Approaching God Wisely

Approaching God

Turn with me to Ecclesiastes 5. If you're visiting us this morning, we are working our way through this really unusual book but this morning we come to a section that actually sounds a little more like what we're used to reading in the Bible. Let's read vv. 1-7 (NIV).

5 ^[a]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.

The thing that makes this section unusual from so much of Ecclesiastes is that it is clearly centered around God, mentioning God six times in seven verses. See, God isn't front and center in much of Ecclesiastes. In fact, Solomon is writing it from an "under the sun" perspective - what is the meaning and purpose of life when analyzed from a totally earthbound perspective where you pretty much leave God out of the picture? And the depressing answer is, everything is meaningless. But in chapter 5, God takes center stage as Solomon describes how we should approach God with more fear and less words.

Solomon says guard your steps when you go to the house of God. The word "guard" means pay attention to, be careful. Solomon is saying, pay attention to your steps when you are approaching God. Matt Chandler makes the astute observation that unless you are unbelievably flexible, the direction of your feet dictates the direction of your life. We walk in the direction our feet are pointed in. And the direction we walk in determines the destination we end up at.

There's a right way and a wrong way to approach God. If God is the star of these seven verses, the fool is the supporting cast because three times Solomon warns us not to approach God the way a fool does.

In essence the fool forgets who God is. He approaches God as if He is no big deal. As if He can be used and exploited for selfish interests. The fool would take the average judge or ruler more seriously than he takes the Almighty. Sometimes the fools says in his heart, "there is no God" and sometimes the fool says in his heart "God is no big deal". That's the kind of fool's approach that Solomon is warning us of here. If I had to sum up the big lesson from this passage it's this: Remember that God is God. Guard your steps when you go to the house of God - don't approach God haphazardly or flippantly. We need to guard our steps, and our hearts, from a small and irreverent view of God. We need to walk with care, walk with reverence. Remember that God is in heaven, you are on earth. God is amazing, and we are - not so much.

Sometimes we need to come to the house of God and just reflect on who God is. Forget about ourselves and what we want or what's going wrong or right in our lives. Sometimes even forget about what God has done in our lives and just reflect on who God is. God has been speaking to my heart through these verses this week and I realize how easy it is for God to get crowded out of my life by other, far less important things.

If we drill down to the center of the Bible, to the center of the Christian faith, to the center of life itself, what we find at the center isn't ministry. It isn't loving people. It isn't charity or missions or being generous or helping the poor. It isn't having the right doctrine and theology or being the Bible answer man. At the center of it all is God. All of creation sings His praise. The heavens declare the glory of God. By Him and through Him and for Him all things were created. The ultimate answer to "why" is God. The meaning to life is bringing God glory, and life lived apart from God will always be meaningless because we've missed the point of it all. We need to remember that God is God. And Solomon gives us three pieces of advice to help us approach God wisely.

1. When approaching God, listen more, talk less

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.

Ever meet someone who sucks all the air out of the room by talking incessantly? They think a good conversation is 98% them and 2% you. That's a good conversation. A great conversation is when you yield your 2% to them. It's annoying and eventually we find ourselves trying to avoid people who dominate conversations, but the saddest thing is that they are missing the opportunity to connect with other people, to get to know them, to interact with them, to exchange ideas and find out how they're doing. It's all one sided, which means they're not really growing in relationship. Think about it: if you spend 30 minutes with someone and you talk for 28 minutes, you leave with nothing in your head but what you came with. You're just regurgitating your own ideas and perspectives again and again and again and never learn anything new or get a new way of looking at things. And you don't know anything about the other person, how they're doing, what's going in their lives, what they're like.

That's what the fool does when he goes to the house of God. He fills the place with his noise, leaves with what he came with, and never gets to know God. Now, some commentaries I read used this as an opportunity to promote quiet, reverent worship services over more contemporary services with drums and guitars and stuff. I don't think that's what Solomon exactly has in mind here. Don't get me wrong, I don't think there's anything wrong with more reverent, liturgical services, where people come in quietly and worship quietly, and leave quietly. Nothing wrong at all. But I think it's overreaching to say that's the biblical way of approaching God. In the OT we're encouraged to hit the clanging cymbal and strike the harp and lyre and shout and clap our hands. So worship and praise wasn't a quiet, somber thing in the OT. In the NT, people are rejoicing and praising God and making all kinds of noise wherever Jesus went. Worship services with Jesus was more raucous than reverent. When the Spirit fell on the disciples after Pentecost they are loudly praising God in tongues and as they're praying the house they're in is rocked.

So I don't think this prescribes a certain type of worship experience or volume. But what I think it is saying is that the most important part of your relationship with God is what goes on inside. It's the temple of worship, love, and obedience inside the heart. It's quieting our hearts, listening to God, bowing in humble acknowledgement that He is God, and we are not. It's allowing God to speak to us, not just blather at God all the time. It's knowing that we don't know everything and posturing our heart to listen and learn. The fool comes assuming he (or she) knows everything and if anything of worth is to be imparted it's going to be imparted by them. They are spiritual know-it-alls but they don't really know God, and they don't know that they don't know God because they're constantly filling the space with words and noise.

Now, full disclosure: on the spectrum of words, I'm probably more on the "talks too much" side than the "talks too little" side. I like to guide conversations, "hey, we haven't heard from this guy - let me ask him a question." Or "there's an awkward pause in the conversation, quick! I need to come up with a topic to start conversation again." So that's just kind of how I'm wired. But a couple years ago when Jared was graduating from CCC they held an awards banquet and Jared had won the Rensellaur Award so of course Janice and I wouldn't miss being there. But I had a bad case of laryngitis and couldn't talk. As I sat at the table with Janice and 3 or 4 other couples, I realized what quieter people might feel like as I could really only smile and nod at people…and listen. Solomon is saying when we approach God we could all use a case of laryngitis, we should all learn to listen more, and talk less. It's wise to let our words be few, measured, careful, humble.

2. Be honest with God

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. 

A vow is a promise made to God, sometimes in exchange for God doing something for the worshipper. Joshua vowed "as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." Hannah vowed that if God gave her a boy she would dedicate him to the Lord. Probably the most painful vow to read about is found in the book of Judges when Jepthah rashly vows that if God gives him victory against the Ammonites, he will sacrifice whatever comes out of his house to greet him first. His daughter, his only child, comes running out to greet him, and sadly, he keeps his vow.

Jesus instructed us to let our yes be yes and our no and not to make oaths to the Lord. But we still have vows of commitment to the Lord. When two people get married in the church, they make vows to God to live together in marital faithfulness until "death do us part". When we come to Christ, there is a commitment we make to follow Jesus as disciples. When a person repents of a sinful habit or lifestyle, they are, in essence, making a vow to the Lord, I am not going to continue to live this way.

So vows look a little different today, but what Solomon is addressing is very relevant to us today. There were people making vows, "God, I'll give you this much or I'll serve you in this way" in order to look spiritual or gain God's favor, then when it was time to fulfill the vow, they said "oops, I made a mistake by making that vow, I didn't really mean it. I "misspoke". What they're doing is playing games with God, treating Him with less respect than they would an earthly judge or ruler. They think that God is someone who can be trifled with without consequence. They forget that if God is against us, who can be for us? If God is out to destroy your life, ain't nothing in the universe can prop you up!

When Jesus says, "let your yes be yes and your no be no" he isn't saying we shouldn't take our promises to God (or to others) seriously. He's saying we should take it so seriously, and be such honest, sincere people, that a simple yes is all it takes for us to carry through. Now, we need the grace and power of God to enable us to do anything, and we will never be perfect, we lean on the forgiveness and mercy of Christ every minute of every day. But we should approach God with honesty and sincerity. Not playing spiritual head games. Not play-acting as one thing when we're in church, and something very different when we're at home. Men, if you try to act like the best husband in the world when you're at church, or the most attentive father in the world when people are looking, and then are mean and inconsiderate to your wife, or harsh to your kids when alone, you're playing games with God, and God isn't going to like that. God isn't going to bless that.

If there is an area in your life that you know is in need of serious repair, that's ok. That's what the gospel and grace of God is for. But be honest. Bring it to God. Seek help to change. Go to counseling, join a group, study God's word, pray, do everything you can to pursue transformation in that area. But don't just paper over it with a lot of God-talk and religious games.

I dream a lot. Sometimes I analyze the dreams I have, but the truth is they are meaningless. They don't mean anything. The same is true of a lot of God talk and religious chatter and empty vows. Listen more, talk less, and be honest with what you do say.

3. Walk in a healthy fear of God

Solomon concludes with three words that sum all this up: Therefore fear God. Fear God. Fear God and you won't fill His house with empty words and dishonest claims of piety. Fear God and you will treat God with awe and reverence and respect, as He deserves.

So how do we as Christians call God our Father, approach God's throne of grace boldly, and fear Him at the same time? Are we even supposed to fear God? Didn't grace put fear away? The answer is yes we are supposed to fear God and no, grace didn't put all fear away.

There is a woman who is only identified by her initials, SM. SM has an unusual disease called Urbach-Wiethe disease and one of the symptoms of this disease is that it leads to calcium deposits in the part of the brain that creates the emotion we call fear. SM cannot feel fear. It is biologically impossible for her to feel the emotion of fear. She is normal in every other way - she is intelligent and feels all the other emotions but she cannot feel fear.

Doctors have been studying her for decades, but have also been very careful never to identify her, because they know that being without fear is dangerous. They've tried testing her with snakes - she will play with a rattle snake. They tried to alarm her by honking a horn unexpectedly behind her. No fear. Once a man held a knife to her throat and threatened to kill her. She said, "go ahead, I'll come back and haunt you." Doctors will not even identify her age or let her voice be heard because she is vulnerable to threats that the rest of us could easily avoid. Living without any fear is dangerous. And being without fear when it comes to God is incredibly dangerous. More dangerous than any other danger we can ever face or imagine. So when people treat God like He's no big deal, when the truth is that everything else in life is no big deal compared to God, it's foolish.

Jesus told us not to fear those who can only kill the body and after that can do no more, but to fear God who, after killing our bodies can throw us into hell. Yes, Jesus says, fear Him. ISIS can only torture you and cut off your head. Jesus says, don't fear that. I don't know about you but I'd kinda fear that. I'd be terrified. But Jesus says, that's not worthy of being afraid about. What is worthy is facing God's wrath and eternal punishment because it is so much worse than being killed. So fear God. (Luke 12:4-5)

But then Jesus says, fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Luke 12:32 We are to live in a reverent respect for God's ultimate power and sovereignty over our lives and be very aware of the terror of His wrath, but then because we trust in Christ our Savior, all fear of eternal wrath is taken away, and we are assured that our heavenly Father loves to give us His kingdom. So because of Christ, we will never have to face God's wrath, and never have to fear being thrown in hell. And so we really don't need to fear death.

We still live in the knowledge of the terror of being on the wrong side of God's judgment because we know that God is God. We know how awesome and terrifying He is. We don't see God as irrelevant or small or of no consequence. Just the opposite. We know how terrifying being on the wrong side of God is, and we never want to be there. But we also know that through Christ we have been saved, forgiven, and adopted as God's beloved child. So God is also our Father, and He loves us very much. Fear in our hearts is reverence, awe, respect, and worship. But not terror. Christ has taken that away from us. But this fear - this reverence - protects us from approaching God foolishly. It guards our steps so that we come to God to honor Him and not think we can exploit Him or use Him for our selfish purposes.

The most important way that we guard our steps - pay attention to how we approach God - is by trusting in Jesus and coming covered in the blood of Christ. Only by his mercy and grace can we approach God boldly, but by his mercy and grace we are able to approach the throne of grace with confidence. Let's pray.