to church and we do our worship thing, and then it turns into gossiping about somebody else in our small group 15 minutes after we’ve just left the small group. We start complaining and whining about how long the pastor went in his message and slandering him. And we then are bitter towards the other people who are in line at lunch in front of us.

We run into impatience and again slander or gossip, bloodloan then will we go home and spend our time with in the afternoon, what we look at on the internet, how we talk to our parents or our siblings, and yet we have done our duty by worshipping. And the fact is, at that point all we’re doing is just checking it off of the list. It’s not actually of any value to God for you to be here and just then be able to check it off your list. I went to church today. I went to worship. I offered sacrifice. You know what? The sacrifice of fools is of no benefit or value to God. What He wants are people with the proper attitude who draw near to listen.

And in drawing near to listen and to hear what God has to say, who then desire to put that into practice, who desire to obey that.

offering your sacrifices, your attendance, even your song singing or whatever it is will not be a substitute for obedience. It never will be. Specifically I think that the contrast back in chapter 5, specifically is referring to how we use our mouths. Definitely when we look at verses 4 through 7, we’ll see the giving of vows that obviously relates to the mouth. I learned a new word last night. In fact, I’m kind of all into learning new words because I watched Akila and the Bee Friday night. And I’m going to share one of the words I learned from then. Probably next week I’ll get to it. But I learned a new word last night from one of the commentaries, I’m sharing it with you. Bloviate. To discourse at length in a pompous or boastful manner. To bloviate. I actually had to look this up in three different dictionaries before I found one that gave me the definition. The first two didn’t even include it as a word in their dictionary. I was like, well then dude, he He can’t write this.

He can’t use this word. It doesn’t even exist. But it does. Bloviate. To discourse at length in a pompous or boastful manner. What’s the comparison here? To draw near to listen is better than the sacrifice of fools. I think at least what that implies is that the sacrifice of fools has a lot to do with their big smack talk, their religious big talk, about how great they’re going to do or how great they are doing and about how wonderful God is and then when nobody is listening anymore they’re back to pursuing their own life and their own interests and their own perhaps sin rather than God’s interests and obeying what they just learned from Him. I I think perhaps of the parable Jesus tells of the Pharisee and the tax collector.

And the Pharisee, who very boldly and brazenly goes to the temple to pray and to pray loudly and to show himself off about how religious he is and how terrific God must think he He is. And he waxes eloquent in this great pompous and boastful prayer. And the fact is, that’s not what God is looking for. God is not looking for our religious big talk.

In fact, God calls that foolish. Next week we’ll see the explanation for this and then we’ll see the second instruction on how we are to worship. Can I just suggest to you though that this is something to take really seriously. Disregarding God in your day to day life, you’ll find no satisfaction in that. You will eventually receive the consequences of that disregard. But coming to God’s house, and I use that by way of application, this is just an activity center and we’re in a classroom, but because we as believers have decided to gather together to worship God as a group right now, calling it the house of God. When you come to the house of God unprepared without your steps being guarded and you come to impress other people or your small group leader or even just check it off your list and say, I’ve done my duty. That kind of disrespect directly to God is something that Solomon warns us against. It’s his very first admonitions and warnings in the entire book for all of the problems he’s seen so far. This actually gets some commands

and some imperatives that we actually better stop doing that, not being prepared. Father, I ask that you would help us to be considering that, not just today, but all of the times that we come, we get so caught up in our stuff that our hearts are not right when we come and participate in this set-aside time where we ought to be worshipping you. And worshipping you wholeheartedly and worshipping you not lukewarmly, but worshipping you with everything us to consider the need for us to guard our steps as we come to your house. We pray in the name of your Son, Amen.