0:00
Anybody free. So, that's kind of a downer and I want to start out with a story. What book should I read to grow spiritually? This is a question that a fellow posed to me after I was here to do my pastoral internship here a couple of summers ago. So, I've been preaching all summer.
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It was the day before we were leaving and I met with this fellow at the Virginian. We got through with breakfast and he looked over and said, well, what can I do? What do I need to do? I'm a Christian. I already know Jesus.
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I became a Christian outside of the bounds of the normal like get together every Sunday church. I got to got to knowing some Christians. They introduced me to Christ. I believe it. I read the gospels and I love him and I'm all for him but I just want to know what I can read to grow spiritually.
0:45
What do you suggest? Preacher boy, you know, that kind of thing and I said, Ephesians. Well, Ephesians, that'd be a great place to start. Ephesians is a really, really good one. If you're already a Christian, you're latching on and you want to know what it's like to experience the body of Christ the way it's meant to be experienced.
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Ephesians is great because it is short. It's only four pages long but you know, just not many chapters. It's easy to understand. It's super plain spoken when Paul says, for those of you who are stealing, steal no longer. It's just that simple.
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It's that easy, you know? Be tender hearted, compassionate, kind, loving one another, forgiving people just like God and Christ forgave you. All that's good stuff. And it's very encouraging. Those are my reasons.
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You should read Ephesians to grow spiritually and so, I went home to South Carolina. It took us a couple days to get there. He didn't call me one day, didn't call me the next day and I told him, read it tonight. It's four pages long. No big deal.
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Just read it. Call me back. Let me know what you think. So, he didn't call me first day, second day, third day. We get to South Carolina.
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I'm getting a little worried. So, I called him back and I said, so what do you think about the book that I said you should read? I didn't like it. She didn't read all that. I didn't like it.
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That's not an answer that I was expecting. Maybe you're not a Christian after all. I didn't like it. How can you not like it? He said, it wasn't short.
2:08
Oh, okay. I thought, now, you are really not a reader if Ephesians is not sure. It wasn't easy to understand. Now, I'm questioning his cognitive abilities. And it wasn't encouraging and I was just slump shouldered thinking, I spent the whole summer preaching out there.
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And he didn't like it. What happened? And I was considering it and going, lord, what in the world could've happened? He read Ecclesiastes. That's what happened.
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And you know why? Because Ecclesiastes is long. It's long. It's confusing. Yeah.
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And it's discouraging. So, that's what I told and they and that's an absolutely true story. That's none of that is amplified at all. He's he told me he didn't like it because it was long and confusing and discouraging. Well, today, we're going to look into it.
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Ecclesiastes, y'all know Ecclesia in Greek means the assembly or the congregation or the body but Ecclesiastes literally means the preacher. When I originally started thinking about preaching on this today, it was because I was looking back on Monday of this past week, April 15, tax day. I was thinking about one year ago, exactly, April 15 is when we came out and I preached here for the vote. The congregational vote and that was last April 15. So, we've I've been the preacher here for exactly one year.
3:40
We did go back home for a while. That didn't happen in the first service. I wasn't expecting that. Anyway, it literally means the preacher and since more than anybody else, I'm the one who stands up here. It's the one who gives word to the assembly, the preacher.
3:59
This is funny to me. Tiny little words but this is how the preacher, Solomon. Solomon wrote this book about nine forty five BC and this is the story in first Kings of how he got to the point where he could actually be the one that was writing this book. At Gibeon, the Lord appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream and God said, ask for whatever you want me to give you. Solomon answered, you have shown great kindness to your servant, my father David, because he was faithful to you and righteous and upright in heart.
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You've continued this great kindness to him and have given him a son, that's me, to sit on his throne this very day. Now, lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father, David. That's me. But I am only a little child and I do not know how to carry out my duties. Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number.
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So give your servant a discerning heart. What he's asking for here is a discerning heart, a wisdom to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours? The Lord was pleased that Solomon asked for this. So, God said to him, since you have asked for this and not for long life, which some people would ask for or wealth for yourself which a lot of people would ask for nor have you asked for the death of your enemies which we have seen this week.
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People will still ask for but you have asked for discernment and administering justice. I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart so that there will never have been anyone like you nor will there ever be. He was going to make him the wisest man ever. Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for, both wealth and honor so that in your lifetime, you will have no equal among kings.
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And if you walk in obedience to me and you keep my decrees and commands, keep my commands. As David your father did, I will give you a long life. So, key to Ecclesiastes, there are couple of different ways because it is long, because it is confusing, because it is not very encouraging, unless you're reading it correctly. I want to talk about the keys. For one thing, is a poetic book.
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So what is confusing often is poetry. But he uses repetition for effect. Very, very well, I think. He uses the word vanity 35 times in 29 different verses over the course of the 12 chapters and he uses it throughout. It's peppered throughout.
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Vanity of vanity, everything is vanity. All is vanity. All is meaningless. A grasping after the wind is completely hopeless. Debbie Downer, he just the whole time.
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It's like meaningless, meaningless. Oh, it's useless, futile. What does it matter? What is said to be vanity in this book? Look at this list and while you're looking at it, think about what you're chasing after.
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Pleasure? Vanity. Industry or labor? Also vanity. Human wisdom?
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Vanity. All life? Vanity. Leaving an inheritance for your children. Sounds pretty good?
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Nah, they're just gonna spend it and blow it and forget about you anyway. Vanity. That's what he says. Acquiring riches over family, vanity. Political popularity, he knew something of this, vanity.
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Many dreams and many words, vanity. Meaninglessness, loving abundance, which do you think he did? Oh my goodness, the gold store houses and the porcupines. I mean, concubines, all of that sort of stuff, the abundance, he had it. He's been there.
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He's done that. He got the T shirt as they say. Love and abundance, always vanity. Wealth, without God given enjoyment and it there is that caveat. Without God given enjoyment, vanity.
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Wandering desire, born with a traveling Jones, all vanity. Foolish laughter, injustice in this life, the days of darkness, which old age, and the days of childhood and youth. So, he pretty much covers it. Right? Everything is vanity.
8:19
My goodness. This would not go over well at the last staff, would it? Meaninglessness, futility. Near the end of the book, just in case you missed all of those references, he says, everything is meaningless. Good grief, Solomon.
8:34
You're just killing us. Twelve eight, they're only goes up to twelve fourteen in the book and then it's over. So, at twelve eight, he's still saying, everything is meaningless. Okay, for repetition for effect, he also, instead of just using vanity, he uses the phrase under the sun and this is the key to understand in Ecclesiastes. It's used 29 times in 27 verses and it emphasizes the completely earthly point of view.
9:03
Solomon is looking at things from a completely earthly point of view in all of these depressing sections. The phrase leaves God out of the equation and he's taken in what can be taken in through the natural senses, naturally observed without faith or without God's help. So, that is why it seems so discouraging and depressing. Now, I hate to mention this. After I started like that, but for the next three weeks, we're going look at this depressing book.
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We're going to mine the ore that is Ecclesiastes. Hopefully, pull some gold nuggets out of it. Some encouraging and hopeful gold nuggets out of it. There are two main points to the book, and the majority of the book takes up the first point. It is that everything under the sun is vanity without God.
9:51
Without God, absolutely everything can be and is vain, hopeless but it's it's point number one and point number one. That's interesting. It's the same. It's two sides of the same coin. It said two last night on my computer but nothing is in vain if it's done in loving reverence and obedience to God.
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Does that make sense? Everything, absolutely everything is meaningless if God is not in it but little is much if God is in it. So, nothing is in vain if it's done and loving reverence to an obedient God. So, what book should I read to grow spiritually? Solomon says at the very end, let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter.
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Now, he's explored absolutely everything. So, wise man who can learn from the mistakes of others and Solomon certainly made a lot of bad choices and a lot of mistakes but he was teaching one of the ways that God gave him wisdom was in his doing the wrong thing. You beat your head against the wall, you learn not to do that again and so he learned that. You see that in the first part of the book, he he says what he's going to do is excuse me. He says in the first part of the book that what he is wanting to do is search for meaning in life.
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He says, what does it profit a man with all his labor under the sun? That's the section. He's searching for meaning in life. The second section is about his observations from life. What he has observed as he's lived his life and then the third is very short.
11:31
It starts off giving you little hints on about chapter seven and up through 12 but he ends off with this twelve, thirteen, and 14 and that is the preacher's counsel for life. From all that he has observed and all that he has seen. So, I'm going to introduce today Ecclesiastes. I already have actually. The sermon's almost over.
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Sermon portion of the sermon. Ecclesiastes twelve thirteen says, fear God and keep his commandments for this is the whole duty of man. The what version that Dan said, it pertains to everyone. Fear God and keep his commandments for this is the whole duty of man. I told you about the wealth caveat.
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It said, without the God given gift of enjoying it, he had a couple of different things in there where he says that under the sun, there's nothing better in life that a man be happy and do good Because he knows that under the sun, if everything is vanity, it leads invariably to one of two places. If all is meaningless, all is nothingness, all is hopeless, then it leads two places. One, either despair or two, hedonism. I don't quote the Grateful Dead very often. Probably good.
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Lose your job doing that but if if the Grateful Dead have a song that says, I may we I may be going to hell in a bucket, babe but at least I'll enjoy the ride. That's the answer to despair. We know that this is all nothing under the sun. We feel like this is all nothing so it either heads to despair or it heads to hedonism, trying to either dull the pain or enjoy it while you can because tomorrow we die. It's hopeless.
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It's horrible to think like that. But the conclusion of the matter is this. Now, Solomon also wrote Song of Solomon. Solomon also wrote wrote a lot of proverbs and so you see him pointing towards God in all over the place and in this book, he even points to God a lot of different times. He mentions God and his provision but he's talking mostly, it's almost like an apologetic book where he's saying, I believe in God.
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I know that he's good but I see your point. Person who doesn't believe in God, it does look hopeless. I do see the righteous man die. While the evil man does well. I see that bad guys get away sometimes and good guys get shot down sometimes.
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I see that. So, he's given them he's given them a chance to understand that I can see that that's what's happening but little as much when God is in it, fear God and keep his commandments for this is a whole duty of man. Keep his commandments. Which commandments is Solomon talking about? Is he talking about the 10 commandments?
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Yeah, I think he probably is talking about the commandments. There there may be others but he's definitely talking about the commandments of God. The first four of the 10 commandments are about loving God. The second set of six is about loving your neighbor and Jesus sums it up. Love, lord your God, with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul, with all your strength and the second commandment is like the first.
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Love your neighbor as yourself. He sums it up into two and I think that we can safely sum up the 10 commandments into those two. Loving God and loving people. So, fear God and keep his commandments for this is the whole duty of man. That's the conclusion of the matter.
15:08
After all of that stuff that was long and confusing and if you go back, it's not as confusing. There are some poetic moments especially the last chapter. I think of old age, it has a very poetic way of saying, this really stinks. Yes, I get it. This is Solomon after he had been through some of that but if you will look back through, I'm going to challenge you this week.
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For the next three weeks, we're going be looking into this book and we're going to look into it especially as it concerns first B and it might not seem like that's a good idea. That's alright. It's like, I don't want be depressed about first B. We're not. Fear God, keep his commandments for this is the whole duty of man.
15:46
First, B's motto is with all that we are, loving God and loving people through Christ. In all of Solomon's wisdom and he is the wisest one ever, biblically, absolutely the wisest guy ever. He says that in the conclusion of everything and I have considered absolutely everything and if you read through those 12 chapters, you'll see, he's considered it all and he considers all of the pursuits without God to be meaningless, hopeless. But fearing God and keeping his commandments is what he says, that's the conclusion of the matter. So, everything that we do here needs to be linked to fearing God and keeping his commandments and the two are loving God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength and loving our neighbor as our self.
16:34
Told you it's going to be a short sermon. That's the biblical portion of the sermon today. Finito, we've got fifteen minutes before twelve. We might, that's it. That's the last slide.
16:43
There's nothing more but I want to tell you this too. I woke up the other night in the middle of the night and I could not get away from this thought. Every week, I'm going to stand up here. I'm the preacher. I mean, that's what my job is.
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To stand up and deliver words to the assembly and I really do believe that a sincere application of God's word to our life is the way that the kingdom grows. It's the only way that the kingdom grows. It's through the blood of Jesus and the word of our testimony. That's the only way evil will be overcome and this week was a very evil week. It's very hard but we don't have to act as those who have no hope.
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If we have a savior, we have the joy that Christ has given us within us. Everything that we do needs to be motivated by our love for him which is his love for us, gives us that ability and then it needs to be directed towards someone else. That whole study of the gospel of John for me, it surprised me how often my my focus was the same and it's not because I'm formulaic about how I come up with. That's what the passage says. It's all about Jesus, how that affects you, and then how you affect others with Jesus as the center of your life.
17:52
That's what it always is. So, this motto is a great one. So, everything that we do here should be linked to that. I kept thinking state of the union address, state of the union address when I woke up. It's like a state of the state address or state of the church address.
18:09
State of the capital c church is God is alive and he is working all over the world. We're seeing amazing stuff happening in Africa. See an amazing stuff happen in South America. China, the church is growing by leaps and bounds. America, we feel like the church is on decline but that's actually not true.
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Christianity is still growing even in The United States. Church plants are multiplying. It's happening all over The US. It's difficult but it's worth it. So, that's happened.
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That's the state of the capital c church. God is not dead. He is alive. No matter what Nietzsche said. No matter what it seems like, Solomon might have been saying about existentialism and it's all about just how you feel.
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No. It's not. Fear God, keep his commandments. Love is what it's about. I want to talk just for a minute about the small C church.
19:01
This local church, we have had the men's fraternity gathering was a fantastic thing. There are a lot of guys in this church. Tanya and I have been on the field before where we went to church where there were mostly kids and a few ladies and we saw that that church struggle, struggle, struggle, struggle, struggled until it got to a place where there were some guys that were coming along with their families and then, it seemed like once they had some guys involved, it started to grow. In this church right now, we have a lot of guys who are sincerely interested in loving people, Loving God and loving people and that's a fantastic place to be. The elder board at this church who makes the spiritual direction who accounts for.
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We come together. It's a plurality of leadership. I'm one of the 11 elders. We get together and we make decisions based on how we feel like God is moving the church based on his word and right now, there's an incredible amount of unity within the board of elders. It's great.
20:01
We go to the meetings and it's like a small group meeting where we're building one another up and we like that. Small groups are going great. Women's ministry seems to be going very well. Last year, we had three ladies, four ladies that went to Africa and this year, we have 19 going back on the same trip. They're sharing what Jesus has done in their life with the ends of the Earth.
20:24
Missions is going like gangbusters. Doug and Becky Walkup just got back this morning. We've had people going that you know about and people that you don't know about. We have some that are underground missionaries and some that you are very vocal about it. Missions is going very well.
20:38
There are the five purposes you see em as you walk down the hall and each one of those things is going fairly well But I have one issue, and Ecclesiastes brought it back home over and over and over again. We have one issue here that seems to be coming up with the elder boy for the past six months. We've been praying more or less by ourselves about this one area and we shared a a couple of months back in February. We shared it with the youth team and then with the board of trustees who board of trustees handled the temporal matters. They pay the bills.
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They help pay the bills. Finance, finances, and temporal stuff. Everything that we do needs to be linked to this with all we are, loving God and loving people through Christ and the one area that seems to be lacking the most right now in this church, not through any person's fault at all, is youth ministry. Now, Carl was hired a couple of years ago to do youth ministry and he has done it faithfully. He's always there.
21:37
He's always working. He has a great relationship with all the youth but over the past year and couple of months, we have had four families that were integral related to integrally related to the youth ministry that those four families have moved away and when they moved away, they left holes in the youth group and it became kind of let the wind out of Carlsails honestly but it let the wind out of the sails of the youth group and it started to be a struggle. I'm asking you as a church if you would with this in mind, all we are, loving God and loving people through Christ. If you read over Ecclesiastes this week, you will see some things that just sound to you just like Jackson. Under the sun, this is a beautiful, fantastic place.
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The mountains are gorgeous but have you seen that the hopelessness and the despair of just looking at life through very temporal earthly eyes leads either to despair or to hedonism. Have you seen that in this valley at all? Have you seen it in the youth in this valley at all? This county has the highest suicide rate of the state by far. Teton County, Idaho has the highest suicide rate in Idaho by far.
22:56
Hands down. Despair, there's no doubt. This is a difficult place to be without God. Now, with God, it's not a difficult place to be. It's one of the most glorious places on Earth to look around and see the beauty of the that the creator has made but chapter 12 starts off with this.
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It says, remember your creator in the days of your youth. Before the days of trouble come. Have you all been here on a Monday night? This is something that's going very well. Monday night, church is an alternative worship service.
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It started off with about 15 or 20 and it has grown consistently since October. Carl is the preacher at that church. That's where I go to church on Monday night at 06:15. It's great. We do meal music and a message and it's fantastic and right here, there are a bunch of kids.
23:47
This thing looks like a place to land a helicopter. On Monday nights, in this circle, this game circle, there are what, 40 or 50 kids at a time, sometimes more and they're just running like crazy. Well, somewhere between that enthusiasm and the enthusiasm that you all feel as grown up Christians, we're losing a generation. So, I'm asking you as a church to pray for the kids. Pray for the fourth and fifth graders because that's where they start to fade.
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Some of it is because of what we teach in church, the Bible to be true and everything that we teach in church is coming up against the world view of everything under the sun. And when the two don't mesh and they feel like outcasts and they feel like morons, honestly, for believing this. We don't want that. We don't want that for our youth. We don't want that for anybody.
24:43
It is, this is reasonable and true. This is good and we need to be ready to defend that. I'd like for you all to pray that we would do a good job of that and that we would usher them from the Awana group where they're all putting scripture into their hearts to in their teenage years, not just having Jesus in their hearts but being ready to share him with other people. Acquire the fires happening this week and we're sending a group of about 10 or 12 kids and a couple of several adults too and we hope, we're hoping and I hope that you would pray with us that we would see that fire catch and see them just come alive for Jesus. Now, the elder board has been talking about what to do about youth ministry because we want to love them well and we want for them to love others well.
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So, we feel like we have a few ideas. Carl has moved more or less the facto already. He's moved into a role of associate pastor. He does hospital visitations. He's done weddings.
25:37
He's done funerals. He does the things that preachers do but he also is just loving people on Monday night. That's what he does. He's moving more into an associate pastor role which he's been doing both but we hope to in the future with your blessing, with your support, hopefully, start up possibly a youth director position. So, would you please pray for us and commit to praying for that?
26:02
Bob, if we're going to sing the closing benediction, you can have the choir come on up. We'll do that. This is kind of the the like I said, the scriptural section of the sermon comes to this, with all we are loving God and loving people through Christ because that is the whole duty of man. We're missing one group right now at first b and I'd love for y'all if you would in whatever way you are able, if you would, commit to praying with us through this process. That's a sincere, honest plea.
26:35
Would you please pray with the elders as we decide on what it is that we do and would you support it when we decide what it is that we do? And that's it. We're going to sing a hymn. We usually sing a hymn, don't we? I skipped that.
26:48
That's alright. We're not singing a hymn. We're going to sing this today. We're, you can stand and be blessed, hopefully. So, stand it.
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Bless you and keep you
