Ecclesiastes: Part 4...Pastor Phil Strong

2-20-11

Text: Ecclesiastes 3:1-15

● Solomon immediately offers us the context of his musings; the context of our lives:

            “What is wrong cannot be made right. What is missing cannot be recovered” (1:15).

            Something’s wrong; something’s missing. We all sense it. We all experience it. There is no shortage of opinion on how to restore order.

● Ecclesiastes 3 is possibly one of the most recognizable passages of scripture, whatever your level of familiarity.

Writings like Ecclesiastes keep us in touch with our heart… who we really are. It forces us to feel; to wrestle with the absurdities of life and all of our attempts to satisfy this enormous appetite with what Isaiah called “cotton-candy” (Isaiah 55 from the Message).

            We have learned to minimize the impact of our brokenness to the point where we are ‘numb’… no longer able to feel the pain. But, in the process, we also become incapable of deriving pleasure from many of the things which God has offered for our enjoyment.

● One thing that the story of God makes abundantly clear is that the heart “matters”. The word ‘heart’ is used over (900) times in the Bible and, repeatedly, there is depicted a direct link between our heart and the life that it produces.

            The heart is portrayed as what “governs” or “orients” our lives: it’s what gives order to our lives, even if it is dis-order.

● When you fail to make the anticipated connection (between your heart and the life that you actually live), you are destined to a cycle of foolishness because there is nothing to explain the disorder and nothing but your own impulses to attempt to correct it.

            Essentially, you forfeit the ability to experience real (eternal) life.

The heart is the part of us that has always suspected that there’s something more; that life is bigger than this. We call it “transcendence”.

We are so wired for something else or someone else “outside of us” to tell us who we are and to tell us that we matter… “eternity in our hearts”, as Solomon so eloquently put it.

I said previously that the heart is created “sacred-space”; for single-occupancy.

But, our hearts are always being “spammed”.

            “spam”- a kind of tinned luncheon meat, made largely from pork, or, [for our purposes] unsolicited messages, often of a commercial (commerce- attempting to sell us something) nature.

            Either way, they all have these in common:

1.    They are typically ‘unsolicited’.

2.    We’re not really sure what it is.

3.    Both can mess with your internal processes!

Life “under-the-sun” has a deadening effect upon our hearts.

Life “under-the-sun” (reduced to our senses and our experiences; no one responsible for and no one to be accountable to for life under the sun; no story, only random and subjective experiences; no revelation; no God speaking and interacting) contributes nothing to this “ache” except massive helpings of distraction.

We are typically quite deceived about what orients/governs/rules our hearts.

                We have developed elaborate systems to convince ourselves and soothe our aching heart.

We all lie to ourselves at some point, don’t we?

            We lie about our health (we walk from the living room to the bedroom and realize we are ‘winded’, but not ready to admit that we are over-weight or out of shape); we lie about our jobs (the inordinate amount of time we spend away from home, convincing ourselves that if we don’t do it, it won’t get done); we lie about our relationships (“If it weren’t for her/his ______, we would be fine.”)

            I am convinced that this phenomenon is the number one reason for “pulled hamstrings” amongst men (40) years of age and older!

In fact, sometimes we remember things that did not actually happen to us. We tell stories and insert ourselves into scenarios in which we did not originally participate.

Part of the beauty of the human heart is found in its vulnerability.

                The heart is so willing, so ready to believe, even beyond the boundaries of pure logic. Perhaps that is why it is so easily deceived. Perhaps it’s why it’s so ready to attach itself to something or someone.

● Even a cursory inspection of the word “heart” in the Scriptures demonstrates early and often the myriad of conditions or responses associated with it.

            “filled with pain”, “evil” (disorderly), “drawn”, “set”, “glad”, “hardened”, “unyielding”, “prompted”, “moved him”, “lose”, “obstinate”, “courageous”, “grudging”, “searching”, “rejoicing”…

If you are looking for someone to blame, look no further than God himself.

It seems that while he was “knitting us together in our mother’s wombs” (Psalm 139), in his own thought-filled and complex way, he knit something of himself into us; subliminal messages from God that are embedded in our hearts which are easily missed because they are so subtle, yet so persistent.

Real life, eternal life, is sacrificial.

            There’s something incredibly appealing and attractive about a sacrificial life. It requires something of us; it demands difficult choices; it offers clarity in a world that is so ambiguous and disorderly.

Matthew 13- sold all to buy the field; sold the other pearls to get the one of greatest price.

The pearl is yours, if you are willing to pay the price. It requires a ‘counting’; an evaluation. It means saying ‘yes’ to something/someone means saying ‘no’ to many others…even all of your other pearls!

Sacrifice typically has a negative connotation; we usually speak of sacrifice in terms of all that we lose/forfeit in the process.

But, sacrifice is best understood by all that is gained when we find something that’s worth all… that’s worth any price. It’s why the phrase, “half-hearted” is so repulsive. It speaks of passionless motion.

Maybe that’s a good way to gauge our present relationship with God, huh? It if feels more like pressure to perform than life-giving interaction, maybe it’s not love that is compelling the relationship.

Because it is love, not duty or obligation, that establishes the parameters of the relationship.

            Love compels me to live within the boundaries of the covenant because it’s only as I do that I will have the fullest experience of committed love (e.g. “keep yourself to him/her”, “forsaking all others”, “until you are parted by death”, “in sickness and in health”, etc.)

            Love hears those challenges as an invitation to the full life; the pathway to oneness, not as restrictive or suffocating.

“You didn’t choose me, I chose you…” (John 15:16)

It was the idea of chosenness that was meant to make us feel secure; to keep us from having to try so hard; to allow us to rest.

● The Bible offers (3) predominant images which characterize our relationship with God:

1.    Sheep and a Shepherd

2.    Father and child

3.    Husband and wife

In order to find life, in order to find the love that our hearts long for, we must…

            … hear another voice. We hear it like music in the distance which captures our attention and evokes a search… “Where is that coming from?”

“I am the Good Shepherd… I know my sheep and I call them by name… my sheep know my voice… they will not follow another… I willingly lay down my life for my sheep…” (John 10)

We were meant to feel disoriented in the absence of God.

            …come to our senses.

Luke 15: I said in the past that when people are lost and not ready to admit it, there is little you can do to alter their direction.

            We are always either walking down the driveway with our back toward God, or walking toward the porch, longing to come home… longing to be received as the wayward child. But, apparently, the only one more stubborn than us is God!

            … forsake all others and cling to Jesus.

Hosea’s name is a variant of “Joshua” or “Jesus”… “God is salvation” or, “Help, God!”

● Hosea comes home from work, calls for Gomer, then the kids…no answer. Suddenly, this sick feeling, this chaos interrupts his peace when he recalls the words of God and knows where he might find her. He finds her in the arms of another man and wonders what he could have done differently to prevent such a tragedy.

            He returns home to begin packing and to try and find a way to inform the kids, but he senses God saying… “Don’t give up now; fight for her. She’s yours. Go get her back!”

            God is portrayed through Hosea as the wounded lover, but one is intent on winning back her affections.

God will never be content to share you with anyone or anything else, because he knows that nothing else will fulfill you… will never allow you to experience the life that he created you for.

Your heart longs for God… you just may not know it yet!

            Doesn’t it make sense that if you are the “workmanship” (artwork: Ephesians 2:10) of a loving, Creator-God, and that you were designed in such a way that your ultimate sense of identity and worth were to be discovered in a relationship with him, that he would go to great lengths to ensure that our hearts would settle for nothing less?

(2) of the wisest people on record, Solomon and ultimately,

Jesus, have both advised us that the life we were looking for was “within us”, but it seems to be the last place we have looked.

            Luke 17:21 “You won’t be able to say, ‘Here it is!’, or, ‘It’s over there!’ For the Kingdom of God is already among you” (in you, or, within your grasp)