The Vanity of Piety

Introduction

General: Excerpt from The Unsaved Christian by Dean Inserra

Personal: Why do so many people find so little meaning in their Christian faith? How can can people spend years practicing their faith, and experience so little impact on their lives? Is your faith meaningful? What does it mean to be a Christian? What difference does it make?

Biblical: The vanity of an empty faith is the topic Solomon addresses in Ecclesiastes 5:1-7.

Body: How to find meaning in your faith

If you want a meaningful faith, be quiet (Eccles 5:1-3).

Exposition

Solomon is describing people who make a big show of faith to impress God… and it’s vanity—the sacrifice of fools.

Meaningful faith is not about me, what I think, how it makes me feel, or what I have to say. It’s about God—who God is, what God’s done, God’s Word, God’s Son, God’s Spirit, God’s voice, God’s speaking to us. We need to hear God speak more than God needs to hear us speak.

To be quiet means to be humble when you come before God. Remember who God is, and remember who you are.

God is in heaven, I’m not… all-knowing / all-powerful / all-wise / eternal / all-loving / grace is unending / mercies are new every morning / light, no darkness at all…

Before Jesus, I was dead in my sin / following the pattern of the world / controlled by the desires of the flesh / a liar / a gossip / a fool / an enemy of God / alienated from his people / without hope and without God in the world.

Thank God for his grace! —Eph 2:13-19 (selections)

Illustration: Eccles 5:1-2

Ecclesiastes 5:1–2 NLT

1 As you enter the house of God, keep your ears open and your mouth shut. It is evil to make mindless offerings to God. 2 Don’t make rash promises, and don’t be hasty in bringing matters before God. After all, God is in heaven, and you are here on earth. So let your words be few.

Application: How can we hear God speak?

God speaks through: reading the Bible, hearing a sermon, reading a devotional, doing a Bible study, through music, during a worship service, in prayer, through conversations with others…

No magic formula, we just need to listen… One big obstacle: We have no quiet in our lives.

“Silence gives us too much time to think, and thinking raises too many awkward questions we do not wish to address about the nature of reality and our personal identity and destiny. We live in a culture that therefore feels a deep need to push reality as far away as possible and uses noise to this end.” —Dr. Iain Provan

If you want a meaningful faith, be honest (Eccles 5:4-7).

Exposition

Solomon is describing someone who makes a big show of faith but has no followthrough. / Good intentions but no backbone / religious overachiever (vv. 1-3) vs religious underachiever (vv. 4-7) / Instagram Christian… but no real substance to their faith. / “I’ll pray for you…”

Shallow, cultural Christianity is meaningless. To have meaning, we must be honest…

With God — Don’t make promises to God you don’t intend to keep. Don’t play the church game.

With ourselves — Am I just as much a Christian when there is no one else to see? Is my faith in Jesus a performance (a show) or is it who I am?

With others — James 5:16; Prov 28:13… Confessing sin to one another takes your faith to a whole new level.

Illustration: Generous for show or for real?

If you want a meaningful faith, be with Jesus.

Explanation

Solomon couldn’t proclaim Christ because he wrote Ecclesiastes about 930 years before Jesus was born. But the seeds of the gospel are here.

Speaking to the religious overachiever and the religious underachiever, God is not impressed by your performance or your intentions. It doesn’t matter how hard you try or how well you mean or what others think about your faith.

Application: Do not leave this room without deciding where you stand with Jesus.

Conclusion: Col 1:15-23… Prayer