Invest In Life: Faithful Work
Ecclesiastes: God's Love In A Broken World • Sermon • Submitted
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Good morning
Thank you Chris for leading us this morning.
I’m sure many of you are curious about what the plan is now.
I’m glad you asked.
As we get started today, I want to share with you what the Lord has been speaking about worship here at TGP West.
Obviously, when Coby told me that God was calling him to Alpine, I really started asking God what His plan was for us.
It is important that we spend some of our time this morning talking through this because I want you guys to see a couple of things.
Firstly, the elders are seeking God, just like we ask you to do.
I want you to know this because I don’t ever want it to appear that this is the Will show.
In seeking Him, God pointed the elders to a particular person.
God even so far as to tell me that before Coby left, I would know who was going to step into this position.
God used the story of David appointing Solomon as the next king before his death.
In the middle of my panicking, God showed me that even before He told Coby to leave, He was preparing someone else to lead.
I still didn’t know who, but stayed before God about it.
Secondly, I want you to hear what God has said in response to our asking for His plan.
On September 30th, I emailed the other elders what God has spoken that morning and what I believed He was speaking not only about the person, but some of the vision that He had for our worship ministry.
These passages were in my quiet time that morning.
9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight,
10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ,
God highlighted this idea of growing “in knowledge and depth of insight”.
This person wouldn’t just lead us in worship, but that they would also help our team and future team members to grow in their understanding of worship.
2 Sing about the glory of his name; make his praise glorious.
Again this idea of growing, but specifically in the skills involved in leading worship.
"...and if you do not praise God, you are not bringing forth the fruit which he, as the Divine Husbandman, has a right to expect at your hands. Let not your harp then hang upon the willows, but take it down, and strive, with a grateful heart, to bring forth its loudest music." -1stfifteen.org
All of these passages are speaking to the growth process.
We understand the progressive nature that all of us as believers go through, but God is saying that this persons’ task is to help develop those that He calls into worship ministry.
The specific purpose of that ministry is for some of them to be sent out to lead worship in other churches.
Hopefully, our new church plants. lol
So, I send all this to the elders that morning, on the 30th.
Glen calls me and asks what I’m doing for lunch.
So we meet and discuss all that the Lord has been putting before me and I tell him that I think that Leah Hill is the person that He is pointing to.
Glen agreed and mentioned that Leah had talked to him a few weeks before about having more prayer time in our services.
Okay, so, now I’m pumped right.
The next morning this was in my daily readings.
“The greatest moments in a Christian’s life come through prayer. When Jesus prayed, heaven opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him. The Spirit came upon the disciples as they gathered to pray on the Day of Pentecost”
Then the author referenced Acts 1:14 and Act 2:1 and Acts 4:31
14 They all were continually united in prayer, along with the women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.
1 When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place.
31 When they had prayed, the place where they were assembled was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God boldly.
“When the disciples prayed together after Pentecost, their gathering place was shaken, and they were emboldened to proclaim the gospel throughout the city.”
God used the desire that He put in Leah for more prayer to confirm to me and the elders that she is the one that God is calling to lead this ministry.
Now, even though God has been really clear to me and the elders on this, we want you to also have an opportunity to hear from God.
As a side note...
I will also tell you that I met with David to let him know that he could be as involved as he wanted.
I did this because I know from experience of doing ministry with my spouse that sometimes there is an unspoken expectation for the spouse's participation.
When I met with both of them this week, both have gotten a word to participate in different capacities.
I’ll let them lay that out for you, but the simple way to put it is that Leah will be the face/voice of the ministry and David will be the musical/instrumental muscle.
They will begin in an interim capacity on November 8th and then we will have an opportunity for the church to affirm them.
I’ve asked both Leah and David to come this morning and share what the Lord has spoken to them.
Thanks for sharing that testimony this morning.
I hope that you see that God is setting us up for some incredible ministry.
He is preparing us to invest in life in some really significant ways.
We are going to bring God’s love into this broken world by seeking God and doing what he tells us to do.
I love that God had Glen bring it back to the most basic element of who we are as believers.
Just abide.
Everything else will fall in place as we do that.
Love God and love people.
Turn with me to Eccl 11:3-6 and let’s look at investing in life through faithful work.
3 If the clouds are full, they will pour out rain on the earth; whether a tree falls to the south or the north, the place where the tree falls, there it will lie.
4 One who watches the wind will not sow, and the one who looks at the clouds will not reap.
5 Just as you don’t know the path of the wind, or how bones develop in the womb of a pregnant woman, so also you don’t know the work of God who makes everything.
6 In the morning sow your seed, and at evening do not let your hand rest, because you don’t know which will succeed, whether one or the other, or if both of them will be equally good.
First of all, too soon God. lol
I brought verse three back in this week because it is going to help us understand the next three verses.
We know all about the rain and trees falling.
I was telling the Elder’s this week that it was time to start praying about the next series and Glen said not Ecclesiastes or anything like it.
We now understand the hevel nature of life.
We get it.
In verse three we are reminded that much of life happens to us and around us and we have little or no say in it at all.
I’ll give you a recent example.
We had a tree that has been leaning over the house for years and during Laura, unbeknownst to us, it began to uproot.
In the days before Delta, Bethany reminded me that we need to have it dealt with asap.
To make a long story short, we had a tree company come on Wednesday of last week and cut the tree down.
But… we still had a tree fall on our house.
We did all we knew to do, and still we had a tree fall literally on the same spot the other would have fallen.
It was from a different angle, but still the same spot.
Also, it was completely healthy, we had just gotten so much rain that it uprooted.
That hickory tree had to come down or we would have had two trees on our house after delta and it would have been a much bigger issue.
We can prepare to the best of our ability, but some times, 2020 just happens.
Invest in life by trusting God.
Invest in life by trusting God.
We can spend tomorrow worrying about all the things, and at the end of the day, it will still be 2020.
Two weeks ago we talked about investing in life by preparing our lives to serve others.
Living that way allows us to be freed up to help when the time comes for it.
When life turns upside down, we make that investment by looking for God’s activity in the middle of the crazy.
Just think about how much we have learned this year about God’s character because of Covid and all the complications that come from it.
Church looks very different from the way it did a year ago, and yet God is still speaking and we can still hear Him.
We aren’t necessarily comfortable, but God is using that too.
He is stretching us to think about what is most important.
We don’t think about those things when we are comfortable.
4 One who watches the wind will not sow, and the one who looks at the clouds will not reap.
5 Just as you don’t know the path of the wind, or how bones develop in the womb of a pregnant woman, so also you don’t know the work of God who makes everything.
Making preparations are good, but we can’t prepare for everything.
I can’t afford to cut down all the trees that are close enough to fall on my house and most of them are on my neighbors property anyway.
The author is pointing out that we can’t spend our lives worrying about every little thing that will happen.
If there is an obvious thing that you can do to prevent something bad, do that, but don’t prevent yourself from living life because you are worried.
The author is using the example of planting a crop.
The aren’t like a small garden that you can plant in a few hours.
They can take days or weeks to complete and if you spend the whole planting season looking at the sky, the crops will never be planted.
We need to trust God to take care of the things that are out of our control.
Listen, I understand that life is scary.
All the changes that are happening in our church right now might seem daunting to you, but God has proven that He knows what He is doing.
He proves it time and time again.
We can invest in our own lives and the lives of others by trusting God.
As we live with the confidence that God can take care of what we can’t, we are planting those Gospel seeds that we have talked about the last two weeks.
It is very noticeable when someone is trusting God instead of taking control themselves.
But, there is a fine line here that we need to be aware of.
As we talk about trusting God, we also don’t need to fall into the trap of not doing anything and calling that faith.
Look with me at verse six.
6 In the morning sow your seed, and at evening do not let your hand rest, because you don’t know which will succeed, whether one or the other, or if both of them will be equally good.
Invest in life by wisely using the time you are given.
Invest in life by wisely using the time you are given.
We are only given a brief time here on earth.
We have talked about this at length through this series.
We have also talked about work.
I want to remind you of Ecc 2:24.
24 There is nothing better for a person than to eat, drink, and enjoy his work. I have seen that even this is from God’s hand,
When we looked at chapter two we discussed that our work is not just a means to an end, but rather it is has been created, by God, for our good.
I remember a sermon by Matt Chandler from years ago when he called out men for going to bed with too much energy.
His point and the point that the author of Ecclesiastes is trying to make is that we were created for work.
Did you notice that the author didn’t say work hard and take the evening for yourself?
It is common for us to think to ourselves that we have worked hard and therefore we deserve some couch time.
That is not what God is instructing his people to do when He told them to take a day off.
8 Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy:
9 You are to labor six days and do all your work,
10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. You must not do any work—you, your son or daughter, your male or female servant, your livestock, or the resident alien who is within your city gates.
11 For the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything in them in six days; then he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and declared it holy.
God’s intent for the Sabbath wasn’t to just give us a day of downtime.
The purpose of that day was to remember God and all that He does for them.
We know this because of how Jesus used His sabbath.
1 At that time Jesus passed through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick and eat some heads of grain.
2 When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “See, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.”
3 He said to them, “Haven’t you read what David did when he and those who were with him were hungry:
4 how he entered the house of God, and they ate the bread of the Presence—which is not lawful for him or for those with him to eat, but only for the priests?
5 Or haven’t you read in the law that on Sabbath days the priests in the temple violate the Sabbath and are innocent?
6 I tell you that something greater than the temple is here.
7 If you had known what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the innocent.
8 For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”
9 Moving on from there, he entered their synagogue.
10 There he saw a man who had a shriveled hand, and in order to accuse him they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”
11 He replied to them, “Who among you, if he had a sheep that fell into a pit on the Sabbath, wouldn’t take hold of it and lift it out?
12 A person is worth far more than a sheep; so it is lawful to do what is good on the Sabbath.”
13 Then he told the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out, and it was restored, as good as the other.
Jesus used his “day off” to invest in the lives of others.
He is the Lord of the Sabbath, He is the rest that we desire.
We feel refreshed, not by resting, but by working with the Lord.
We invest in life by working hard, as the Lord leads.
I’ve told people this so many times before, but I look back at my early twenties when I had only one child, and I laugh at myself.
I thought I was so busy and tired back then. lol
We waste so much time convincing ourselves that we deserve a break.
After I thought I was done writing last night, is sat down and read a sermon by Charles Spurgeon last night that he preached in 1877.
I want to share some quotes from that sermon because I want you to see that the words I’ve shared with you today are not just of someone that loves to work.
He uses Matthew 21:28 as his text
28 “What do you think? A man had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘My son, go work in the vineyard today.’
The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, Vol. XXIII Work for Jesus (No. 1,338)
And now the text says, “Go work.” That is something practical, something real. Go work. He does not say, “My son, go and think and speculate, and make curious experiments, and fetch out some new doctrines and astonish all thy fellow creatures with whims and oddities of thine own.” “My son, go work.” And he does not here say, “My son, go and attend conferences one after another all the year round and live in a perpetual maze of hearing different opinions and going from one public meeting and one religious engagement to another, and so feed thyself on the fat things full of marrow.” All this is to be attended to in its proper proportion, but here it is “Go work: go work.” How many Christians there are that seem to read, “Go plan;” and they always figure in a way with some wonderful plan for the conversion of all the world, but they are never found labouring to convert a baby—never having a good word to say to the tiniest child in the Sunday-school. They are always scheming, and yet never effecting anything. But the text says, “My son, go work.”
It is at this moment when God is calling some of us to go to church plant and is calling some of us to stay, that the work is beginning for some.
For others, they have been working hard for the last five years.
The work isn’t done.
A new work is beginning and it is going to be incredible if we will obey.
Make no mistake, we will be tired at night, but look at what Spurgeon goes on to say.
The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, Vol. XXIII Work for Jesus (No. 1,338)
And by good work is meant something that will involve effort, toil, earnestness, self-denial, perhaps something that will want perseverance. In right earnest you will need to stick to it. You will have heartily to yield yourself up to it, and give up a good deal else that might hinder you in doing it. Oh, Christian men and women, you will not glorify God much unless you really put your strength into the ways of the Lord, and throw your body, soul, and spirit—your entire manhood and womanhood—into the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. To do this you need not leave your families, or your shops, or your secular engagements. You can serve God in these things. They will often be vantage grounds of opportunity for you, but you must throw yourself into it.
Being a follower of Christ is to live a life of action.
Jesus didn’t tell the disciples to recline with him for three years, He said to follow him. He called them to action.
All of them.
The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, Vol. XXIII Work for Jesus (No. 1,338)
And remember, once more, on this point, that the work to which the Lord calls us is very varied, therefore there is a great deal of change in it; and, besides that, it suits the different temperaments, constitutions, dispositions, and abilities of his people. He says, “My son, go work to-day in my vineyard.” But he does not give you to do my work, and he does not give me to do your work.
There is no room here for you to sit and wait for someone else to do what God has called you too.
The time is now for all of us to seek God on the roles that we are called to fulfill in the life of this body at West or at Kolin.
If we are working with the Lord, if we are living in obedience to what he is telling us to do, the work itself will be energizing.
Will you be tired and ready for bed every night?
Most definitely, but as you lay your head on the pillow, you will be able to reflect back on a day that well spent.
You will feel satisfaction and joy in knowing that even though it was a busy day, week, month, or year, it was time well spent because the work wasn’t pointless.
That work is lasting, eternal work because it was assigned by God.
Our lives will matter and others will come to know Christ because we worked our tails off for the glory of God as He willed and equipped us to do.
Let me wrap this chunk up of scripture for you and we will call it a morning.
We don’t know what life will bring. #2020
We can’t fix the problems we don’t know about, and we shouldn’t spend our day trying to figure all of them.
And so we must trust God.
Because we don’t know what the future holds or all the things that God will do, we work diligently at the task He has already revealed to us.
Early in the morning until late in the evening, we do the work that the Lord has called us too.
This is how we invest in our own lives and the lives of those we love.
We trust God and work like there is no tomorrow on what He has given us to do.
Let’s pray.
Announcements:
Core Team training for Kolin will begin on November 8th.
If you haven’t asked God if He is calling you to go, now is the time.
Trunk or Treat
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Morgan’s book is out for purchase on Amazon. It will be a perfect gift and Christmas is coming!
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