Ecclesiastes...Pastor Phil Strong

Part 10                                   

Texts: 5:1-7

● Amidst Solomon’s musings concerning the frustrations and futility of life “under-the-sun”, we are offered, what would be considered for many, a welcome interruption.

               Poet T.S. Eliot said, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality”; or, maybe in this case, “Too much life under-the-sun, not enough God breaking in”.

● The interruption? It’s a trip to the “house of God”--- God’s address among us. A place where we can be at home with God. Space (where?)… time (when?); it’s where we develop ‘history’ with God. Intentionality in an otherwise hectic and distracting world.

            Solomon would have known something of the Temple since he was commissioned to construct it (read about it in 1 Kings 5-8).

● The immediate context of Solomon’s interlude? Life: what he sees going on all around him. Life ‘under-the-sun’ is the context for love and worship; for making room for and calling attention to God.

 The presence of oppression (“…tears of the oppressed with no one to comfort them…” 4:1); distorted obsession with success (“… most people are motivated to success because they envy their neighbor.” 4:4); isolation and loneliness (“… a man who is all alone, yet who works to gain as much wealth as he can…” 4:8)

Life often leaves us feeling disoriented.

            “God is in heaven and you are here on earth…”

● Life leaves us feeling unsettled; no point of reference for perspective; nothing which looks familiar. You are supposed to feel disoriented in the absence of God.

● It says, YOU ARE HERE! There’s nothing better for us when we feel dazed and confused by life than to be able to locate ourselves in the process and reach out for help.          

● When I’m disoriented, I find that some good things happen:

            ~I become a better listener because my pre-conceived notions about life and God have left me feeling somewhat imbalanced (people are much more inclined to you when you look confused or lost).

            ~I discover that I can no longer trust myself or my own instincts (they are probably what got me here). I now have more questions than answers (“Where am I? How did I get here? How do I get to where I want to go?”)

Simply knowing where you are outside of its relationship to everything else is not enough; it does nothing to move you forward, in fact, it paralyzes you.

● But, the YOU ARE HERE (●) is useless without context. If all you have on the board in front of you is a “red dot” and no other means of placing yourself,

●… the universal symbol for man’s inability to find his way.

“God is in heaven…” is not meant to dismiss us or devalue us, but simply to re-orient us. If you don’t live with an eternal perspective, with a practical response to the “other” (God), life will simply be reduced to the sum of all of the senseless and random stuff that happens to you.

Worship is a response.

“responsive” (def.)- to react appropriately; function according to intent (e.g. “responding to treatment” means that it is realizing its intended result).

Psalm 19:1-6

The heavens tell of the glory of God. The skies display his marvelous craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make him known. They speak without a sound or a word; their voice is silent in the skies; yet their message has gone out to all the earth, and their words to all the world. The sun lives in the heavens where God placed it. It bursts forth like a radiant bridegroom after his wedding. It rejoices like a great athlete eager to run the race. The sun rises at one end of the heavens and follows its course to the other end. Nothing can hide from its heat.

Psalm 98:4-9

The whole earth has seen the salvation of our God. Shout to the LORD, all the earth; break out in praise and sing for joy! Make a joyful symphony before the LORD, the King! Let the sea and everything in it shout his praise! Let the earth and all living things join in. Let the rivers clap their hands in glee! Let the hills sing out their songs of joy before the LORD.

Isaiah 6 “…angels flying declaring, ‘Holy, holy, holy…”

● Although the story seems to indicate that all of creation has somehow been marred--- somehow experienced the disruptive effects of sin, we as humanity appear to be the only ones who are intentionally ‘resistant’ to our Creator. We seem to be the only ones who “don’t get it”; the only ones who remain, at times, “unresponsive”.

 “resistant” [immune; unresponsive] (a good way to describe humanity)- “the ability or power to be unaffected by something”. It’s not just about being hostile or aggressive, but about being indifferent.

● So, worship is not only a response, but the “right” (fitting) response. It is the right response, because it is the anticipated reaction to grace.

Worship is a response to glory.

Glory is meant to get our attention; to inspire within us the heart of a ‘seeker’; to promote curiosity.

Glory  includes the idea of standing before something bigger than yourself, something other than yourself without attempting to explain it… simply wondering; enjoying. Being present to it.

Glory gets our attention but it does not evoke worship. Worship requires a more personal revelation of God.

Even as weighty and as prevalent as it is, it is easily missed (e.g. the numbers of people who were with Jesus but didn’t recognize the glory).

Worship has always been centered in a grateful response to God’s goodness.

It was in worship that the Israelites were oriented (re-oriented) around the story of their God and his gracious interaction with them.

Although we celebrate sovereignty as God’s unique capacity to recover and restore even evil to accomplish his good intentions for his creation, there is much that we observe and experience that makes it difficult for us to reconcile God as “great” and God as “good”.

● For us to say that “God is good” is really more a declaration about his nature than an explanation of our experience. I have found that, most often, this particular declaration (“God is good”) is made in the context of little or no circumstantial support; there is no logical evidence to support such a claim.

And when we do make it, it is typically with a lump in our throats and a discernible crack in our voice. It is not impulsive and loud, but made with quiet confidence.

● In this context (God’s goodness), the worst possible heresy would be ‘forgetfulness’ (Deuteronomy 8:2, 11, 12-14).

● Forgetting within the context of a trip to the grocery is certainly irritating and somewhat inconvenient, but forgetting within the context of relationship is the ultimate expression of contempt: you don’t matter enough to be called to mind.

● I have suggested that nothing makes us feel more valued than when someone ‘takes notice’ of us; when someone, amidst a host of competing activity, directs their attention toward us. Conversely, there is nothing that makes us feel more dismissed, more devalued than we are ignored.

Worship prevents our lives from being dictated by our emotions.

“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good…” Psalm 136

“Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits…” Psalm 103

● The Bible never seems to offer feelings as a reasonable motivation for worship, but it does allow us to worship despite them.        

Could it be that our only appropriate response to the seeming frustration and futility is worship; being in the presence of something larger than ‘life under-the-sun’: something large enough to contribute a sense of perspective to our lives---something which causes us to realize our ‘smallness’/’finiteness’, yet remind us of our tremendous worth?

Worship is our reasonable response to God’s unreasonable love (Romans 12).