Sermon Tone Analysis

“A Bad Stigmattitude”

 

Ignorance is Bliss

 

2 Chronicles 7,

 

1 Kings 4:1¶ Solomon made an alliance with Pharaoh king of Egypt and married his daughter.

He brought her to the City of David until he finished building his palace and the temple of the LORD, and the wall around Jerusalem.

2  The people, however, were still sacrificing at the high places, because a temple had not yet been built for the Name of the LORD.

3  Solomon showed his love for the LORD by walking according to the statutes of his father David, except that he offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places.

4  The king went to Gibeon to offer sacrifices, for that was the most important high place, and Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings on that altar.

5 ¶ At Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God said, "Ask for whatever you want me to give you."

6  Solomon answered, "You have shown great kindness to your servant, my father David, because he was faithful to you and righteous and upright in heart.

You have continued this great kindness to him and have given him a son to sit on his throne this very day.

7  "Now, O LORD my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David.

But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties.

8  Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number.

9  So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong.

For who is able to govern this great people of yours?"  10  The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this.

11  So God said to him, "Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice,  12  I will do what you have asked.

I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be.

13  Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for-- both riches and honour--so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings.

14  And if you walk in my ways and obey my statutes and commands as David your father did, I will give you a long life."

15  Then Solomon awoke--and he realised it had been a dream.

Ecclesiastes 1:1 ¶ The words of the Teacher, {Or leader of the assembly; also in verses 2 and 12} son of David, king of Jerusalem:  2  "Meaningless!

Meaningless!" says the Teacher.

"Utterly meaningless!

Everything is meaningless."

3  What does man gain from all his labour at which he toils under the sun?  4 ¶ Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains for ever.

5  The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.

6  The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course.

7  All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full.

To the place the streams come from, there they return again.

8  All things are wearisome, more than one can say.

The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.

9 ¶ What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

10  Is there anything of which one can say, "Look!

This is something new"?

It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.

11  There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow.

12 ¶ I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem.

13  I devoted myself to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven.

What a heavy burden God has laid on men!   14  I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

15  What is twisted cannot be straightened; what is lacking cannot be counted.

16  I thought to myself, "Look, I have grown and increased in wisdom more than anyone who has ruled over Jerusalem before me; I have experienced much of wisdom and knowledge."

17  Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind.

18  For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.

What you don’t know won’t hurt you . .

.

We live in the information age.

We can find out most anything that we want today.

He prayed a prayer for something that delighted the heart of God.

There are many prayers that we pray that are much more focused on things than on character and qualities.

He asked for God to give him something that really mattered.

It is amazing that the man thought to be and still spoken of as the wisest man the world had ever known was so much "down on life" and he knew life at it’s absolute best.

He wanted for nothing, he knew no equals

 

 

 

Solomon prayed for wisdom and somewhere along the line abdicated common sense.

The search for knowledge apart from God is folly and deception.

That is because He is the author of truth & the Creator of this world.

There may be nothing new – now there’s something that really bothers me – but there is the joy of discovering how the author of life designed life to be lived.

What sorts of knowledge bring grief to people?

The knowledge that someone is not as you have believed them to be.

Who you know is more important than what you know.

Character is not the path to advancement.

There are times when the things that we ask God for can become detrimental to us.

Perhaps when we fail to use them as we should???

These are the perspectives of a man who looks at the world through a particularly dark pair of glasses.

Once we know better in our lives, then we can never return to what we knew and be happy about it.

An informed mind and an unregenerate heart lead people to:

 

Ø      Cynicism

Ø      Pride

Ø      Immorality

Ø      Idolatry

Ø      Humanism

 

Solomon’s Prayer

Prayer for wisdom in James 1

“Except you become as a little child.”

Jas 3:13 ¶ Who is wise and understanding among you?

Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom.

14  But if you harbour bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth.

15  Such "wisdom" does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil.

16  For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.

17  But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.

Why am I concerned with preaching this sermon.

I feel that there are people at times who see life and even faith through some very dark glasses.

Our opinions about this or that in life are only confessions as to the state of our minds or our values.

We reveal our perceptions when we vocalize our thoughts.

They may or may not be accurate but they certainly tell others where our minds and hearts are at.

In this state of mind we tend to ask some bad questions

 

Things are never going to change.

I’m bored

 

There’s nothing new.

We’re gone and forgotten

 

 

 

The net effect of cynical pessimistic outlook is to render us powerless.

Ecclesiastes 1:15  What is twisted cannot be straightened; what is lacking cannot be counted.

One of the worst conclusions that a person can come to in life is that they cannot make a difference anymore and it is almost always the introduction of a cynical spirit.

It turns men into critical observers never looking for answers always highlighting the problems and the failures and the reasons that something shouldn’t or won’t work.