Ecclesiastes 5: Fear the Lord
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B: Ecc 7:11-13; 12:13
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Welcome
Welcome
Welcome to Family Worship with Eastern Hills Baptist Church, and I’m glad you’re here this morning whether you are in the room or online. I’m Bill Connors, the senior pastor here at Eastern Hills, and if you’re visiting this wonderful church family this morning, thank you for being here. We’d love the opportunity to say thanks, to get to know you a little more, and to meet any needs that you might have. If you’re in the room, if you could just take some time during the service to fill out the communication card that is in the back of the pew in front of you, we’d appreciate that. You can just drop it in the offering plates by the doors at the close of service, or if you’d prefer, I’d like to invite you to meet me at the end of service, where I have a mug filled with chocolate to give to you to say thanks for being here. If you’d rather fill out a card online, you can text the word “WELCOME” to 505-339-2004, and you’ll get a text back with a link to our digital communication card. You can do that if you’re joining us online as well.
The video we just saw was another way that the Mission New Mexico Offering is used by the Baptist Convention of New Mexico to impact this State with the Gospel—through helping pastors and their families be refreshed and enjoy a couple of days of being ministered TO by our Convention staff. The Ministers’ and Families Retreat is only held every three years, and I know that it has been a great blessing to me and to my family. While Brother Manuel shared about how the Retreat is a blessing to pastors, can I also share what a blessing it is to pastors’ families? Especially our kids. I know that both Maggie and Abbie have enjoyed connecting with other pastors’ children from around the State at the Retreat. Abbie even shared with me that sometimes being a pastor’s kid can make her feel a little different than some of her peers, but there, she knew she was with other kids who go through the same things that she does, so she didn’t feel different at all. For some pastors, I know that the Ministers’ & Families Retreat might be the only time they are poured into and encouraged, and it wouldn’t be possible for them to do something like that if it weren’t for the Mission New Mexico Offering. Our church goal for the MNM Offering is $10,000, and through last Sunday, we’ve given $6,492. Thank you for your generosity, church family! Please continue to pray and ask the Lord to direct you in how you might give to the Mission New Mexico Offering this year. We will be taking this offering through October.
Announcements
Announcements
I’d like to say thanks to Joe and Trevor for filling the pulpit for the past couple of weeks while I took a little time off and really started planning for the kickoff of our Endeavor generosity campaign on 10/16. Could I just ask everyone to plan to be here every single Sunday from October 16 through November 13 as we take this journey together as a church family? I’m so excited to see what God is going to do in the life of this church as we think deeply about biblical stewardship and generosity along with anticipation of what God wants Eastern Hills to be as His hands and His feet in the years to come! There are already some big things that He’s doing in preparation for 2023, and I know that Endeavor is going to be a big part of that. Let’s take this discipleship journey together.
Opening
Opening
For this morning and next Sunday, we will be finishing up our look at the book of Ecclesiastes. Joe brought a great perspective on where we find our identity, and then Trevor addressed the question of doubt in Ecclesiastes with tremendous honesty and hope. This morning, we are going to look at two other aspects of life “under the sun,” and how they go together: fear and wisdom. Our focal passages in Ecclesiastes will be in chapters 7 and 12, just four verses in total. Let’s stand in honor of God’s holy Word as we read 7:11-13, and 12:13 this morning:
11 Wisdom is as good as an inheritance and an advantage to those who see the sun, 12 because wisdom is protection as silver is protection; but the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the life of its owner. 13 Consider the work of God, for who can straighten out what he has made crooked?
13 When all has been heard, the conclusion of the matter is this: fear God and keep his commands, because this is for all humanity.
PRAYER (FBC Belen, Pastors David Guerrero and Ernest Sanchez)
Fear is an interesting thing. Fear can go two ways. Some fears are irresponsible or even irrational. Some fears, however, are completely reasonable and consistent. When we are told in Scripture not to fear, that isn’t God saying that we should never be afraid for any reason. He made us with healthy, reasonable, life-sustaining fears. The question is the part that wisdom plays in the application of our fears: how to respond to fear, and whether we should be afraid at all.
This past May, Melanie, Abbie, and I went with the Tedford family to South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore. One of the things that we decided that we were going to do on that trip was to take what is called a “Buffalo Jeep Safari,” but to be completely accurate, it’s really a “American Bison Jeep Safari.” Anyway, we traveled out to this lodge where they hosted these safaris, where you all pile into a stretch jeep that holds 8 people and drive around this preserve to see a bison herd and other animals.
When we arrived at the lodge, I went inside to check us in. While I was in there, the rest of the group noticed a statue of a big adult male bison near the lodge entrance. It was pretty impressive. Looked really legit. Here’s a picture. Mel suggested that Abbie go over and put her hand on it so that she could take a picture and mess with her grandmother a little. As Abbie, started moving toward the statue, Wayne noticed that it looked like it was breathing. I thought I saw it blink. Wayne said, “That’s some really impressive animatronics.” And then we realized… it wasn’t animatronic. It was a real live 1800 lb male bison that my 13 year old daughter was walking up to. Obviously, we stopped Abbie immediately and called her back… she had gotten about 8 feet from the thing. The bison started scratching his head against the rock he was standing next to shortly after that.
I went back into the lodge and said, “There’s a male bison out there, and we thought it was stuffed, so my daughter almost went up and touched it.” “Oh, don’t do that! That’s Carl! He comes down out of the hills and hangs out here sometimes.” Carl was still out there when we came out to go to the jeep, and we looked at him again and were just amazed at his size.
The National Park Service actually has started a campaign in the last few years that says “Do not pet the fluffy cows,” because of the increase in people who have thought that the bison in South Dakota and Yellowstone were so docile and calm that they were somehow domesticated. And people have been severely injured in their run-ins with these far-from-domesticated animals, who are both powerful and fast. It’s actually recommended that you stay at least 25 YARDS away from bison if you’re not in a vehicle. In honor of our experience with Carl, we bought each of the kids a t-shirt with the “Do not pet the fluffy cows” warning sign.
So: was fearing Carl right and reasonable and rational? Yes. Were we terrified of Carl? No. Did we respect him? Absolutely. Was this wise? Completely.
Now, please hear that I am by no means in this message comparing God to Carl the bison. I’m just using our experience to get us thinking about the correlation between fear and wisdom.
So where does wisdom come from? How would we define it? And how does it relate to fear and God?
1) Wisdom is defined by God Himself.
1) Wisdom is defined by God Himself.
My standard way of defining wisdom is that wisdom is knowing how to live a life that glorifies God. The reason that this definition makes sense to me is because of where wisdom comes from in the first place. It comes from God Himself. He determines what is wise, just like He determines what is true, on the basis of His own character. What is true is what coincides with reality, and God is the ultimate reality and thus, the definer of truth. Likewise, God’s wisdom is perfect because His character is perfect: He never makes a mistake, an error, a bad decision, or a failure. Therefore, human wisdom is what coincides with God’s wisdom, which always brings Him glory.
Job, when discussing his situation with his “friends,” expressed an ode to wisdom in chapter 28 of that book:
20 Where then does wisdom come from, and where is understanding located? 21 It is hidden from the eyes of every living thing and concealed from the birds of the sky. 22 Abaddon and Death say, “We have heard news of it with our ears.” 23 But God understands the way to wisdom, and he knows its location. 24 For he looks to the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens. 25 When God fixed the weight of the wind and distributed the water by measure, 26 when he established a limit for the rain and a path for the lightning, 27 he considered wisdom and evaluated it; he established it and examined it.
And in Proverbs 8, where Solomon writes what wisdom would say if it were a person, he writes something very similar to what we see in Job:
23 I was formed before ancient times, from the beginning, before the earth began. 24 I was born when there were no watery depths and no springs filled with water. 25 Before the mountains were established, prior to the hills, I was given birth— 26 before he made the land, the fields, or the first soil on earth. 27 I was there when he established the heavens, when he laid out the horizon on the surface of the ocean, 28 when he placed the skies above, when the fountains of the ocean gushed out, 29 when he set a limit for the sea so that the waters would not violate his command, when he laid out the foundations of the earth. 30 I was a skilled craftsman beside him. I was his delight every day, always rejoicing before him.
As we have seen several times throughout our study of Ecclesiastes, Qoheleth’s point in the decisions that he made and then in writing this book is to see what the benefit of wisdom or work or wealth were “under the sun:” in the normal flow of human life in the world, and most of what he’s discovered so far in our study has been hevel: meaningless or futile.
As Trevor mentioned last week, part of the reality of living under the sun is that God created the world with certain limitations placed on us, and those limitations are set by Him. One of the fascinating parts of humanity is that we constantly want to push against those limits, to go our own way and to do our own thing.
We see this all the way back at the Fall of humanity in Genesis 3. There was ONE moral limitation placed on the humanity in the Garden. And it was the one place humanity decided to push against. And we still do this. We think that God’s ideas of wisdom are somehow less than our own—that we know and always do what is wise and moral and right and holy, and that somehow He doesn’t. This is a position of arrogance, pride, and idolatry. The truth is that we don’t see life the way that God sees life, and we don’t think the way God thinks. He is completely and totally beyond us:
33 Oh, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments and untraceable his ways!
We must acknowledge and submit to the fact that God is the source of wisdom, and that His wisdom is truly wise: that He is the One who determines what is “straight” or “crooked” as we see in verse 13 of Ecclesiastes 7:
13 Consider the work of God, for who can straighten out what he has made crooked?
We cannot change what God has established. And therefore, there is an appropriate place to begin:
2) Wisdom begins with the fear of God.
2) Wisdom begins with the fear of God.
Many believers in this day and age struggle with the concept of the fear of God. We don’t really like to think of God in terms of fear. We would rather think of God in loving ways, gracious ways, merciful ways, providing ways. But fearful ways? That’s not a very “feel good” perspective. But that’s exactly where Solomon says that wisdom begins, and thus is the conclusion of all of his searching in Ecclesiastes:
7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and discipline.
10 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
13 When all has been heard, the conclusion of the matter is this: fear God and keep his commands, because this is for all humanity.
So what does it mean to fear the Lord? The Hebrew word for the word “fear” in each of these verses is yirah. Yirah has four basic definitions:
1) reverence, fear, i.e., a state of piety and respect toward a superior
2) fear, terror, i.e., a state of great anxiety and alarm
3) worship, i.e., the act. or speech of showing profound reverence toward a superior, which may include ritual action
4) awesomeness, i.e., that which causes wonder and astonishment
So fearing God might be reverence, it might be worship, it might be awe and amazement (which I think all go together quite well), and it also might be abject terror. Now, for those who have experienced the love of God and so now approach Him from a place of reverence, awe, and worship, we have experienced the fact that relating to the Lord from humble fear is wise—it brings Him glory and it brings us blessing. That’s not why we approach Him in this way. We do so because of who He is and for what He has done. In fact, walking in the fear of the Lord is the best and most effective way to live:
27 The fear of the Lord prolongs life, but the years of the wicked are cut short.
27 The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, turning people away from the snares of death.
23 The fear of the Lord leads to life; one will sleep at night without danger.
The reason for this is that living in the fear of the Lord means that we obey Him—that we keep His commands. If we don’t follow the commands of the Lord, can we actually say that we fear Him? And what does the Bible tell us it means to fear the Lord? It says that fearing the Lord means that we turn from evil:
13 To fear the Lord is to hate evil. I hate arrogant pride, evil conduct, and perverse speech.
28 He said to mankind, “The fear of the Lord—that is wisdom. And to turn from evil is understanding.”
So the place that wisdom begins is a reverential, worshipful, awestruck response to God’s Person, character, and work, which presents itself in a desire to obey His commands and reject of what is evil in His sight.
But this leaves us with the last definition of yirah that we didn’t address: fear, terror, i.e. a state of great anxiety and alarm. This is a good place to start if you have never trusted in Christ for your salvation; if you’re not a Christian. Understand that that kind of fear can also be the place that wisdom begins, because the truth of Scripture is that God is going to judge the world and all the sin of mankind, including yours and mine. Verse 14 of Ecclesiastes 12 is the very last verse of the book, and it says this:
14 For God will bring every act to judgment, including every hidden thing, whether good or evil.
No one will get away with their sin. No one will rebel against God and not have that sin punished. In the very last book of the Bible, we see that there will come a time when the entire earth will be judged, and the lost will be commanded to fear God and worship Him, but for them, it will be too late:
7 He spoke with a loud voice: “Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come. Worship the one who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.”
Jesus even told the people not to fear man, but to absolutely fear God because of His power and authority:
4 “I say to you, my friends, don’t fear those who kill the body, and after that can do nothing more. 5 But I will show you the one to fear: Fear him who has authority to throw people into hell after death. Yes, I say to you, this is the one to fear!
The Bible tells us that God’s wrath against the sin of mankind must be poured out, and that Jesus took the wrath of God on Himself so that we wouldn’t have to bear it. He did this by willingly laying down His perfect life in our imperfect place so that we could receive forgiveness of our sins because He paid the penalty already. However, He doesn’t force us to receive His sacrifice on our behalf. He calls us to surrender our lives in trust to Him, and He takes the punishment that we owe in our place, and gives us eternal life instead of eternal punishment, because He didn’t just die in our place—He defeated death in our place as well, and since He has eternal life, He can give us eternal life.
So wisdom can start with that kind of fear—the terror kind—if that fear brings us to repentance and surrender. So fearing the Lord is where wisdom starts, but why would we want wisdom? We want wisdom because it is exceedingly valuable.
3) Wisdom is more valuable than anything else “under the sun.”
3) Wisdom is more valuable than anything else “under the sun.”
This is what Solomon has been trying to figure out this whole time—what has value the everyday limitations of human life on earth? And we’ve already seen what He says is the “conclusion of the matter:” fear God and keep His commandments. The “why” of this conclusion is found back in chapter 7 of Ecclesiastes.
11 Wisdom is as good as an inheritance and an advantage to those who see the sun, 12 because wisdom is protection as silver is protection; but the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the life of its owner.
Solomon was willing to say that both wisdom and wealth gave an advantage to “those who see the sun,” those who live the regular life on earth. And certainly from a certain perspective, he is correct. He says that both wisdom and wealth can provide protection, literally shelter or shade, for the person who has them. And this makes sense: wisdom can keep us safe in our choices, and wealth can keep us safe from things like starvation, or provide us shelter in the heat of summer or the cold of winter. However, The Teacher tells us that wisdom has an advantage over wealth, in that it preserves the life of the one who possesses it, because it cannot be taken away. Also, under the guidance of wisdom, one can be successful “under the sun” and earn material wealth, and thus have both. On the other hand, a wealthy person who is also a fool will soon be parted from his wealth, and will thus have neither wisdom nor wealth. Therefore, wisdom is worth more than riches or wealth.
Job explains in his ode to wisdom:
12 But where can wisdom be found, and where is understanding located? 13 No one can know its value, since it cannot be found in the land of the living. 14 The ocean depths say, “It’s not in me,” while the sea declares, “I don’t have it.” 15 Gold cannot be exchanged for it, and silver cannot be weighed out for its price. 16 Wisdom cannot be valued in the gold of Ophir, in precious onyx or lapis lazuli. 17 Gold and glass do not compare with it, and articles of fine gold cannot be exchanged for it. 18 Coral and quartz are not worth mentioning. The price of wisdom is beyond pearls. 19 Topaz from Cush cannot compare with it, and it cannot be valued in pure gold.
And in his Proverbs, Solomon argued this over and over again, and this selection of four passages is just a few of the many:
13 Happy is a man who finds wisdom and who acquires understanding, 14 for she is more profitable than silver, and her revenue is better than gold. 15 She is more precious than jewels; nothing you desire can equal her. 16 Long life is in her right hand; in her left, riches and honor. 17 Her ways are pleasant, and all her paths, peaceful. 18 She is a tree of life to those who embrace her, and those who hold on to her are happy.
7 Wisdom is supreme—so get wisdom. And whatever else you get, get understanding. 8 Cherish her, and she will exalt you; if you embrace her, she will honor you. 9 She will place a garland of favor on your head; she will give you a crown of beauty.”
10 Accept my instruction instead of silver, and knowledge rather than pure gold. 11 For wisdom is better than jewels, and nothing desirable can equal it.
16 Get wisdom— how much better it is than gold! And get understanding— it is preferable to silver.
And the clearest declaration of God’s wisdom is found in the cross of Christ—a declaration which from the world’s perspective (“under the sun”) is foolishness. A Savior who dies seems a silly way to save people. But again, we don’t think the way that God thinks, and we don’t do things the way God does them. Our way of looking at things says that God should either just let us off the hook, or make us earn our way into salvation. That’s what all world religions besides Christianity teach. But the Bible reveals that God maintained His perfect holiness apart from sin, along with His perfect wrath against sin, while at the same time showing His perfect mercy and grace to those who only deserve death and punishment, because He both could not just let us off the hook, nor could we ever earn eternal life.
20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the debater of this age? Hasn’t God made the world’s wisdom foolish? 21 For since, in God’s wisdom, the world did not know God through wisdom, God was pleased to save those who believe through the foolishness of what is preached. 22 For the Jews ask for signs and the Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles. 24 Yet to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, 25 because God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.
And Jesus said that the kingdom of God—living under His righteous rule and reign—is worth literally everything.
44 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure, buried in a field, that a man found and reburied. Then in his joy he goes and sells everything he has and buys that field. 45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls. 46 When he found one priceless pearl, he went and sold everything he had and bought it.
So why would following Jesus be worth everything? It’s because He is the wisdom of God, and in wisdom is how humanity was meant to live.
4) In wisdom is how humanity was meant to live.
4) In wisdom is how humanity was meant to live.
If you look around at the world right now, you might scoff at this last point just a little. How can I say that humanity was meant to live in wisdom? Look at how terrible we are at being wise! This goes back to what Joe preached about where we get our identity. Notice what Solomon said at the end of Ecclesiastes 12:13:
13 When all has been heard, the conclusion of the matter is this: fear God and keep his commands, because this is for all humanity.
“Because this is for all humanity.”
Many modern translations supply a word to help translate this verse. The CSB says “for”, many others include the word “duty.” But the last part of this verse literally says is “for this is all of humanity.” Living in wisdom—in the fear of God and thus in obedience to Him—is what we were made to do. We were meant to live in a constant state of right relationship with God through our complete dependence on Him precisely because of the limits that we face “under the sun.” That’s what it was supposed to mean to be human—to see that we derive our identity from the One who doesn’t live under the sun because He made it and us and everything else. This is why Solomon found that everything “under the sun” was mundane and meaningless!
This last point kind of brings us full circle back to the Fall, which I mentioned in my first point. The reality is that Adam and Eve lived in the kingdom of heaven, in perfect relationship with each other and with God, but under the one limit that God had set up for them “under the sun.” Unfortunately, they wanted a promotion. They wanted God’s position: the ability to do whatever they wanted to do no matter what.
And in trying to become something beyond our God-given limits and boundaries, we actually lost the very essence of what it means to be human. And so we walk through life confused, searching for meaning and definition in all of these other places. Look around at our culture right now: everyone is trying to make up our own definitions of both life and wisdom: Gender, race, sexual orientation, politics, national identity, relationships, careers, education, what we are for or against, how we talk about this issue or that issue… while these topics are important, none of them are ultimate. None of them are what define us at our core. None of them can give us our total meaning. None of them can provide what we’ve lost. It is living a life that follows God’s design that is wise, and it is unwise to live outside of God’s intended design for humanity.
And we will only be returned to that life through surrendering our lives to Jesus Christ in faith, trusting in Him for our salvation and eternal life. This is where true wisdom comes from.
24 “Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 The rain fell, the rivers rose, and the winds blew and pounded that house. Yet it didn’t collapse, because its foundation was on the rock. 26 But everyone who hears these words of mine and doesn’t act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27 The rain fell, the rivers rose, the winds blew and pounded that house, and it collapsed. It collapsed with a great crash.”
We have a choice: follow Jesus or not. Fear God or not. Be wise or not.
Closing
Closing
Brothers and sisters in the faith—how are we living our lives? Do we live them in the worshipful, reverent, awestruck fear of the Lord and in obedience to His commands? Are we living in wisdom, knowing what it is to glorify God and then doing it? Or are we taking the world’s perspective—that we can find our ultimate meaning in something other than Him? We are designed to live in right relationship with God, and nothing else will provide what we’re looking for. Now is the time to repent of pursuing anything other than God for meaning in life. You can come and pray with us, or you can pray right where you are.
If you’re lost and here or listening this morning, you’ve heard this morning that there is a reason to be terrified of God: He must punish sin, and though He has provided Jesus to pay that penalty, He isn’t going to force you to take that payment on your behalf. You may approach Him on your own merits and be judged, but I promise you that you will not pass the test. Only Jesus does. Stop living in rebellion against God and surrender in faith, believing that Jesus died for you and rose again.
Joining the church
Offering
PRAYER
Closing Remarks
Closing Remarks
Bible reading plan (Ps. 91)
Pastor’s Study tonight Eph 2.
Prayer Meeting Wednesday night
Instructions for guests
Benediction
Benediction
1 My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, 2 listening closely to wisdom and directing your heart to understanding; 3 furthermore, if you call out to insight and lift your voice to understanding, 4 if you seek it like silver and search for it like hidden treasure, 5 then you will understand the fear of the Lord and discover the knowledge of God.