Religion without Jesus

Good morning everyone! Today we are picking up in our study of the book of Ecclesiastes at chapter 5. Now, chapter five contains a few topics but for our purposes this morning we aren’t going to cover each one. The first half of chapter 5 is what we are going to be focusing on this morning and we will be looking at how we prepare our hearts for worship and how we view religion in general. We aren’t going to go in depth on the second half of chapter five because Solomon includes some of the same material that he has already talked about. This doesn’t mean that these verses aren’t true and good, but we want to gain an understanding of all of the themes Solomon talks about. This is why we are focusing on the first half. In the second half Solomon once again hits on the point that riches are meaningless. Wealth hoarded in life does you no good because at the end of the day, you are going to die. So, instead of hoarding money and leaving it to someone, find a job that you like, enjoy your food and drink, and see it all as a blessing from God. (That is a very short summary) But this morning as we focus on the first 7 verses, we will see what fake religion is compared to following Jesus. Let’s read our passage and then pray together.

Ecclesiastes 5:1–7 NIV

1 Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, who do not know that they do wrong. 2 Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few. 3 A dream comes when there are many cares, and many words mark the speech of a fool. 4 When you make a vow to God, do not delay to fulfill it. He has no pleasure in fools; fulfill your vow. 5 It is better not to make a vow than to make one and not fulfill it. 6 Do not let your mouth lead you into sin. And do not protest to the temple messenger, “My vow was a mistake.” Why should God be angry at what you say and destroy the work of your hands? 7 Much dreaming and many words are meaningless. Therefore fear God.

Prayer

Engage

Have you ever had a conversation with someone where everything that was talked about was focused around that one person? Imagine having a conversation with me and all I talked about was myself. What had been happening in my life, what my problems were, anything I mentioned dealt specifically about me. If I paused long enough to let you talk, I expect you to talk about the specific things I have already mentioned and keep it focused on myself. Would that be a great conversation? Probably not right, but I think we have all been guilty of conversations like this and chances are we have all been on the receiving end of a conversation like this. We experience this in conversation to when instead of listening to what someone is saying to us we are thinking about the next thing that we want to talk about. So often in our conversations we have this “me” focus.

Tension

Not only do we have this mindset in our regular conversations, we even bring that same kind of “it’s all about me” attitude to our faith in God. There was a video a while back of a very prosperity gospel kind of preaching and in the video the person says, “When you come to church, when you worship Him, you’re not doing it for God really, you’re doing it for yourself.” On the surface I think we can recognize that is a bad thought, but in reality I think we all fall into that way of thinking at times. We might not say that out loud, but a lot of our faith can be centered around ourselves rather than God. Church itself has even fallen into this way of thinking before. We’ve gotten to this consumer modeled church where we want to offer good programs, music, entertaining preaching, all with the idea of “if someone comes to visit I hope they like it.” Now, I am not saying that it is bad to consider what a guest feels when they come into the church, that is a good thing to think about and consider. But what becomes a problem is if we are so focused on ourselves, if we like the service, that we forget about who we have gathered here to worship. One author says, “Some worship services are planned around the thoughts and concerns of the worshipper rather than the One being worshipped.”

One example I heard that shows what this “me” centered Christianity looks like is about a man who was around 40 and scheduled a meeting with his pastor. In the meeting the man explained to the pastor that he had been coming to church and participating so much over the last five years because he was single and wanted to be married. This man’s thinking went like this. I’m single and I want to be married, I’ll go to church, give my time and money to the church, and God will reward me with a wife.

This man did not actually want God. He wanted what he thought God could give to him. He treated God like you might treat a person growing up. You don’t actually like this person or want to be around them, but they have the new video game console that you want to play. So in order to play it, you have to be around that person. What happens is we use religion to try to get God to do what we want. This is the kind of religion that Solomon is talking about in verses 1-7.

Offerings

So far throughout Ecclesiastes, Solomon has looked at all kinds of different things to try to find meaning in life. But he has found that everything under the sun, apart from God, ultimately is meaningless. But in chapter 5, Solomon looks beyond “everything under the sun” and begins to wonder “what about religion?” Is there meaning in religion? And you might be surprised to find out that religion also can be empty. Why? Religion can be empty when we do not actually desire a relationship with God. Instead of being in awe of God, we treat him like this genie in a bottle. If we do certain routines and rituals, then surely God will reward us. So Solomon exposes three religious rituals that are meaningless when done apart from a relationship with God. The first one he mentions is offerings.

Ecclesiastes 5:1 NIV

1 Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, who do not know that they do wrong.

The verse starts with a command to guard your steps when you go to the house of God. During Solomon’s time, there were specific regulations and rules for drawing near to God in worship. There were certain places in the temple that people couldn’t go because of their sin. This whole process of approaching God showed how sin caused separation between God and people. Only the high priest could go into the most holy place in the temple, and even at that they could only go in there once a year and had to take blood as an offering. In this whole process, you had to be careful about how you approached God because death could occur.

But the problem that can happen, is that you turn the process of approaching God into a ritual. The prophets repeatedly corrected people who thought that ritual alone was valuable. People would develop this mindset that you don’t have to come before God with an attitude of repentance and faith, you just needed to walk though the steps and God would be pleased. But here, Solomon says that it is better to go near with a heart ready to listen than to go through the ritual sacrifices without thinking about them. This sacrifice of fools is what it looks like to show up to church on Sunday, drop a check in the offering plate, and think that God is pleased with you simply because you gave an offering. The sacrifice of fools is even to come to church and go through the service simply because that’s what we do. We all are guilty of this. We’ve all gone through religious things while our heart is not in it.

Not only that, but we think that if we follow certain rituals and traditions then God will bless us with what we want. Like the man from the story I shared earlier, we give our time and money to the church and expect God to do what we want. That is not what the Gospel is though. The gospel of Jesus isn’t, “Perform these 10 rituals and be rewarded.” The gospel is reconciliation to God through the death and resurrection of Christ.

And what makes this even more problematic, is that the fools Solomon is describing don’t even know that their mindset is wrong. The fool continues to view religion as rituals instead of relationship and makes the problem even worse. 1 Samuel 15:22 talks about this mindset of bringing offerings to God without actually obeying him.

1 Samuel 15:22 NIV

22 But Samuel replied: “Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.

The word that is used for obey here can be translated “listen.” And the idea is that listening to God and obeying what he says is better than brings half hearted offerings. This is what is key if you want to worship God. Listen and obey him. This doesn’t just happen in church on Sundays. This kind of worship takes place each day, it takes place in our homes, at work, the way we live our life.

So the question we have to ask ourselves is, “what keeps us from listening to God?” We all have different things in our lives that distract us from taking the time to listen to God. We have impatient hearts that don’t want to be still before God, we would rather be entertained, we would rather try to build up wealth, we could create a huge list of reasons why we don’t listen to God. But the thing is, each of us has a different one. Each of us have to examine our hearts and ask ourselves “what is keeping me from listening to God?”

So instead of giving God these ritual offerings, take time to listen to him and obey him.

Prayers

The second ritual that we can fall into is built around our prayers.

Ecclesiastes 5:2–3 NIV

2 Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few. 3 A dream comes when there are many cares, and many words mark the speech of a fool.

Solomon warns us to not be quick with our words with God in prayer, to limit our words when we talk to God. Does this mean Solomon is saying that prayer is bad or you shouldn’t talk in prayer to God? No, because remember he’s viewing this as rituals that we do. What Solomon is pointing out is similar to what we just talked about. The first problem we have is listening to God. We like to be the subject of conversation all of the time in our prayer. We’re like that person you are having a conversation with that just will not stop talking about themselves. So first, it is important that we stop talking at times, and actually listen to what God is saying.

The second part of this though, is that we use our prayers to try to manipulate God. One of the best illustrations of this was in 2016 when the Cubs were in the World series. (I know, talking about the cubs again) But so many people were likely praying, “God just let them win, please, if they win I will start going to church again.” And you might remember a viral facebook post that went around after the game, I’ve got a picture of it here.

Fun fact, the guy who created that post is Robert Reynolds. He is the leader of the band that plays at church camp for us every year.

But it illustrates the point here. We try to use prayer to manipulate God to get what we want. And so often when we do this we are praying constantly with this mindset of, “well if I talk for a long time and use good words, God has to do what I ask.” Jesus himself warns about this type of prayer in Matthew 6 though.

Matthew 6:7–8 NIV

7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Solomon then is pointing out that God will not be manipulated by how long or eloquent your prayers are. God already knows what is on your heart, he already knows what you need before you even ask him. So instead of babbling like pagans, we can approach God with a simple and sincere prayer. We can approach God just as the tax collector does in Luke 18.

Luke 18:13–14 NIV

13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ 14 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

We don’t have to try to convince God that we are struggling with problems and issues in life. He already knows. So don’t try to use prayer to manipulate God into fixing your situation. Instead, go before him with a heart ready to listen and express to him what is going on.

Vows

The third thing we try to do in empty religion is to make vows to God to once again try to get him to do what we want. This also fits the the example of praying that if God let the cubs win you would start going to church. But Solomon tells us that vows can lead us into difficult situations.

Ecclesiastes 5:4–6 NIV

4 When you make a vow to God, do not delay to fulfill it. He has no pleasure in fools; fulfill your vow. 5 It is better not to make a vow than to make one and not fulfill it. 6 Do not let your mouth lead you into sin. And do not protest to the temple messenger, “My vow was a mistake.” Why should God be angry at what you say and destroy the work of your hands?

Now, vows were used a lot in the Old Testament. There were times when Israel would make vows to God and say, “If you do this, then we will do that.” One example comes from Numbers 21 which says,

Numbers 21:2–3 NIV

2 Then Israel made this vow to the Lord: “If you will deliver these people into our hands, we will totally destroy their cities.” 3 The Lord listened to Israel’s plea and gave the Canaanites over to them. They completely destroyed them and their towns; so the place was named Hormah.

The problem that often comes with these types of vows, is that they go unfulfilled. You make a vow to God, a promise to him that you are going to tithe so much, give so much of your time, whatever it may be, if he fixes the problem you are in. So we make these vows and promise God certain things but truthfully, there is a greater chance that we are not going to actually follow through with it. We make excuses by saying we didn’t actually mean to make the vow, things have changed and we want to take it back. In this case, Solomon says that it would be better if we had not made it.

Throughout these verses we see that religion that tries to manipulate God is meaningless. Christianity is not about bargaining with God to get what you want in life. Our desire should not be that our desires are fulfilled, but that God’s will is fulfilled. And spoiler, God’s will defeats our desires every single time.

Approaching God through Christ

Finally, in verse 7 we are told what we are meant to do.

Ecclesiastes 5:7 NIV

7 Much dreaming and many words are meaningless. Therefore fear God.

The idea of fearing God can be hard to understand. Fearing God means to recognize who he is, that he is the creator, the redeemer, the one who literally breathed life into us, and so we humbly submit and stand in awe of him. It doesn’t mean that we are afraid of God, it means we recognize his authority over our life and show him the respect and awe that he deserves as a result of it.

The only way that we can appropriately approach God then is through Jesus. You see, we don’t have all of these rules and regulations that we have to follow in order to go before God like they used to in the temple. Through Jesus we are made right with God and can approach him with confidence. Our call to worship told us that we have boldness to enter the sanctuary through the blood of Jesus. Jesus is the perfect priest who opens a way for us to approach God with a true heart and with confidence. We don’t have to use these gimmicks or rituals to try to go before God. We don’t have to use empty religion to gain God’s favor. We are able to go before God and experience his favor because of our faith in Jesus. Jesus is the one who has done all of the work, Jesus is the one who has taken your punishment and bought your salvation. Stop trying these empty religious rituals to manipulate God, instead trust in Jesus and depend upon your relationship with him for everything you need.