Guard Against A Wasted Life
Sermon • Submitted
0 ratings
· 13 viewsNotes
Transcript
Sermon Tone Analysis
A
D
F
J
S
Emotion
A
C
T
Language
O
C
E
A
E
Social
Good Evening,
Tonight if you have your Bibles go ahead and turn to Ecclesiastes were gonna look at chapter 12 and the last four verse starting with verse 9.
Tonight were going to learn about what it means to guard against a wasted life. Were going to look at King Solomon and his words and learn that he wrote near the end of his life, and were just gonna soak up some of his wisdom.
I want us to really just dive down and see what God has to teach us from Ecclesiastes tonight.
Have you ever wanted to be or thought about being famous or rich?
Have you ever had those kinds of thoughts growing up, well if I only had this amount of money or if only I was famous, and maybe welath and fame is not what you desire but maybe its signifigance. You want your life to matter.
You look all over the place and you see people who have these things, they have fame, they have money, they have significance but yet what happens is that they come up and they fall short.
Now deep down we know fame and all of that stuff it doesn’t provide fufillment for us and its really not all that its cracked up to be. Its amazing to see how many times you see someone who has everything the world would say everything and yet they are miserable.
I wanna read you an email from someone that I knew growing up who has become very succesful in the stock market his name is Kevin Brown. I just wanna read you the body of the email.
He writes: “Kyle I make 20,000 dollars a month and I am not happy.”
Thats the subject of the email, and he goes on to say I currently generate over 21,000 dollars a month but heres the thing I am unfufilled I am not as happy as I thought I was going to be.
Isn’t that amazing over 20,000 dollars a month and hes unhappy and unfufilled? The famous quarterback Tom Brady he was 30 years old he had already won 3 super bowls, He was making 60 million dollars in that current contract and at that time in his life he was saying “theres gotta be something greater out there, theres gotta be more than this.”
Now he has won 3 more super bowls and he has all kinds of money, and maybe he feels better now who knows. We need to know in many ways an unfulfilled life a life without purpose is a wasted life. Yet many Christians we know and we realize that fulfillment is only found in a relationship with Jesus Christ.
But heres the deal, many Christians struggle with many problems and temptations as the world. They walk through life unhappy and unfulfilled they have that which gives us purpose and yet in their relationship with Christ they are unhappy and unfulfilled but heres what we have to realize many people inside the church are better at hiding this than people outside of the church.
I dare say that there are some of you in here tonight that might say Kyle I know I am a believer I know I have a relationship with Christ but I go throughout many of my days unhappy and unfulfiled.
Tonight were gonna look at Solomons life and I dont think there is anyone better to learn from about this idea of guarding against a wasted life.
Most of us are familiar with King Solomon, He was king davids son, from the relationship with Bathsheba and scripture tells us that Solomon was unusually blessed by God because of his desire for wisdom.
At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream at night. God said, “Ask. What should I give you?”
Your servant is among Your people You have chosen, a people too numerous to be numbered or counted.
So give Your servant an obedient heart to judge Your people and to discern between good and evil. For who is able to judge this great people of Yours?”
God asks Solomon tell me what you want anything, you could have, and Solomon says what I want is wisdom and discernment. Not riches, not fame, not power, and this answer pleased God so much that this is what God replies
I will therefore do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and understanding heart, so that there has never been anyone like you before and never will be again.
In addition, I will give you what you did not ask for: both riches and honor, so that no man in any kingdom will be your equal during your entire life. If you walk in My ways and keep My statutes and commands just as your father David did, I will give you a long life.”
1 Kings 3:13-1
The Bible goes on to explain that people came from all over the world to hear from the wisdom of Solomon and to learn from him. People would give him tons of gold just to be in his presence.
You see the blessing of God provided everything he needed but at the end of his life he turned away from the one true God and turned to the false gods of his wives.
We see this in
When Solomon was old, his wives seduced him to follow other gods. He was not completely devoted to Yahweh his God, as his father David had been. Solomon followed Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, and Milcom, the detestable idol of the Ammonites. Solomon did what was evil in the Lord’s sight, and unlike his father David, he did not completely follow Yahweh.
Now many scholars and I would agree that Solomon is the writer of Ecclesiastes it makes it pretty clear it says its king solom
The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
Ecclessiastes
This is King Solomon and throughout Ecclesiastes he is explaining and saying I have pursued everything, I have chased riches, I have chased pleasure, I have pursued prosperity, and even in the midst of all of that my pursuit showed itself to be vanity of vanities.
Everything he chased he came to the realization that it was pointless. Vanity is something that is pointless, empty and worthless.
What happened was that towards the end of his life he turned away from the Lord and turned to the gods of his wives, and in the midst of that we come to Ecclesiastes and if you read chapters 1-12 you see that this book is not a very uplifting book.
It’s not all that encouraging it can get somehwhat depressing at points. But this is Solomon looking back on his life and saying what have I done?
I think today in these last few verses of ecclesiastes were going to be able to find and learn how we can guard against a wasted life. Christian id your here tonight and you walk through days and you feel like Solomon and you feel like its vanity of vanities its all worthless what am I doing this for.
I think theres a word for us tonight.
Tonight were going to look at 4 actions that each of us must take if were going to guard against a wasted life.
Engage your Mind
Engage your Mind
In addition to the Teacher being a wise man, he constantly taught the people knowledge; he weighed, explored, and arranged many proverbs.
The Teacher sought to find delightful sayings and write words of truth accurately.
In engaging your mind we need to understand that as a Christian you are not asked to check your brain at the door, you no longer have to stop thinking as soon as you become a Christian.
No God He wants you to engage your mind and to think about Him and to work out your salvation through understanding what god has for you through his Word.
We see that there are 4 ways we can do this.
Teach others
In verse 9 it says the preacher he taught others. Now I understand that sometimes we think if were going to teach others we have to know everything, in order to teach others.
This is a neat way to engage your mind.
When i was in school do you know how I studied?
There would be these poor guys who would have been lazy and they would not have studied. so what I would do is I would take the notes from class and we would spend all day and I would go through and I would teach them the material.
(elaborate)
I engaged my mind to teach others, its the best way to learn yourself.
If you are discipling somebody your engaging your mind in order to teach them its the best way to learn yourself.
You see before you can teach someone how to share the gospel you have to know what first? To share the gospel. You have to engage your mind, before you teach someone how to pray or show somebody how to pray you have to know how to pray.
2. Think deeply
I love these words that he uses
“He pondered, He sought out and arranged many proverbs”
This idea of spiritual discipline of meditating on God’s word just stopping and soaking up the word and understanding God’s word.
He pondered He arranged and he sought out many proverbs
See what we know from this side, is that many of the proverbs that Solomon put down on paper became what?
Scripture.
the wisdom of Solomon through the Holy Spirit became the Bible and today it speaks to us. You see we have to move beyond the blogs and daily devotionals at some point and begin to think deeply about the word of God so that we can move forward and guard against a wasted life.
It may be a struggle but we must be willing to engage our minds.
I love what he says in verse 10 it tells us that we must
3. Seek Truth
The preacher sought to find delightful words to write words of truth correctly.
This is one of the reason I wrote out my sermons, I want to make sure when I speak truth that I have written the truth correctly, I sought it out studied and I am ready to pour that truth out because that is the power of God.
You can seek alot of things in this life but if it is not truth it will be no good to you. You see I know guys who I could ask them to give me the starting defensive end for the 1991 Dallas Cowboys and they could do that.
You know people like this right?
They know random facts and they could do that for many years. But we need to get to a place where we can do that with the word of God. To where those things that were pouring over and spending our time on and seeking those things were seeking are lasting.
4. Write the words of truth correctly
Journal
Now he follows this up he says we must do these things to engage our mind but he follows this up with what I call an encouragment and a warning.
The sayings of the wise are like goads, and those from masters of collections are like firmly embedded nails. The sayings are given by one Shepherd.
The words of wise men are like goads, if you know anything about farming or cattle prodding. what goads are are they are the way the farmer would get the animal to do what they wanted them to do.
what Solomon is saying here is he is saying these goads if we follow this truth it will push us it will move us to the way we should go, when we pursue God and truth of his words.
Many of us are settling for the world and the condition and the way that it is right now. We say theres nothing we can do, the evil is too great, the light is not bright enough, we have no hope.
What needs to happen to us is that we need to be jabbed out of complacency to be moved to action. Does that make sense?
So many times we look at the challenges we face and give up, what happens is that we are not focusing on truth, and were not allowing it to move us beyond our complacency and into action and I wanna to see that we must engage our minds to move us beyond where were at.
The hope that we have in Christ is that we have victory beyond the evil of this world, but ehres the thing we dont have to wait for Jesus to come back and set up His kingdom on this Earth for us to have victory.
We can have victory here on Earth, we have seen it when light wins over darkness. But that only happens when we get outside of ourselves and follow the wisdom of scripture.
Those who master these collections are like well driven nails.
Many of you who know carpentry know that when you hit a nail the right way and it goes in the right way it brings stability to that structure.
A small nail placed in the right place can do a whole lot of work.
Thats what Solomon is saying here, He is saying if you become masters of truth, these words they will become like well driven nails they will stabilize you. They will make you strong, then he says they are given by one shepherd the truth that will stabilize you comes from God.
You can read all the self help books you want, you can look at everything on facebook but if your not getting the truth from te shepherd you will be unstable.
We must seek to enagage our minds.
So what does that look like in your life?
Are you on autopilot?
How do we begin to engage our mind?
Get to work, choose to exercize your mind, choose a passage of scripture I want you to write those verses down, I want you to read them over and over again. Get a dictionary learn words, pray that scripture back to God think about it ponder it and see how it applies to your life.
Then teach it to somebody in your life.
Now this is where it gets awkward so wait a minute I am just supposed to goup to somebody and teach them what God has been teaching me?
Yes
I know it sounds funny but thats what were supposed to do.
He tells us we must engage our mind.
But he also tells us to
We must fear God
We must fear God
When all has been heard, the conclusion of the matter is: fear God and keep His commands, because this is for all humanity.
Ecclesiastes 12:13
The fear of the Lord is a theme you find throughout scripture
The fear of the Lord
is the beginning of knowledge;
fools despise wisdom and discipline.
I know that all God does will last forever; there is no adding to it or taking from it. God works so that people will be in awe of Him.
The fear of God is expressed through the reverence and awe that comes from His children.
We need to fear the Lord but what does look like?
Driving
Most of us in here drive and in order to legally drive a car you have to take a test study pass that test then you take that driving test. By doing this your supposed to learn the rules for the road.
I dont know about you, I know the laws of speeding and I try not to speed but all the time I find myself going a little faster than I should.
But most of the time I go the speed limit. However, when I see a cop car even if I am doing nothing wrong I find myself letting off the gas. I dont stomp the break because that dmits guilt I just let off the gas, now what that is is me recognizing the authority that has been given to that officer to make sure he can apply the law to my life.
We do that
This is an example that helps me see the fear and honor of the Lord, because I recognize and honor the authority the police officer has and that recognition leads to a response.
Its immediate
Now lets apply that to our relationship with God
When we recognize gods power and authority in our lives we respond in worship.
In love and honor and we revere Him with all of our being. Fear of the Lord will cause us to change our behavior, husbands before you look at something that is an offense to God and you turn from temptation because of the fear of God.
Ladies before you start to believe a lie that the Lord tells you that you are not valuable I want you to stop that God has created you in His image and for a purpose.
The fear of the Lord leads us to realize that we have value.
Before you tear someone down remember that Jesus loved them so much that He laid down His life for them on the cross.
You see fear of the Lord leads us to worship but it also leads us to change the way we act, we start running towards him and away from sin.
Keep Gods Commandments
Keep Gods Commandments
When all has been heard, the conclusion of the matter is: fear God and keep His commands, because this is for all humanity.
Ecclesiastes
It’s simple we get it keep the commandments.
Gods rules and commands have the ultimate authority, now when we look at Solomons life he didnt do to good at keepingthe commandments.
I mean thats just honest, He did alot of good things but He missed it in a lot of ways. I dont want you to think this is because He didnt know the Lord we know He did.
Deuteronomy 17:15-
you are to appoint over you the king the Lord your God chooses. Appoint a king from your brothers. You are not to set a foreigner over you, or one who is not of your people. However, he must not acquire many horses for himself or send the people back to Egypt to acquire many horses, for the Lord has told you, ‘You are never to go back that way again.’ He must not acquire many wives for himself so that his heart won’t go astray. He must not acquire very large amounts of silver and gold for himself. When he is seated on his royal throne, he is to write a copy of this instruction for himself on a scroll in the presence of the Levitical priests. It is to remain with him, and he is to read from it all the days of his life, so that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, to observe all the words of this instruction, and to do these statutes.
He wrote them down and read them day after day, He knew that if he kept Gods commandments it would lead to blessing
This book of instruction must not depart from your mouth; you are to recite it day and night so that you may carefully observe everything written in it. For then you will prosper and succeed in whatever you do.
This book of the law should be meditated on
Solomon failed here, Gods commands here are nit just for OT kings Jesus did not come to abolish the law He came to fulfill the law.
The one who has My commands and keeps them is the one who loves Me. And the one who loves Me will be loved by My Father. I also will love him and will reveal Myself to him.”
He who has my commands is the one who loves me.
Do you love the Lord tonight do you keep them?
And one of them, an expert in the law, asked a question to test Him: “Teacher, which command in the law is the greatest?”
He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.”
Love the Lord your God with everything.
Loving people
Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Matthew 28:19-
Go and tell
Love God, Love people, Go and tell!