Kaleo San Diego Church

INTRODUCTION

This morning each of you here completed certain tasks with a certain degree of energy to get here. What did you do to come to this building this morning?

Wake up. Shower. Brush your teeth. Get dressed. Fix your hair and your makeup. Fix and eat breakfast or feed your children. Bathe and dress your children. Fill up your car with gas. Drive to this location. Find a seat.

When I lived a life apart from God’s grace, I went through a similar process on Friday and Saturday night.

I can tell you why I did those things, and I can tell you what I desired to have happen for all my efforts, but I won’t since it would get me fired.

My point is this… I knew why I was going through all of the trouble that I was, and I knew what my goal and desire was. My desires dictated my actions, they were inextricably linked. I prepared for a consummation of my desire with the reality of my desire being fulfilled.

How many of you have friends over for dinner? Are there things that you do to prepare your home for the arrival of guests? Why? Because you desire to have a time of enjoyment with your guests and part of that enjoyment is a confidence that your home is fit for your guests.

Your desire is that your visit will be enjoyable and so you prepare your home through the effort of your hands to facilitate a consummation of your desire.

Why? Why do you go through this every Sunday morning? What motivation is there behind this ritual? What is your desire when you come to this place?

What drives to gather together on Sunday morning? What drives us to sing songs, listen to a longwinded preacher and give our money?

Some of you treat Christ’s bride much the same way you treat your own. You do things because you must, rather than doing them because of your deep rooted affection for her.

If I asked my wife if I must kiss her goodbye when I leave, I would expect her to say “you must, but not that kind of must.” In other words; unless my kiss is motivated by spontaneous affection, any duty I have, no matter how noble I view it, is stripped of all of its beauty and benefit to either of us.

Does our heart hunger for God so much that we are compelled out of deep affection for God and with a desire to be deeply satisfied in Him alone that we go hard after Him Sunday morning?

In Solomon’s day the practices of his countrymen did not escape his eye. Fake religion greatly distressed him as much as proud wisdom, vain pleasure, abused justice, or hollow freedom.

It seems that these men and women were coming to this great temple that took 153,000 men and 7 years to complete, with a huge number of sacrifices, but they took a mechanical attitude to the gather of God’s people and to the sacrifice they were commanded to bring. They did the right thing with the wrong motives, or you could say they came to the right place with wrong attitude. All of the detail of their religious service profited nothing because they missed the deeper meaning, the key purpose of those animal offerings.

This shows us that even though we consider ourselves the people of God, we can miss the big “E” on the eye chart in our quest to be spiritual and religious.

It was easy for me to put on clean clothes and bathe so that I can find a girl on Saturday night. My façade could last till about 2:00 am then I started to fall apart like Cinderella.

It is easy to clean your house and prepare a nice meal once every blue moon when company comes over.

It is easy to come to church on Sunday morning and act the part of the Christian for a couple of hours when Monday through Saturday night I was doing whatever I wanted.

But to have right motivations, right desires, right focus, without hypocrisy, is another issue entirely. One of the main reasons non-Christians can’t stand the name Jesus and the word Christian is because of those that claim to follow Jesus as Christians live and act in ways that even non-Christians see as utter hypocrisy.

We are called to lift our hands in praise of our God.

Psalm 134:2- Lift up your hands in the sanctuary, And bless the LORD.

But Paul tells us-

1 Timothy 2:8- I desire therefore that the men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting;

If a man is a brawler and has sinned by using his hands that he raises in the sanctuary to sin during the week, he is a hypocrite.

Women likewise are given instruction-

1 Timothy 2:9- in like manner also, that the women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with propriety and moderation,

Also, if a woman is loose in her apparel and seeks after the attention of men in a way that is not appropriate, yet comes on Sunday with a more discrete apparel, she is a hypocrite.

It is not solely about what you do on Sunday for 2 hours, but how you live your life the 166 hours.

You can’t be a guy that cusses his wife out throughout the week then comes to worship God with those same lips on Sunday morning. You can’t be a woman that dishonors her husband by making him look foolish by her careless behavior then comes to church and puts on an academy award performance on Sunday.

It is about a reverential way of living that forces us to guard our steps continually so that when we enter the house of God, it is not with fear of judgment, reverence for His majesty.

We are to walk continually in a state of circumspection, guarding each and every step along the way so that we don’t stumble.

STUDY

Ecclesiastes 5:1-7

1. Watch Your Life

Verse 1a- Guard your steps as you go to the house of God…

This is summed up in our way of life that should lead towards God. When we watch our steps we are living in a way that demonstrates we are true worshippers of God. We are proving with our lives what we claim to believe in our mind and feel in our heart.

There should be no distinction between our language throughout the week and on Sunday, there should not be a cleaning up that has to occur on Sunday morning that wasn’t already occurring throughout the week.

Here is the question I want you to answer. Are you living Monday through Saturday as a true worshipper of God that is consistent with your fellowship on Sunday? If not, who do you think you are fooling?

You can fool me, you can fool your brothers and sisters, but you will never be able to play hide-and-go-seek with God, it’s always seen, it’s always known, it’s always obvious, because God is present always. He wasn’t confined to a Temple 3,000 years ago, and He’s not confined to a church building today.

Also, is it possible to draw near to God when we are playing a game of shell and pea with our sin? No. The Holy Spirit is grieved when we find more satisfaction in our sinful actions that we do in the sweetness and presence of our God.

Yet Solomon says we are to draw near to God.

2. Listen To God

Verse 1b- …and draw near to listen…

In what way does Solomon instruct us to draw near to God? By drawing near to listen.

What is this implying? That God is speaking.

Are you worshipping God right now as I preach to you His word? Yes.

Some of you have bought into this postmodern myth that says that we should just gather experience the presence of God without having someone preach to us.

How exactly are you going to respond in a way that is in “spirit and truth” if the “truth” is taken out? What “spirit” would we be responding to?

God has spoken to us in His word, and the same Holy Spirit that dwells in each of us that love Jesus is the same Holy Spirit that inspired the writing of the Bible you hold in your hands.

The preaching of the word has been diminished to a place of perfunctory obligation rather than the major means by which we draw near to God.

Romans 10:13-15, 17 says- 13 For "whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved." 14 How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? 15 And how shall they preach unless they are sent?...17 So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

Preaching is a major part of corporate worship in Christ’s church because it is designed to lure God’s people from the fleeting pleasures of sin into the sacrificial path of obedient satisfaction in Him.

The aim of preaching is to magnify God and make much of Him. The way He is made much of is when His people prefer Him over “all the riches and pleasures of life” (Luke 8:14).

Yet today, preaching has become more about you and less about God. It is looked at as irrelevant and outdated. People don’t want to listen, people don’t want to learn. They would rather come to a place where they can be entertained by the music or laugh at the message, but they leave with no lasting satisfaction because in order to have lasting satisfaction you must be consumed by the World of God.

My job is to make you a bible saturated people that are fed a steady diet of God’s word so that you can overcome sin, guilt, and folly.

In order for you to see and savor God you must learn of Him in His word as He has revealed Himself to us. If not, then we end up with a God of our imagination that looks nothing like the one of the Bible, but instead it looks more like us.

It is God’s revelation to us. God does His works in the world by his Word and gives new life by his Word and awakens faith by His Word. Without the Word of God, there would be no life, no faith, no work, no revelation and no worship. The Word of God is to worship as air is to breathing.

2 Timothy 3:16-4:5 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work. 4:1 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. 3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. 5 As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

The reason that preaching is so prominent in worship is that worship is not just understanding but also feeling. It is not just seeing God, but also savoring God. It is not just the response of the mind, but also of the heart. Therefore God has ordained that the form his Word should take in corporate worship is not just explanation to the mind and not just stimulation to the heart. Rather the Word of God is to come teaching the mind and reaching the heart; showing the truth of Christ and savoring the glory of Christ; expositing the Word of God and exulting in the God of the Word.

Do we come with prepared spiritually? Do we come as a praying people who spend more time preparing to God hard after God than we do going hard after earthly things?

If not, then we come an doffer the sacrifice of fools…

3. Don’t Be Foolish In Worship

Verse 1c- …rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools; for they do not know they are doing evil.

Blood and smoke in the Temple wasn’t meant be a magic trick that God performed for their entertainment. It was meant to draw people to a closer relationship to their God, that is the point of the sacrifice and the point of forgiveness. So that people are closer to their God and receive joy and satisfaction from Him, in Him.

Nothing makes God more supreme and more central in worship than when a people are persuaded that nothing- not money or reputation or vacation or family or job or health or sports or toys or friends- nothing is going to bring satisfaction to their sinful, guilty, aching hearts besides God.

This breeds a people that don’t come to give the sacrifice of fools with all it’s outward focus, rather, they go after God with unabated and all consuming vigor. You become the most dangerous people on this planet.

These kind of people are not confused about why they are in a worship service. They do not view songs and prayers and sermons as mere traditions or duties. They see them as a means of getting to God and God getting to them for more of His fullness- no matter how painful that may be in the short run.

If the focus of corporate worship shifts onto the things we give, the money we raise, the skill of the musicians, we have lost touch with why we gather.

We come to God with empty hands, to receive from God. And what we receive in worship is the fullness of God. We should come saying “as the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” (Psalm 42:1-2).

If our attitude is shifted on our giving to God, one result I have seen again and again is that subtly it is not God that remains at the center but the quality of our giving. Are we singing well? Does Brian, Chris, Grace and Isaac play their instruments or sing on key? Little by little the focus shifts off the utter need of the Lord himself onto the quality of our performance.

Nothing keeps God at the center of worship like the Biblical conviction that the trembling pursuit of satisfaction is why we are together.

God can’t be a means to anything else. We can’t say to God, “I want to be satisfied in you so that I can have something else.” That would mean that we are not really satisfied in God but in that something else. And that would dishonor God, not worship Him.

Yet, for thousands upon thousands, and for many pastors, the event of “worship” on Sunday morning is conceived of as a means to accomplish something other than worship. We “worship” to raise money; we “worship” to attract crowds; we “worship” to heal human hurts; to recruit workers for the ministry; to improve overall church attitude; to improve community; to give musicians a place to fulfill their calling; to teach our children the ways of God; to help marriages stay together; to evangelize the lost, etc.

In all of this, much like those that Solomon rebuked, we prove that we don’t know what true worship is. Genuine affections for God are an end in themselves.

I can’t say to my wife: “I feel a strong delight in you so that you’ll make me lasagna.” That is not the way delight works. My delight should end at her.

I believe true corporate worship may have all of these good effects and a hundred more in the life of the church. But, my point is that to the degree that we do “worship” for these reasons is to the degree it ceases to be authentic worship.

We should always keep God at the center of our affections and desires when we come together, if we have not and are not doing worship with this sole motive, which is God, then we all need to turn from our way and repent of our folly.

Fools rush into worship carelessly and feel free to tell God and His people what they think and what they want, like consumers coming to buy services with a hand full of cash.

How did Jesus treat these people at the Temple when he saw them buying sacrifices rather than bringing their own? He flipped tables and chased them out with a cord (John 2:12-25).

We are never to be fools who rush in and are hasty in our actions or thoughts or with our ears closed and our mouths flapping (Matthew 6:7-8).

4. Pray God Centered Prayers

Verses 2-3 Do not be hasty in word or impulsive in thought to bring up a matter in the presence of God. For God is in heaven and you are on the earth; therefore let your words be few. 3 For the dream comes through much effort and the voice of a fool through many words.

Your view of God determines your view of prayer. Since most religions view God as someone for whom they need to work for to earn favor, their prayers sound the same. They are longwinded, full of words, are not authentic in content, and put on an air of piety but are bankrupt.

So many people come to God on Sunday and are impulsive because they are not listening to God and watching their steps throughout the week.

They go on a sin binge and think Sunday is gameday when they can come and purge their sin and make big commitments to God.

They are big at dreaming and little at doing what they work themselves up to committing.

It is better that we are brief in our prayers and listen to God open our mouth and stop up our ears.

Wild promises and unguarded commitments, vain repetition were to be avoided then and are to be avoided today.

Poise, control, measured speech and action should be considered sound conduct by the wise.

The word Solomon uses for “hasty” means rash, wild, and mindless conduct.

How do we walk soberly? By recognizing our Creator/creature distinction. Prayer is a solemn conversation with a great and awesome God. The gap between humans and God is poetically measured by the difference between “heaven” and “earth.”

The central definition of prayer is “an offering up of our desires unto God.” Prayer is a revealer of the heart. What a person prays for shows the spiritual condition of his heart. If we don’t pray for spiritual things (like our joy in the glory of Christ, the salvation of sinners, the holiness of our hearts, and the advance of the gospel, the coming of the kingdom, and the joy of knowing Christ), then it is probably because we don’t desire these things.

How we pray reveals the desires in our hearts. And the desires for our hearts reveal what our treasure is. And if your treasure is not Christ, we will perish.

Our prayer is a mark of our great need for God. It is evidence that we do not think so highly of our selves. It is proof that we are lowered and bowed before God. It demonstrates how much we need His blessings, His love, His mercy, His grace, His truth, His compassion, His faithfulness, His strength.

Our prayer is to be saturated with the Bible so that when we pray we pray as a people according to the will of God.

John tells us in 1 John 5:14-15- And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.

Every prayer should be motivated by a desire to have more of the fullness of joy in Christ. Prayer should be to glorify God and magnify His Son. If what we pray for doesn’t end with us being closer to God and finding more joy in Him, then the prayer is useless.

If you don’t know how to pray, read Luke 11. Even the disciples came to Jesus and said “Lord, teach us to pray…”

Instead of dirty feet, closed ears, empty prayers and hollow vows, we should fulfill what we commit to God.

5. Keep Your Vows

Verses 4-6- When you make a vow to God, do not be late in paying it; for He takes no delight in fools. Pay what you vow! 5 It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay. 6 Do not let your speech cause you to sin and do not say in the presence of the messenger of God that it was a mistake. Why should God be angry on account of your voice and destroy the work of your hands?

How easy it is to make a vow to God in times of emergency, and how hard it is to pray.

We watch our steps, come near to God and hear His Word, are careful in worship, and offer Godly prayers, and with that we should be a people that when we are convicted by the message, or notice our steps slipping, or have not worshipped in the way God calls us to, we make certain vows and commitments to God, those commitments should be kept.

This shows how much we truly love God. If we make a vow at the altar to love our wives and give ourselves to her as Christ gave Himself to the church, but 2 weeks later forget the vows we promised when we asked God to give us a wife, we are a people that God has no delight in. We are a people that God is angry with.

We pray prayers that sound like this “God if you give me a wife..” then we vow “I’ll love her all her days.” You make a vow to God and then you are granted your prayer by God’s will and forget the second part of the prayer “I’ll love her all her days.”

This kind of rash foolishness is like a man who goes to an auction and is caught up in the moment of excitement as he sees this cherry red 56 Corvette and starts flapping off at the mouth and makes commitments to buy and wins the bid. But when the auction messenger comes to take payment, he says it was a mistake and can’t pay.

Fantasize with me for a moment…What would this church look like if all the vows that were made to serve, to give, to love our wives, to honor and respect your husbands, to honor your mother and father, to live missionally, to tell everyone about your love for Jesus were actually kept? It would be a different church wouldn’t it?

Our word doesn’t mean much today. It is shallow, our vows are hollow, and our commitments and often broken without any sense of conviction or guilt.

Not in God’s house, not in God’s family, not as God’s child! We are to be a people that let our “yes be yes.”

When you become a member of this church and pledge to love God, to read His word, to give, to honor and respect your elders as they teach you the word. When you stand at the altar and make your vows to each other, you make a covenant with one another and vow to keep your commitment. Why don’t we fulfill our vows?

I believe it’s because we really don’t love God, and we really don’t fear God.

6. Be Realistic About Your Vows

Verse 7a- For in many dreams and in many words there is emptiness…

The worship of God is not to be a time whereby we boast about who we are and what we are going to do, and then demand that God bless our plans as if we were God and He existed to obey us. Instead, worship is an occasion for us to contemplate the goodness and greatness of God with the intention of being connected to Him.

7. Fear God

Verse 7b-…Rather, fear God.

Jeremiah 32:39-41 I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them. 40 I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. 41 I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul.

A people that are now God’s children in the New Covenant will fear Him. They will have a holy, reverential, trembling, fear for their awesome God who has saved them into a relationship with Him.

The worship which Solomon speaks of occurred in the Temple. But, the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD and so Christians no longer have nor need the Temple; Jesus is now our Priest (who intercedes as our mediator between us and God the Father) who has shed His blood as the once-for-all sacrifice for sin (Hebrews 4:14, 9:11-15). At Jesus’ death, the Temple curtain was torn in two and the barrier of sin, which had separated men and God, was removed. God’s presence was made available to His people wherever they may be located—not just at the Temple (Matthew 27:51). All of this happened because Jesus is greater than the Temple (Matthew 12:6). Today, God dwells with and in His people around the world, making it possible for us to worship God acceptably at all times and places (1 Corinthians 3:16). Therefore, Solomon’s directions regarding the worship of God’s people are set forth for us to obey, not only in formal religious settings, but also through the course of life each day, as we are always in God’s presence in worship. These directives also apply to our gathered worship, where God’s people come together for church (Hebrews 10:25).

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