Sermon Tone Analysis

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Welcome & Introduction

HAPPY FATHER’S DAY

Thank you

Father to the Fatherless

Eccleasiastes Overview

Life apart from God is meaningless (under the sun, Hevel)

The ways we seek meaning and satisfaction (pleasure, work, etc)

Striving for Control

Week after week we’ve discovered that the world doesn’t always work the way we want.

When our world feels like chaos, we strive for control

Smart Homes - new irrigation device for Father’s Day

Social media or News apps so we know what is happening

To-Do lists and organization

We clean and de-clutter (Netflix’s Tidy Up with Marie Kondo )

We plan and research…

We exercise and diet and take supplements

Smart Homes

Sheming for Control

[7:14] “In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him.”

The world is complex but God is sovereign

“so that we won’t know...”

This complexity can feel like chaos and meaninglessness when we forget that God is in control and maintains purpose over his creation.

Last Week

Good name - Character more important than appearance

Death is a Teacher

Folly Distracts - flattery, deflection, pride, etc

God is Inevitable

I feel as if the Teacher sighs at the point...

[7:15a] “In My vain life I have seen everything”

Live is a vapor (short, confusing, difficult to grasp, meaningless, etc)

In the confusion of life, we try to find control

CONFUSING WISDOM

[7:15b] “There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evil doing”

Reality - sometimes the person who considers themselves ‘right’ die young and the people we think are ‘bad’ live a long, happy life.

And we don’t know why

We want a world that makes sense - good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people.

Karma “"the force created by a person's actions that is believed in Hinduism and Buddhism to determine what that person's next life will be like" or "the force created by a person's actions that some people believe causes good or bad things to happen to that person".

Story of young man selling magazines...

People get what they deserve

You reap what you sow

Good things happen to good people

What goes around, comes around...

Receive good energy when you send out good energy

Christians believe this as well

We just try to apply this same principle to God.

Good people receive good things from God and bad people don’t

When something bad happens to someone we consider to be bad we say, “they got what they deserved.”

When bad happens to someone we consider good then our world is shaken a bit...

How could God let this happen?

They deserved better?

Summarize story of Job - I once heard of a man who

Loved God

He loved God and went to church every week and was generous

God blessed him with a beautiful wife, numerous children, and a great job

Reality - sometimes the person who considers themselves ‘right’ die young and the people we think are ‘bad’ live a long, happy life.

Tragedy

Then life began to unravel

He received news that all his children had been killed while they we together

He received a pink slip when he came to work that week

When it seemed like things couldn’t get worse - the doctor called - his blood tests returned and the doctor had serious concerns.

Harmful Advise

Pastors came to visit him in his grief - probing his heart to discern areas of hidden sin that might bring such calamity on this man who appeared righteous but must have some hidden secret.

Poem

A hundred proverbs, all concerned

with why calamities befall

a man.

And one thread runs through them all:

The righteous have a prosperous lot,

but those who curse and sin do not.

The more your sin is large or small,

The more your comforts rise and fall.

And we don’t know why

I want to come back to this man’s story in a bit....

For now… Karma is not how the world works...

In God’s sovereignty - sometimes the righteous die and the wicked live

Yet, God remains perfectly good and holy

Wrong Cliches

Safest place is center of God’s will

Righteousness here is not talking about faith in Jesus.

It is talking about the attempt to control God and environment through one’s good actions.

Hence, “his righteousness.”