Ecclesiastes 3: Scattering and Gathering Stones

Last week I looked at Ecclesiastes chapter 3 of the particular verse that I shared with you and then I'll just a couple of things. One is appreciate so much the feedback that I got that day and during the week and I was able to help them with meaningful other also in, there were people who came to me and said, I'd like to study about this or this, or this other phrases that are included in that chapter. And one of the things that several people pointed out is that they have a Tennessee, a group together and I hadn't really known that. Obviously, there's 14 couplets there, but the topics kind of merge in time. And so, rather than look at each of those individual phrases. What I'm going to do is put them with some of them into three groups. And I will spend three Sundays looking at groups, that might be helpful there. Backcountry was teaching school. She looked forward to summer time for a lot of reasons, but one is the opportunity to do an art project for a project around the house. And one Summer, she had been accumulating things at her, grandparents had owned for my grandmother. She had, you know, so we can samples and Samplers and Eyeglasses and spooked all instruments and things like that for my grandfather. She had more large type, things grandpa had a size and the sickle hand, planer an axe, the keys to the farm, things like that. It's so big wall and she put all these things and decorated them and she been working on it for a while, and the boys were off work and John's like a sophomore in college. And John Dee's is a sophomore in high school. When I came home

Shonda took his arm, put his arm around, Johnny said just think Johnny, maybe one day, one of your kids will billable like this and put a weedeater up there and change the keys to the riding lawn mower and lamp out of it. So is Jesus really going off the track now?

The boys were making a good point. It's kind of easy to be nostalgic about the old way but we really came down to doing a job. You didn't want to use a little tools on the wall. You want to use the new and even look forward to those Advanced tools that are coming down the road. We did persuade her to put the side in the in the garage and it looks more nostalgic and less Sinister after that. One move.

Ever try to get rid of things in your life. Probably we will all have that experience of finding that thing that we haven't used in 20 years that we said this out only the next day. They have a need for it and it we always are frequently you're reinforcing and they get to Fashion about what we all the key for mobile. Y'all to throw away it looking at these 3:3 sex three statements in there that really reflect on this idea. This challenge of us keeping throwing what we're going to do rebuilding and things of that, sort of, that sword. So we'll start with the verse 3.

It says a time to tear down and a time to build. If you put down.

Pennsylvania to Quail Springs, Mall area. Some of you will remember that. There used to be two movie theaters, not at Quail Springs but close by one was over there where that p.f. Chang's, is there a Red Robin in that area. The other is back kind of the back part of the parking lot or over towards the bookstore and the one over by the bookstore. They never did tear it down. I just made it into something else. It's kind of an antique Consignment area and the other one though, they didn't do that, they just tore it down to the ground. And put a whole new area in there instead of trying to remodel or remake and it's kind of stands as a little bit of a testimony to the how, what a good choice that wasn't allowed on the dollars that were involved, but that area has just really gone Grazy. It done really well. The other area kind of just lingers in the past and sometimes there is such a true wisdom and being able to tear down and rebuild. And I guess somebody said, nope, it'll be better off. We'll be better off if we'll just take it down to the ground, spend the extra money. And do it again, but tearing down the stuff. Me. I'm sure they're people said that's perfectly good. Building, you know, how much this cost to do that and haul it away? Some owner was a business person said no that's going to be the right call it's really going to work here. I've been to before the Cherry loves that show, Love It or List It. And the animal with the two people on the show, one of them remodeled, the house for the other guy, is a real touring shows you all the new houses you can buy sit up straight in your old house. And yet the lady who does the redesigning wins The Love It, or List It competition. Most of the time probably at least two-thirds of the time in 34. Why is that? Well she often cites the fact it's emotional attachment, you know you're attached to the home when she remodels it makes it over it just like, okay. Yeah, this really feels good. That really feels comfortable and though and the realtor guy will say, what you can get two more

5 miles away from here.

And the reality is in there, shortly some positive there but we can get emotionally attached to things and maybe lose the inside it exactly why they are important or meaningful to us.

It gets hard to do tearing down. You go into the military. You're going to go typically to boot camp and one of the first things that you'll see is they shave people's head. Why did I do that? Well, a lot of theories about that. One of those theories is the psychologically breaking it down. You know, you don't look very good, you don't feel very good. It's, it's pretty much overwhelming kind of behavior. And so, then it's a process of rebuilding And in life, it works that way to we get torn down and then we have to rebuild put it back together. Now sometimes people ask how do you do the tear down? My suggestion is, don't worry about it, the world will tear you down. Just go out there near Philly. People that are willing to participate in the tearing down process demo day is a fine thing for the ball, somebody's personality, and then it's a question of rebuilding and then we build it back differently. We build it back. That's what we build it back with God's to rebuild it back with God's resources. So that we become more like what he wants us to be In 1st Thessalonians chapter 5 it says simply therefore encourage one another and build each other up. Just as in fact you were doing all sisters keep doing this when the world tears you down when the world tears the family down, when the world here is our spiritual body down. If we work together to build it back up and God give us that opportunity to do so and make it even better than it was.

Another of the phrases here. This time from verse 5, A time to scatter stones and a time to gather them. the next picture is of the

architectural ruins at Tulum and probably many of you have been there. It's a beautiful place and that the Mayans had a worship center, that was there. If you look at those dimples there pieces of those temples that are gone. Maybe a fresco, or maybe a sign, or maybe some kind of special image. And for a long time, they wondered what happened to those pieces, until the next picture perspective. Now, and you'll notice that there's an outer wall That's where those pieces are. That probably at some point in time there was some threat and so instead of going out there and find an all-new Limestone place and move it out there and maybe it'll slow down, the people who were coming to take advantage of us, gather them all up, to make something pretty out of them. And then there's a practical the baby. You need a little further down the line. Is a Solomon's time. So Stones were viewed differently. Obviously, in their time, than, in our time.

David gather some Stones before he went to fight Goliath and I and I don't know. I'm I'm assuming it was a smoothness and Symmetry and various kinds of things that were taken into account. We often make note of the fact that he got five Stones. Why did five? We don't know. We do know from a careful examination of the Old Testament that The Lions had for kinsman and may have been that, they would thought he was going to have to beat the whole family that day. You know, you just got to find rocks and so we'd have enough to go in that direction. So what happens in our world When We Gather stones? We probably got a building project or sometimes going on, maybe a landscaping project. You're going to move this or that or, or, you know, you put in the storm shelter or in the pool or various kinds of things. And we really don't view Stones. The same way that they would have used stones. You know, they were weapons to them, they would have used the stones to sabotage other. People of one of the very common principles of that time was to take farm and put stones there. So it will be hard to grow crops, they use stones to plug up Wells. They're all kinds of ways that they will weaponized the use of don't even down to throw them by hand or sing with a swing. In our time, we think we may be, we do things not quite on that kind of parallel, but we look at our lives and I think we see Stones there, we see maybe a habit on Obsession or a grudge or maybe a misconception or misunderstanding and we are holding on to that stone. It's time to pass away. It's time for apps to the scatter. It time to get it away from YouTube. Rake it up even and move forward from there. Gather these things we like to keep. And sometimes we don't even really want to keep them but we just wind up actually doing that.

EBay because Bella number times and every time you do I get a little plastic bag and put mementos and I always have this idea, put them in the shadow box or something like that. There are no shadow boxes at my house, but there are numerous plastic sacks with sand and and various kinds of things in the ones that are especially fun or the ones that keep and Kelsey, were there. Broken tile off the swimming pool Leonardo or something like that. That's in the bag. We remember those things in those are useful and beneficial to us. You've heard the stories of people who know, maybe you did well and were able to build a new farm house. And so they, they built this big nice Farmhouse, it and they kept the little house to to remind them where they came from. usually work, but sometimes it doesn't We can get too caught up or tube says, with what we're leaving behind. We look for the things that God puts in us to help us build a new and different, Welling 1st, Peter chapter 2, verses 4 and 5. As you come to him, the living Stone, I'll look at the Paradox of that. We don't think of stone just being living. But that's pinched or there'll be mentioned again rejected by humans. But chosen by God and precious to him talking about Jesus, they're quite obviously and then he talks about us. You also like living stones are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood offering. Spiritual sacrifice is acceptable to God through Jesus Christ, where the living stones that make up the house, the family, the world's God, the spiritual world and he wants to use it. And he wants to places, they want to shape us. He wants to mold as they must have. Put us into those places. Will we all fit together in this powerful yet? Organic Institution that keeps moving and doing an accomplished 8. Things God wants us to do.

The third one that I point out is from 6:6, simply a time to keep and a time to throw away.

I've been here at Britton Road about a year maybe two and somebody had the idea of us clean out the building to have all kinds of stuff down here on Saturday, and we'll take it all out of there and throw it all the way and create create all this dude's face. And some of you were here that day, we took all that stuff out all those and put it all back in there. When they made the trip to the dump, there was like one pickup load of trash that we had because everybody was attached to the stuff for vacation bible school. We can get rid of that. We might tell that story again, you know, it it was really hard to throw things away and we all have that quandary. Yeah. I'll break down and put things away. There's a one of the caregivers at our house that says you will need to move more often in our house right at 40 years. So there's been none of that cleaning and moving and then going away. And if you look there, just in Tire industry is built around this process. Containers and plans, and strategies, and information that, you know, it's just really easy to make three areas of others. Keep get rid of and throw away, Salem to throw away. It's real nice to make a plan. But it's different when you're actually throwing stuff away. Didn't have a big trash week, this week. So I have a whole cart. It's empty, trash day is tomorrow there. Yesterday, I roll that up on the back porch and thought I'm going to let up with all the stuff that we could get rid of. How much stuff is in there? Nothing.

Really hard to say okay their toes you had it for 20 years. You've had it for 30 years or something. Along that line is really a hard mon would just say okay why is this so hard?

Philippians chapter 3 verses 4 through 7. Paul says, but whatever, we're gains to me, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more? I consider everything loss because it's because it's just passing worth of knowing Christ. Jesus, my Lord, for whose sake, I have lost all things. Tim garbage that I may gain Christ. Paul literally roll the cart, at one's back, porch, and put everything in it. He ain't at the house. He have family connections, he said I'm going to be God's light to the Gentiles. Whatever he brings to me will be fine and what I don't have. I'll learn to live without any rights many passages that reinforce that kind of idea hard to do. Somehow those things that we inquired, if we acquire in life, they, they bring us security. They bring his positive feelings, they bring us connection and so, it's really hard sometimes to separate from those things. The first chapter of Philippians chapter 1. Call Sister them in verse 10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ is about discernment. Maybe moving past the emotional, maybe even moving past the physical baby moving, past the place where we see dollar signs because this might be worth something or things like that. And we said, okay there's things I don't need in my life anymore and use a parallel of your homework, the parallel of your possessions, but what really is being focused on the spiritual things. Ellie used to pass the the collection basket. We don't call it that much anymore, other things you need to put in the basket and not as a gift to God, but to get it out of your life. Just bring it to me, give it to me and I'll deal with it. I'll take care of it. If you'll just let go of it. And all three of these references, talk about casting down giving away tearing down Opening Our opportunity to rebuild because we've torn down some places are pretty solid. These are going to be active choices. You have to actively choose to get rid of this. You have to actively choose, not together, actively make that choice. In order to go in that direction. There was a territorial Christmas. Probably 20-25 years ago. And there were several people from church at Guthrie. In this couple of guys, we were just standing on the corner in there. Were people go Indiana to not mandatory for Christmas and for you to go in there who weren't even from Oklahoma, they were from like the the Northeast and they were just in a murder of this place and I just thought it looks so cool and this and that whatever. And there were three, guys sent three of us standing there. Amongst the lady said, you all were so wise to keep all of these old buildings and one of the guys standing there or he's not here, we could play well on television. He said the reason they're all here man is too lazy to tear him down.

and, Our Lives can be that same way. We just kind of get in the habit. Are we just going to get in the process? Are we going to go through motion? And we look around say,

Is it be better if it was something else? This would be better if it was gone and I use other resources to replace it and I think Don is Whispering to us over and over again. Do it. Do it. Do it. Go ahead and tear that damn, Let It Go. And put back. But I want you to have there. That's what God wants for us tear down, rebuild and allow him to be the architect of the rebuild. Would you bow with me, please?

The father, we know that we get attached to things on Mini bases, we pray for your strength when it is appropriate for us to move away. Father, we ask that you would bless us that you would help us if you would give us the the will win the motivation, the active strength to actually go ahead and make those choices. Father, we don't want to do this in a superficial or or casual way, but we do want to be within your will. We do want to be in the place where we remove things from our lives that are holding us back, a truly being the people that you would have us be father help us to examine ourselves. Have us to look at your word for comparison and help us to look to you for the resources and guidance that we need me for this to your precious son named Ian. This morning, we extend the invitation Jesus Christ. If you need to respond to him, we'd encourage you to do that right now, or we stand this thing together.