Category: Sermon Notes

MEANING (LESS)
“Living Wisely in a World of Fools”  Download here
Ecclesiastes 9-10

What will you hear today? There will be two sources of listening, if you’ll participate. One is listening to my words. God may spark something inside of you as your mind traces what I say. But more, the second source. The most important source. Let God speak through His Word. Your Bible open before you. Your phone or tablet open to a Bible app. Listen. God wants to speak, and He does. But we have to listen.

1). Living wisely involves accepting deaths reality (9:1-10)
Solomon has already dealt with this subject in Chapter 7. “It’s better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind.” Death is inevitable. And we live in a culture that denies that more and more. The basis of many of our neuroses and anxiety and most of our fears is the reality that we don’t want to face this truth. Living wisely means we do.

An English poet laureate wrote,
“Oh, why do people waste their breath
Inventing dainty names for death?”

We live in a day that has become skilled in denying the ultimate reality of death. We have renamed it. We pay a great deal of money to make the person lying in the casket look natural…meaning, alive. “They look so natural.” I love the Woodie Allen quote that he gave in an interview where he said, “I’m not afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” Sometimes, we don’t even bring the deceased to the funeral.

Paul Simon wrote a song in 1965 called “Flowers Never Bend with the Rainfall.” I saw the Broadway production just a few weeks ago with my kids. In this song, Simon writes, “So I’ll continue to continue to pretend that my life will never end, and flowers never bend with the rainfall.” But they do bend. And our lives do have an end.

Death is a serious thing, because sin is a serious thing. God never wanted death to be a part of His perfect creation. It wasn’t. Sin…our choice to sin…made death a necessity. “The wages of sin is death…”

I have stood on the porch of a funeral parlor with young men big enough to wrestle a bear. But they were terrified to go inside and view their mother’s remains. Why is that? Death reminds us…this is our fate. It is going to happen to all mankind. We grieve our own death. The Bible is unambiguous about death. “Ring around the rosie, a pocket full of posies, ashes ashes we all fall down.” But death has become something akin to a profanity. It’s offensive to us to be reminded that it is our fate; that God has numbered our days. That, “it is appointed unto man once to die, and then the judgment.” If we just live “under the sun,” without taking God into account, there’s a period there. But for the Christian, when death comes, another kind of life just begins!

2). Living wisely involves acknowledging life’s unfairness (9:11-18)
Everybody dies. The wise man is buried beside the wicked man. Living righteously does not guarantee a longer life or a more honorable death and burial. Death equalizes it all. The best person isn’t always rewarded under the sun… “the race doesn’t go to the fastest, or the battle to the strongest…” The good man isn’t always remembered under the sun…

We are morbidly fascinated with Job because of the unfairness of his circumstances. We are magnificently humbled with Jesus because of His acceptance of the cross…the ultimate unfairness and injustice…Jesus was crucified by religious fools…which He endured without fighting back or speaking back…but he died on the cross and endured and absorbed death and sin’s penalty for the rest of us sinful fools…religious and non-religious alike.

3) Living wisely involves attention to the small things (10)

So just what is a fool?

a. Fool: Doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. So, he goes to school. I may know lots about genetic engineering, but if you slide me under a car on a lift and tell me to repair the transmission, I wouldn’t know where to start
b. Student: Learns what he doesn’t know. That’s why we get an education. But we don’t get answers. Not important ones. You will probably live long enough to see everything you learn in school become obsolete (tubes to integrated circuits). / They told us after two intense years of study, “You now know enough about electronics to go out and really hurt yourself…All you learn in school is what you don’t know.
c. Graduate: Knows the right question to ask…a graduate simply knows more questions that she doesn’t know how to answer. Wisdom is painful, Solomon reminds us. The more we know, the more we learn what we could be, but aren’t.

“If any man lacks wisdom…” (God gives wisdom “freely” and without partiality…no student loans necessary). Solomon’s prayer at the beginning of his reign was “God give me wisdom to lead your people.” God was impressed. And He’s equally pleased with you if you’ll ask! Wisdom pays attention to the small things.

a. Fly in ointment/ bird in filter (My church was on a cistern…thought that was what we called women…” brethren and cistern” …I also thought a bush hog was a pig that ate landscaping). A little thing can pollute a big thing. A little fly spoils the ointment. A little foolishness, a little self-indulgence, a little indiscretion can destroy a thirty-year marriage. “But honey, it was just a little affair…” Stay in tune with the little things.
b. Doing work with integrity … watch the little things…Do what you KNOW to do…don’t fall in the hole…sharpen your axe…watch for falling rocks.
c. Watch your tongue (Charm the serpent in your mouth). I learned in communication classes that, for every statement made there are six possible ways to interpret it. That means you have a one-in-six chance of being understood when you speak. Warren Wiersbe identified five different kinds of tongues

i. Destructive tongues (v 12). “The tongue is small but can start a forest fire.” This is the tongue of the gossip. The rumor monger. The tale bearer. The person that posts an untrue statement online.

ii. Irrational tongues (v 13). Talking nonsense. Much of what is said and written today falls into that category. A New Age speaker named Doreen Virtue, who has written numerous books and is flown around the world to give lectures and conferences renounced her writings and speeches when she became a Christian.

iii. Uncontrolled tongues (v 14a). “I can’t help it…I have to say what I think even if it hurts your feelings.” You can always control your tongue if you want to.

iv. Boastful tongues (v 14 b-c) Boasting about a future they don’t know, and they can’t control. Can’t find their way. “Self-praise stinketh.” “So dumb, he’d get lost on an elevator.”

v. Indiscreet tongue (v 20). The world celebrates and elects fools…. don’t be one. The fact that they are applauding you may not be a compliment. Live with wisdom.

As Solomon concludes his argument, he critiques those in leadership. He includes, we are certain, himself in the critique! Four kinds of people (fools) find their way into leadership.

They are …

1. Immature leaders (vv 16-17)
2. Incompetent leaders. (v 18)
3. Indifferent leaders. (v 19)
4. Indiscreet leaders (v 20)

It’s hard to imagine that a part of this was a job review of his own staff! Solomon was surrounded by leaders and advisers in his role as the King of Israel. He saw each of these in turn. The first, maybe is more like Solomon than the other three. He certainly was not incompetent, or indifferent, though perhaps he was indiscreet. But most certainly he came to the throne as an immature king. Some of his decisions were decisions that an immature leader would have made (see his propensity for foreign women).

Leaders who do not lead well do much damage to their business or, in the case of governmental leaders, to the people they lead. He is right to call for wisdom among those who are responsible and in charge of others.

Life is a gift… live it… live so the mortician has to pry the smile off your face! Death is coming…prepare for it! A wise person lives knowing that death comes but doesn’t allow that reality to stop him from living. In fact, it propels him to take life with more intensity.

MEANING (LESS)

“Finding a Heart of Wisdom”  Download here

(Ecclesiastes 7-8)

In 1982 a California man named Larry Walters decided to follow his lifelong dream of flying.  Along with some friends, Larry went to an Army Surplus store and purchased some weather balloons and a couple of tanks of helium.  He tied the balloons to the arms of a lawn chair with the plan of floating at about 10,000 feet, tethered to the ground, then shooting some balloons out with a pellet gun, and then slowly descending to the earth.

Things did not go according to plan.  The ropes tethering the chair to the ground snapped, and Larry and his amazing chair floated quickly up to 16,000 feet and into the flight path of the San Diego Airport.  The other thing he hadn’t thought through was how much a role fear would play.  He couldn’t let go of the arms of the chair to fire the pellet gun.  When he finally did take the chance, he took two shots and then dropped the gun.

By now he was on the radar of the airfield.  A pilot reported, through the clouds, seeing a man floating in a lawn chair.  But luckily, he had hit a couple of the balloons before dropping his gun.  They did have to pry his hands off the lawn chair when he finally landed!  Larry “gained a heart of wisdom” from his experience floating high in his lawn chair.  He never tried it again!  Sometimes we learn wisdom the hard way.

Solomon is taking us on a bird’s eye tour of life from his perspective “under the sun” or, life without taking God into account.   Solomon’s writing goes through something of a transformation at this point.  We don’t know exactly what brought about his turning point, and he now seemed headed in the right direction.  The words “wise” and “wisdom” are used 30 times between Chapter 7 and Chapter 12.

To have God’s perspective is the definition of wisdom.  Seeing ourselves and seeing life as He does…no balloons… through His Word, through His Spirit, and through His people.  That is wisdom.

Observations About Wisdom

Four things that flip our way of thinking on its head. 

1. It is better to go to a funeral than a party…. (7:1-4)

It was Solomon’s conclusion that going to a funeral, “the house of mourning,” will teach you wisdom more effectively than going to a party.  Honestly, would you rather go to a wedding or a funeral?  People have asked me more than once, “would you rather preach a funeral or a wedding?”  Well, funerals are simpler.  There’s no rehearsal, no seating charts, no mother of the bride or bridezilla to manage, no drama.  It’s just simpler.

I enjoy weddings.  Yet we learn more at funerals.  Every funeral is a caution to us.  My grief class taught me that every funeral is a mortality check.  ^ It reminds us of our own limits. All of us won’t end up having a wedding.  But short of the coming of Jesus, all of us will have a funeral.  “The end of a thing is better than the beginning.”  Weddings are loud and joyful and expensive celebrations.  But a big wedding doesn’t mean the marriage will last.  There’s something quietly, deeply glorious seeing a couple who have made it 60 or 70 years and to see the widow or widower sitting on the front row, reflecting on their life lived well.  “The end of things is better.”

Solomon is just saying, “Don’t miss the wisdom that comes from times like that.”  In fact, occasionally it’s not a bad thing to walk through a cemetery.  I know.  That’s morbid, right?  One guy walking through a cemetery came to a grave marker that said, “Pause friend, as you pass by.  As you are now, so once was I.  As I am now, so you will be.  So, take your heed and follow me.”  Someone came along and added another line to the marker.  “To follow you I’m not content, until I know which way you went.”

Wisdom is knowing which way you’ll go when this life is over.  As we have on our sign outside, there’s only two choices of destination.  Which way are you going?  Paul had no question about this.  In Philippians 1:23-24– “to depart and be with Christ.”

2. It is better to receive a rebuke than a compliment…

Mark Twain said, “I can live two months on a good compliment.”  But Solomon is suggesting that we will live those two months with wisdom after a good rebuke.  I don’t like criticism.  No one does.  Sometimes criticism is unwarranted.  An old farmer told his son, “Son, when a mule kicks you, just consider the source.”  Yet “a rebuke is better than a compliment.”  It takes a courageous person to offer an honest rebuke.  Wisdom tells us to receive those as gifts, not curses.  A wise person learns from the critics.

3. It is better to be patient than to be angry

You know, anger is something that all of us struggle with to different degrees.  Some of us blow up externally at a situation and others implode internally and make ourselves sick with it.  But anger is an inevitable part of being alive.  It is a God-given defense mechanism.  But for insecure people, their “defense” button is stuck.  They are continually angry about something or someone.  Anger is like a porcupine’s quills.  They stick everything in their path.  That’s what an angry person does.  And the first law of the jungle is, “You can’t hug a porcupine.”  Angry people alienate others.

Solomon gives clear warning to that person.  It is unwise to live in anger, lest it make its home in you.  (v9). Anger releases a chemical that we become addicted to.  We can’t live without it.  Then, we have to have it to feel ok.  And then it owns you.

4. It is better to experience adversity than prosperity…

You know who disagrees with that?  Those who are going to through adversity right now!   But we actually learn far more from difficulty than prosperity.   We see people struggle sometimes and feel sorry for them, and yet Solomon says, “They’re better off.”  Jesus Himself was called “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.”   Our sufferings make us more like Jesus, but they also give us “a heart of wisdom.”  As AW Tozer said, “God can use no man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.”

Laughter is fine, but Solomon says it’s empty, “like thorns crackling in a fire.” It’s empty, with no heat, no depth, no lasting value.  A man came to his doctor complaining that his life was tedious, hard, and it just made him not want to get out of bed.  The doctor gave him a prescription and advice: “There is this great comedian holding some shows at a nearby comedy club…Doc, I am that comedian!

There are none who are perfectly righteous; this is the beginning of wisdom (v20)

Then Solomon takes us to the beginning of wisdom.  The beginning of wisdom is realizing that there is no righteous person on earth.  No one, in themselves, is righteous.  This paves the way for the most important lesson in life:  By ourselves, we can never make ourselves acceptable to God.  “There is none righteous, no not one.” Paul said.  Solomon agreed.  (v29)

Conclusions Regarding Humility

• “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” (James 4:6)
• “Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.” (James 4:10)

Wisdom is seeing life from God’s perspective.  Someone has said, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.

1. In the presence of authority. (8:1-9)

                One of the most important lessons we have to learn in life is that there is always some authority we must learn to obey.  A parent, a teacher, a police officer, a military chain of command, a CEO, a board of directors, the president.  And they don’t always exercise their authority wisely.  It’s hard to humble yourself in their presence at times.  But wisdom dictates that we must exercise humility in our dealings with those in authority.  We need to learn we are not always in control and understand our limitations (v 8)

We obey, Solomon said, “because we have made a vow.”  Because the government can compel us to do so, and because we don’t always have understanding of what God is doing through the authorities placed in our lives.

2. In the times of injustice.          (8:10-14)

                Sometimes in life, the wicked prosper and are celebrated, while the righteous seem to suffer for doing good.  It is hard for us to live in a world where things seem so unjust and inequitable.  “Oppression drives the wise person mad.”  We are angry at Russia because of the unfair match-up against the Ukraine.  It’s like an entire nation, or a demagogue dictator, has become the school ground bully.  They are good people who just want to be left alone.  But it torments us to see good people hurting.  We feel this because the love of justice and fairness is hard wired into every person by God.  (Evidence of God’s identity in you)

3. In the moments of mystery (8:15-17)

                Life is full of mysteries.  Why does your peanut butter sandwich or your toast always fall jelly side down?  Why is your traffic lane or your grocery store checkout line always the longest?   Where do your spare socks go in the washing machine?  And why is it just ONE?           Solomon says, in these closing verses, that some things in life will always be a mystery.  There are some things that we must just have the humility to say “I don’t get it.  I don’t understand.”   Some things are just out of our pay grade.  But then, we trust in the God Who holds the keys to all mysteries!

Romans 11

[33] Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!  [34] “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?”  [36] For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

NOTES FOR WEEK OF FEB 27

Meaning (less)

Ecclesiastes 3:1-4:16

“The Human Dilemma”

You can download the notes here

 A few weeks ago, I challenged us using a simple two-story house diagram created by Will Mancini.  Using that illustration I asked the question, “Are you a first floor or a second-floor church member?”  Second floor members are those who have embraced the mission of the church, the Great Commission of Jesus to take the Gospel to the world and make disciples.

The purpose of this study we are in is to give you a different way to look at what we do here on Sundays…we want to equip you, to resource you to make disciples where you live, and work and play.   So, as you listen today, you need to listen not just to “get” a message, but ask, “How can I take the truth of the Bible into my world?”  There are some additional resources online at fruitcove.com to help you do that.

So, we are in a series called “Meaningless.”  Now that doesn’t mean the series is meaningless.  It is a way of presenting the message of Ecclesiastes to our world today, a world that denies that God exists.  A world that sees life as devoid of meaning.  Solomon is taking us on a journey into that world.  It’s not an easy study, but it’s an important one.

I wonder who in here today would say, “I’ve got plenty of time to do all the things I need to do.  I’m never stressed about time.  There’s always just enough.”   Anybody?  I doubted it.   You know we’re not always honest with each other or ourselves about time.  How many times have you said, “I’m sorry, I just didn’t have time to do that,” when the more honest answer is, “I’m sorry I chose not to call you back because I chose to spend my time differently.”  So at least you know if someone says, “I didn’t have time,” they had just as much time as the president.  Just as much time as a surgeon.  Just as much time as a composer or author.  Same 24 for everybody.  They just didn’t invest their time wisely or chose not to invest it with you!

One of the places that most people express frustration or dissatisfaction with life is knowing our time is limited.  We have expiration dates.  The Bible tells us “three score and ten” a total of 70 years.  On average, that’s about right.  My father-in-law lived to be well over 90 but he would remind us often that we were never promised more than “threescore and ten.”

Time flies.  Whether you’re a king or a truck driver, a young person starting out in life (think about how fast spring and summer break used to feel) …unless you’re the parent.  Then it feels like eternity unfolding.

But time is something that is in God’s control, not ours.  That’s the first reality we encounter in Ecclesiastes Chapter 3.  The ticking of the clock.  The passing of the seconds and the days and months and years.  In a Psalm written by Moses, we read “…teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”  But eternity doesn’t run on a clock.

Wisdom takes time seriously.  Wisdom requires us to understand that we live life on loan.  We ultimately can’t control how many minutes or days our lives will be.  We just know that, at a day set by God, we’ll spend our last second on earth.  “Teach us to number…” Or as Solomon puts it in our text, “There’s a time to be born, and a time to die.”  We had no control over our entrance into the world.  We will have no control over our exit.

But right here is where we encounter:

The Source of Our Dissatisfaction:  God is eternal

He has placed eternity in our hearts.  What that means, simply put, is that God is in control of that most precious commodity in our lives:  Time.  The one thing we all share in common is that an hour is an hour.  It’s not 36 minutes to one person and 60 to another.  A day is 24 hours.  And the other thing we get is we have a choice how to spend that time…or waste it.

At this stage of my life, I would really like to have some of those wasted hours and days back for a do-over.  But while with hard work or just being smart we can make up money we’ve wasted, we can’t make up time with our families…or time we could have spent walking with the Lord instead of wandering in the world.  No do overs exist.

But here’s some good news this morning.  “God has set eternity in our hearts.”  We were made to yearn for something that transcends the clock and the calendar.  We were made to enjoy eternal things.  Our dissatisfaction comes because of this.  You see, if we only live “under the sun,” we try to make the pleasures and joys of a fallen, temporary world have eternal significance.  They can’t.  I know I have an eternity of time awaiting.  It takes the sting out of not having enough time now.

Every pleasure you enjoy, every joyful moment with your spouse, or your children, or looking at a beautiful landscape or work of art…all of it is destined to lead to dissatisfaction unless you know that, with those things God is just hinting at what’s waiting for us in eternity.  When we focus on the things of this earth as our ultimate reality and our ultimate enjoyment, we make our ultimate meaning about that relationship or that possession or that experience.

God goes to great lengths to remind us that our time here is limited.  How we use our time will be something we’ll be called to account for.  “…God will call the past to account.” If we invest it with a view toward eternity, it’s something for which we will be rewarded!

Our dissatisfaction comes when we forget that it is God Who gives us the time we enjoy.  We need to invest it wisely.  “God makes everything beautiful in its time,” if we can see God’s hand in it.

The Reasons for Our Frustration:  God is just

             We struggle with the same issues Solomon did.  He lists them for us in Chapter 3 and 4, and they were the source of his frustration, and the source of ours as well.

Inequity (vv 16-17)

Life isn’t fair.  And it isn’t perfect.  If it was, the driver who ran you off the road speeding by you would be pulled over at the next mile marker.  The person who gossips about you would have her teeth fall out that same night.  But the Christian NFL player doesn’t always win the Super Bowl, and the guy living it up as a partying pagan doesn’t always fumble at the goal line. Bad things happen to good people, and equally frustrating good things happen to bad people! But we really don’t want to live in that kind of world either.  We just want other people to be punished for evil, but we want to be allowed to get away with it.

Death

Death, we are told, is the great equalizer.  One out of one people die.  And one out of one animal die.  While it looks like man and animal experience the same fate, that is not the case.  “Who knows,” Solomon asks, “if the breath of man ascends upward…”  Life isn’t fair.  We work like a dog, and then die just like a dog, or so Solomon concluded “under the sun.” But we know, as Christians, that “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.”

Oppression/When it seems the wicked are always winning

             Ecc 4:1-3

In Psalm 73, the Psalmist said, “But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled; my steps nearly slipped…when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.”  But then, an important thing happens.  “When I thought how to understand this, it was too painful for me, until I went to the sanctuary of God.  Then I understood their end.”

A pastor had a golf buddy who was not a Christian who was always challenging him.  As they put their clubs away, he said, “See pastor, in my world, the good guy always finishes last.”  The pastor replied, “Yeah, but the bad guy goes to hell.”

Rivalry/Envy

Ecc 4:4-6

A survey on PersonnelToday.com reported than nine out of ten office workers suffer from “professional envy” of colleagues they picture to have more glamorous or higher paying jobs…a third envy a partner or spouse’s jobs, while a fifth feel jealous of a colleague further up the work “ladder.”  We compensate for those feelings by underperforming or over competing.

Materialism… riches over relationship…things more important than people

             Ecc 4:7-8…This is directed to those who blow up their relationships and never take time for friendships to accumulate money and things.  They don’t have to be mutually exclusive, but often we let our ambition for things and status and money to push out the important things.  You find yourself, at the end of the day, rich.  But alone.

The Root of Our Isolation: God is love

Ecc 4:9-12

            We were made for relationships.  “It is not good for the man to be alone,” God said.  We need to keep reminding ourselves that God revealed Himself to us as a God in relationship with Himself.  The Trinity is an eternal relationship in which God is one-yet-three.  I don’t have time to go into all the explanations of that, but the Bible proclaims it’s true.  Father, Son, Holy Spirit. And this relationship is open-ended.  God invites us to join Him in this joyful dance.  He didn’t create us because He was lonely.  He created us because He wanted us to enjoy what He had!

Earthly relationships are a reflection of that eternal and invisible reality.  We are made to relate, not isolate.  We are wired to know and be known, because the God Who made us is like that.  He knows that the most painful reality of Hell is not the flames but the eternal aloneness. And those who are lonely can testify to how difficult it is.

2 are better than 1.  For working, for walking, for warmth, and for weaving.  You know, when we get married, we are to leave, cleave, and weave a life together.  I will sometimes use the three-stranded cord as an illustration in a wedding ceremony.

Rope makers know that you can take two cords and wrap them together…into eternity… and they will eventually come apart.  But they learned if you put a third cord in the center and wrap the other two around that cord and around each other, it will never come apart!

We have changed marriage into a relationship where it’s just the two of us against the world.  We wrap ourselves around each other and then we wonder why it comes apart.  But the marriages that understand the need for that third strand in the middle…don’t come apart easily at all.

When a marriage is done right, with Christ as the center strand, you create something that is greater than just two people clinging to each other.  There’s a synergy that is created…and those marriages will seldom pull apart.

Popularity (4:13-16)

This ends with a particularly telling thought.  We live in a day when people long for popularity and recognition from others.  People will do silly, funny, dangerous and even deadly things in an effort to get more likes on their social media accounts.  It is a very enticing sin in our day, and the church is not immune.  Neither is politics.  Here’s the story of a popular king that got old, was replaced by a popular upstart young king (who was, ironically from the same background as the old king) and we see the rise and fall and fickleness of popular applause.  It’s frustrating to those who hang their self-worth on this.

Solomon is no doubt reflecting back to his own father, David’s, history.  The popularity of a young king named Saul was replaced by the rising star of King David.  David’s popularity was eventually eclipsed by the new young king named Solomon.  Solomon, once the rock star of Israel, is now the old king who sees his once soaring popularity poll sliding south.

If we are seeking an earthly crown of glory, it will perish quickly.  But if the crown we hope to wear is an eternal reward that we can “cast down” at the feet of Jesus, we will find our star never sets as we live in the glory of making Jesus famous!

Paul said, “But God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ…” (Galatians 6:14).  May our pursuit be that kind of glory…the glory of the cross.

What’s the solution to our dissatisfaction, our frustration, our isolation?  Knowing the God Who invites you to come into a relationship with Him through Jesus!  It brings satisfaction and fulfillment and fellowship to us.  Without God, life is without meaning…without purpose.  With God, you get meaning now…and heaven later!  And it comes by grace, through faith in Jesus.  Won’t you trust Him today?

Resources and References:

• Nelson, The Problem of Life With God
• Swindoll, Living on the Ragged Edge
• Stedman, Is This All There is to Life?
• Jeremiah, Heaven on Earth
• Kidner, Ecclesiastes