Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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If you could have one superpower, what would it be?
Sometimes kids imagine this.
But you can only choose one superpower.
Maybe you would want to fly, or have super strength, or teleport.
Perhaps it sounds like a silly question.
After all, this is a game for children who have vivid imaginations.
But generations of people throughout many cultures have stories of heroes with superhuman abilities.
Something about it resonates with people all over the world.
So, let’s play with the idea for just a few minutes today.
Pick one superhero power.
Now, the next question goes one step further.
Choose one thing you would do with your superpower.
Don’t choose something generic like, help other people.
Think of something specific; one particular activity that you would do using the superpower you choose.
Like this, I would use my laser vision to bake chocolate chip cookies.
Or I would use my power of invisibility to sneak into the teachers’ lounge and see what really goes on in there.
Alright, what’s the point here to all this wondering and imagination.
When you think about it, our thoughts of a superpower and what we might do with it all comes down to control.
If we could, in fact, possess some superhuman ability, we would use it to attempt gain control over some aspect of our lives or of our world over which we cannot control otherwise.
After all, that’s what power is; it is control.
In our moments of being and feeling the most helpless, what we feel is that there is some part of our lives or some part of our world which we cannot control.
This is sort of what the wisdom teacher in Ecclesiastes is getting at in the passage today.
he is not talking about superpowers or heroes.
But he is talking about the way in which he sees the world around him as a place in which we may all desire some sort of power over circumstances that are simply beyond our control.
Working with Wish Lists
list of times is description of the world, not prescription for the world
What is the wisdom teacher in Ecclesiastes talking about in this list of times that we read today?
A time to gather stones, a time to scatter them?
A time to search and a time to give up?
What is this about?
It is important that we first of all remember that Ecclesiastes is about observation.
It is a writing about a description of the world the way he sees it, not necessarily a prescription for what ought to be.
Those are two different things, description and prescription.
Describing an event is simply stating what we might observe—good, bad, right, or wrong.
Prescribing an event is scripting what we think ought to happen; what we should do.
Much of what is listed in Ecclesiastes is a description.
Paul & slavery | time to hate, kill, war?
It is good that we stop to note that.
Because so often we make a mistake in reading the Bible that anything and everything must necessarily be the mandatory will of God just because it shows up in writing in the Bible.
Of course, there are parts of the Bible that are mandatory prescriptions for the people of God.
Jesus summarizes the law to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength; and to also love others as ourselves.
Jesus is prescribing a principle of God’s law that is meant to universally apply to all of God’s people at all times and in all places.
But when the apostle Paul writes about how masters should treat their slaves, he is not prescribing the institution of slavery as being God’s will in all times and for all places.
Rather, he is describing an aspect of the world in which he lives, and applying a biblical principle into that description—that observation.
Maybe this all goes without saying.
Maybe it is already obvious that these items in Ecclesiastes 3 is not necessarily listing a mandate of God’s will.
After all, that would raise some questions.
What do you mean it is God’s prescribed will that there ought to be a time to hate?
That there ought to be a time for war?
That there ought to be a time to kill?
That simply doesn’t make any sense because it would contradict what God has said elsewhere in scripture.
But this list is not a prescription of God’s mandated will for all times and places.
It is much more simply a description of the kind of world that the teacher sees around him.
This is a world that includes both birth and death.
In this world we see examples of love and examples of hate.
There are those in this world who build up and there are those who tear down.
It is not the Bible’s way of telling us that we necessarily ought to do all these things.
It is more simply the Bible’s way of telling us that this is what all is included as part of this world—a world created good by a good God, and then broken by evil through the sinful natures we carry.
Times and events and circumstances will continually fall on either end of the spectrum—as good or bad—and there seems to be nothing the wisdom teacher can do about it to make our world any other way.
what parts of my world do I wish I could change?
if only statements
But we all wish we could.
We all have moments of wishing we could control certain aspects of the world around us.
If only I could make that winning play and be the star of the team.
If only I could stay healthy and not deal with chronic pain all the time.
If only I could have landed that big account at work and got the promotion.
If only I hadn’t said those mean words and ruined a friendship.
If only I had superpowers and could go back and control these parts of my world.
I bet we all have wish lists filled with ‘if only’ statements.
But as life keeps going on there are things that come along which are simply beyond our control.
That seems to be what the teacher is writing about here in Ecclesiastes.
Looking Back and Looking Ahead
worship is a reaction
Let’s loop this back to what our series has been about.
We have been talking the last few weeks about worship.
And we have been noting the ways in which worship is a series of habits that we go back and repeat over and over again.
Last time we began looking for places in our weekly schedule where those habits might find a place to exist.
Today we confront an obstacle that gets in the way as we take an inventory of our weekly activities of worship.
So often for us, worship is a reaction.
Our approach to worship is very often an approach that is a response; we are responding to God in worship.
Now, on the one hand, that is exactly right.
We always begin our worship service here on Sunday with a piece of scripture that is our call to worship.
God calls us into worship, and we respond.
So, while we might like to think that we are the ones who come before God and get this whole worship thing going, in reality it is God who sets it within our hearts to come before him in worship.
what happens when I don’t feel like worshipping?
But who has ever had a day when maybe you thought to yourself, I am not quite sure I feel like worshipping today?
I just don’t feel it right now.
What does a statement like that really say about us?
It says to God that I am only going to respond in worship if and when he provides the right conditions for that response of worship to occur.
And so, we examine all the ‘if only’ moments of our lives and take inventory of all the times in our world which we cannot control and do not always go the way we want.
And we base our response of worship on the outcome of those moments.
It can be pretty easy to get hung up on the parts of my world that I cannot control to go the way I want.
And it can be pretty easy to attach my response of worship to those parts of my world I want to control, but cannot.
do I look back to a golden era I want to get back again?
do I look ahead for a moment when life will be different?
Maybe we look back in our lives at some golden era in which we thought everything was perfect, and we just wish we could somehow get that back again.
Maybe we look ahead at a time we anticipate coming somewhere in the future, and think, God I will worship when I get to that moment.
After all, I cheer for my favorite team when they win; and when they don’t win I walk away and think to myself, tough loss; maybe next time.
do I tie worship to events that are beyond my control?
Maybe we don’t mean to do it, but so often we tie our acts of worship to events and times that really—when it comes right down to it—are completely out of our control.
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