Ecclesiastes...Pastor Phil Strong
Part 15
5-29-11
Texts: Isaiah 35
►Spring is typically associated with hope.
On the heels of what feels like a prolonged and lifeless season, we are
desperate for any signs of life.
►Spring is the ‘vital’ season.
It’s the time when you deliberately determine what it is you want to
reap: “Here’s what I want my life
to produce; here’s who I want to become”.
[Zechariah 4: “…don’t despise (devalue/underestimate) the day of small
things…”]
● Here’s where, surprisingly, we are often caught off-guard:
we often think that because the
consequences of our decisions are not immediate that they are not
inevitable.
Luke 6:43-45
"You don't get wormy apples off a healthy tree, nor good apples off a
diseased tree. The health of the apple tells the health of the tree. You
must begin with your own life-giving lives. It's who you are, not what
you say and do, that counts. Your true being brims over into true words
and deeds.”
When we fail to make the connection between our heart, our choices, and
the outcome of our lives, we essentially forfeit the ability to live
well and destine ourselves to a cycle of foolishness.
Don’t be deceived into thinking that you will reap anything other than
what you have planted (Galatians 6:9); that the formation of your
character will ultimately result in anything other than what you have
consistently and intentionally attached your heart to.
● This is really not just a threat, but a ‘hopeful principle’, because
it says that life is not merely about some ‘irresistible fate’--- that
we’re all not just hapless victims of our circumstances or that we are
simply destined to led around by our own instincts;
but, that we are given a great deal of responsibility for the way that
our lives develop.
Spring is a turbulent season. You get the feeling that the new life you
are anticipating will not arrive without some disturbance.
Listen to the welcomed contrasts that Isaiah offers…
“wilderness/desert”…. “gushing water” and “streams”
“desert/parched
land”… “rejoicing” and “blossoming”
“burning sand”…
“pools”
“thirsty ground”…
“bubbling springs”
“dwelling places of
jackals”… “papyrus and reeds”
Spring is a season of new life which is portrayed as bursting out of the
most unfavorable of conditions. It’s growth: it’s life against
all odds!
In spring, life starts pushing up out of the least likely places (e.g.
grass through the asphalt or a tree growing from a rock).
Sometimes you find yourself in a season of grace where almost anything
will grow (e.g. I’ve never been able to get _____ to grow there).
“… your God will come…”
(v.4)
This grace, this sudden
God-movement, almost feels that way, doesn’t it? It keeps God
out of the comfy-confines of our own theology and allows him to maintain
the element of surprise.
What Isaiah is so creatively attempting to express is that this season
of new life is inexplicably the work of God.
A divine sense of encouragement seems to accompany this transformation: from fearful hesitation (life will always be this way; of being exposed and putting love at risk and losing your place) which has crippled them and weakened their resolve to the hopeful promise of strength and salvation.
A fitting response to spring? “Walking into the light”.
“Light”
is typically equated with being exposed to God; exposed to truth.
“Truth” can be described as,
‘the way things really are; the
ways things were meant to be’.
Whenever truth exerts itself, it exposes all that’s false (unreal) about
ourselves and our ideas of God. When that happens, we experience this
inner-turmoil that must either be
eliminated by walking
openly and honestly into the light of God’s truth, or
silenced through pursuits
which simply drown out the God-noise.
“This is the verdict
(lit. ‘true saying’): God’s light
came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light,
for their actions were evil. All who do evil hate the light and refuse
to go near it for fear of being exposed…” (John 3:19-20)
We hide.
“Is there any more innate reaction to life than ‘hiding’? Who taught us
to do that?”
Genesis (our beginnings story) says that the issue was that
“our eyes were opened”… we
became more self-aware than God-aware. As a result, we felt disoriented
and disconnected. Now
instead of being more aware of and celebrating others as fellow
‘image-bearers’, sin caused us to become more of each other’s
brokenness.
So we
‘perform’ and we
‘avoid risks’ for fear of
failure. When we experience the inevitable failure, we either take it
out on others through blame
or ourselves through guilt/shame.
Shame
forces us
“into the bushes”,
so to speak, in order
to conceal who we really are. We isolate ourselves and involve ourselves
in all sorts
of self-destructive behaviors because we have convinced ourselves
that
‘it’s just who we are’
and
“I dare you to love me!”
If light is available to you, then remaining in the dark is its own form
of judgment; it has its own consequences.
Every time we are exposed to truth, yet fail to respond, something about
our heart is hardened.
God can deal with foolishness and even stupidity, but he has very little
recourse for
“prideful defiance”.
Spring often requires another deliberate and fitting response---
breaking up the hardened ground… ‘plowing’.
“Plant the good seeds of
righteousness, and you will harvest a crop of love. Plow up the hard
ground of your hearts, for now is the time to seek the Lord that he may
come and shower righteousness on you” (Hosea 10:12-13).
● The fact is, any attempts at sowing, prior to this activity, will
prove futile. Even good seed
cannot penetrate unreceptive soil (unprepared heart).
Plowing necessitates a resolve which can easily diminish in the
excitement of spring.
“Put your hand to the plow…Luke 9:62”
● It suggests a commitment to follow through with the necessary
heart-activity of spring.
“Looking back” is not a
suitable (fitting) response. That season is gone, so is your capacity to
alter it.
What you do have is the present season… the current opportunity to
determine what kind of life, what kind of future, you want to realize
[even if you look back and are pleased with the straight furrow, it will
affect the one you currently plowing].
Only love can call you out of the bushes.
We usually ‘stumble’ into the light, but every time we choose to honor
these inclinations, these God-promptings toward living truthfully, we
find not only the confirmation of truth, but an inspiration, an
empowerment to continue to respond to grace;
and, each time that we
ignore/suppress them, in those moments we continue to nurture an
alternate reality… a lie. We draw the blinds on truth.
● We have all experienced struggles to break free of certain
self-destructive attachments, and, having failed repeatedly, then to
realize some significant level of freedom---
Why? What worked this time? Was
it me? Was it God?
Philippians 2:13
For God is working in you, giving
you the desire to obey him and the power to do what pleases him.
Grace, at work in us, is somehow always able to produce what truth
requires.
~ Grace is the guarantee that God is always at work to restore what all
of creation is groaning to be (Romans 8).
God will not be satisfied until you are whole!
~ The Holy Spirit is the “collateral” (Ephesians 1:13-14) ensuring that
he will not abandon the process.
The Spirit is God’s comfort to us that we’ll never have to go it alone!
The Spirit is not only our guarantee of the life we hope for, but the
sure sign that we will never experience it fully prior to resurrection
and the establishment of God’s new world.
~ Repentance signals our readiness to cooperate.
Our response…
Sometimes, spring reveals seeds that you planted years ago and almost
forgot about, but which are now demonstrating viability
(e.g. prayers you prayed, promises you felt you received which had been
supposedly lying dormant).
Spring is also a time for recognizing what issues have been
‘perennial’--- just keep
popping up with some regularity.
They are able to survive; they remain even if they are lying dormant. If
they are not recognized and somehow uprooted, they will keep coming
back.