We will be in Ecclesiastes, that's in the Old
Testament. If you can find Psalms, that's kind
of in the middle, turn a little past that, Proverbs,
Ecclesiastes, they're all right there pretty
close together. Ecclesiastes, chapter 12, last
chapter of the book of Ecclesiastes, last couple
of verses of the chapter, very end of the book.
Ecclesiastes chapter 12, verses 13 and 14. If
you've never read the book of Ecclesiastes, you
should read the book of Ecclesiastes. But you
need to be prepared. It kind of will bum you
out, I'll be honest with you. You might wonder,
if you've never read it before, why this is in
the Bible. This seems kind of depressing. And
if I could sum up Ecclesiastes, it would be to
say that... It just kind of reminds us of the
reality of life, that life is hard, that one
day we'll get old and we'll die, and life is
tough, and it's not going to be good to you,
and that is, in fact, true. But then there's
a conclusion here at the end of Ecclesiastes
that we're going to talk a little bit about this
morning. Ecclesiastes chapter 12, we'll read
verses 13 and 14. Then we'll pray and get started.
When all has been heard, the conclusion of the
matter is this. Fear God and keep his commands,
because this is for all humanity. For God will
bring every act to judgment, including every
hidden thing, whether good or evil. Let's pray.
God, we come to you today and we thank you for
the powerful truth of this word, God. I pray,
dear Lord, that this morning that we would be
free of the worries and of the distractions and
of just the stress and the struggles of this
world, even the happy stuff this morning, dear
Lord, that may be competing for our mind. I pray
that you would free us from those distractions.
I pray that your Holy Spirit would meet us where
we are. You know what we need. I pray that you'd
grab ahold of us, dear Lord, help us to grow
in you today. I pray that you help me to preach
and teach in a way that brings glory and honor
to you, that you take away any nerves or pride
that are within me, that every word that is spoken
here today will be for your glory. I pray, God,
that we would be a people that after being here
this morning and reading these words would be
a people who would fear you and keep your commands.
And I ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.
I've been working on something this week. I'm
pretty excited to share it with you guys. Now,
I know that you all live in the world, and you
know that the world is not always a good place.
But I have come up with a solution, and I'm going
to tell it to you all today so that we can solve
the world's problems. I've decided there's a
lot of bad that goes on in the world. And so
what I have come up with is that we will make
laws to make things that are bad illegal. And
I'm going to start this morning with Highway
24 between Liberty and Macomb. There's a lot
of stuff that happens on that road that is not
good. So I have decided to solve the problem.
I'm going to make it illegal for people to go
too fast and to pass going up a hill. That's
against the law. Can't do it no more. And since
sometimes you've got to get to work and there's
some old fool, he's driving about 30 miles an
hour all the way from Liberty Macomb, I'm making
a law that you cannot go under 50 miles an hour.
It's against the law. I'm also going to make
it against the law to own an electric vehicle.
I'm outlawing electric trucks and cars. You cannot
own them. You have to own a V8. That is the new
law. You cannot own an electric vehicle. If you
drive an electric car, I'm sorry. Even a golf
cart, I'm coming for you. It's going to be against
the law to tell a lie. Cannot tell no more lies.
Can't lie to your employer. It's going to be
against the law to steal from somebody. You can't
steal from your neighbor anymore. It's wrong
to steal. People work hard for what they get,
and you can't steal from people anymore. It's
going to be against the law to do that. It's
going to be against the law to harm anybody.
It's a bad deal when people get hurt. It's going
to be against the law for you to hurt somebody.
It's going to be against the law. For you to
kill somebody. It's going to be against the law
for you to get high on drugs and to get drunk
on alcohol and to cause problems. You see, I
have figured out the solution to all of our problems.
Everything that is bad, I'm simply going to make
a law against it, and that is going to solve
our problems. And you may say to yourself, I
don't think that's going to work. But that's
where you're wrong. Because, see, here's the
law of all laws. And that is, it will be against
the law to break the law. Now, with all of these
laws in place, surely that's going to solve our
problems as a society, is it not? Well, you know
it's not. Because you laugh as I say these things.
Because you say to yourself, well, he's either
an idiot or he don't know what he's talking about.
These things are already laws. And you're right,
they are laws. Throughout our civilization, throughout
the history of man, what do we keep doing? We
keep making more laws and more laws as if that's
going to fix our civilization. As if that's going
to fix humanity. To create more laws and to say
that more things are wrong and to make more laws
against things that we already know are wrong
is an exercise in absurdity. It's not going to
fix our problem. Laws are not going to fix our
problem. Rules that we make are not going to
fix our problem. I'll tell you today what will
really fix our problem and what our problem is.
Our problem is this. We do not fear God. If we
as a people feared God, we wouldn't do half the
things that we do. But the problem that our...
that our society has faced, that humanity has
faced since its creation is we do not fear God.
When we fear God, we will keep his commands.
When we do not fear God, we will live for ourselves
and we will have no regard for the commands of
God and the people around us. You know why Adam
and Eve sinned? Because they didn't fear God.
God said, don't eat from this tree. They didn't
fear God. Throughout the Bible, people knew the
commands of God. The commands that we give today
are no different than the commands that God gave
years ago. For the most part, there are many
of the laws that we have today that are just
built upon the very things that God said. And
yet we still have problems in our society. And
we still wonder why our world is falling apart.
And we still wonder why there is evil. And it's
because we do not fear God. And I ain't just
talking about the non -Christians. I'm talking
about us in this room. I'm not talking about
them. I'm talking about us. I'm asking you today,
do you fear God? Oh yeah, I fear God. Oh really,
is that so? But you better stop and think real
close of whether or not you fear God. Because
if we fear God, there's a lot of things that
we do that we wouldn't do. There's a lot of things
that we just continue to do time and time again,
day after day, month after month, year after
year of our life, and we say we fear God? You
can gauge how much you fear God by how long it
takes you to turn from what you're doing wrong.
And there are some sins in our life that if we
feared God, we'd have stopped doing them 50 years
ago. And yet we keep doing them. And you know
why? Because we don't fear God. When you don't
fear God, you live in foolishness. Here's what's
said in Job chapter 28, verse 8. It says this,
The fear of the Lord is this, wisdom. And to
turn from evil is understanding. You know why
our world is evil? You know why we do evil things?
It's because we are fools. Because we are not
living in wisdom. Because we do not fear God.
Proverbs chapter 3 verse 7 says, Don't consider
yourself to be wise. Fear the Lord and turn away
from evil. That's our problem. We consider ourselves
to be wise. We don't see a need for God, and
so we live for ourselves, and we have no care
about those around us. We have no care about
the Word of God. We have no care about our brothers,
about our neighbors, and we cheat them, and we
steal from them, and we lie to them, and we cheat
on our spouses, and we abuse our children, and
we give in to our temptations of sin because
we do not fear the Lord our God. the creator
of the heavens and the earth, the one who we
will have to stand before one day. There will
be a judgment day that will occur. God gives
us in his word, his instruction and his commands
and how we are to live and we have to answer
for ourselves today, are we living by the commands
of God? When Jesus was asked what law was the
most important, what did he say? He said to love
the Lord your God with all your heart, mind,
soul and strength. And the second is like it,
to love your neighbor as yourself. That is the
law of Jesus Christ. That is the law of love.
And when we fear God, we'll keep those commands.
When we fear God, we'll love our neighbor. We
won't harm those around us. We won't cheat those
around us. We won't steal from those around us.
We need to have a fear of God. God is good. Praise
the Lord. He's good. He's gracious. I praise
God for that. A lot of people say, oh, it's just
fear of the Lord. It doesn't really mean fear
of the Lord. Like, not really fear Him. Just
a reverential fear. Well, yeah, we should have
a reverential fear of God. We should respect
God. But I think there's a real fear there that
needs to come upon us that we need to realize
that one day we will stand before the Lord our
God. And you can sit on this pew every day, but
if we still are living in sin, then we don't
fear God. And he knows what we're doing. The
rest of the people in here may not know what
you're doing. Y 'all might not know what I'm
doing. But God knows what we're doing. And one
day we'll stand before God and you may say, well,
I follow Jesus Christ and my sins are forgiven.
Okay, well, praise the Lord. But that's going
to be a pretty scary day to stand before God
and he's going to say, you know you did this
thing? That's going to be pretty scary. Now,
when I was growing up, I feared my father. It
was not just a reverential fear. It was a real
fear. It was a fear that the genuine leather
of his belt was going to touch the soft skin
of my bottom and the two were going to become
one flesh. And so when I got this urge and these
temptations to do things I shouldn't do, it wasn't
like, oh, I respect my father so much and I don't
want to disappoint him. Now, sometimes there
is that in life. But the fear was, I don't want
the belt to touch my butt, so therefore I'm going
to do good. That was a fear. He was my father.
And I didn't walk around every day going, I'm
so scared of my father. No, I knew he loved me.
And I loved him. And I didn't walk around in
fear. But there was a real fear there to know
that he has spoken and he has told me not to
do what I was doing and I better listen to him.
That's the same kind of fear I think we're supposed
to have of God. A real fear that we respect God
and we know God. We know God loves us. I don't
walk around every day thinking God's going to
strike me with lightning, but there's a fear
there when I'm living in sin and doing what I
shouldn't do, especially repeatedly for a long
period of time, and there's no peace in that.
And so our real problem in life, as individuals
and as a society, is sometimes the very fact
that we just don't fear the Lord. Maybe if we
really started to seek God and His commands,
if we really began to just humble ourselves before
God and realize that we are sinners and we are
in a bad way, and that God is the creator of
the heavens and the earth, and that he spoke
everything to existence, and that he sees everything
that we do, and he hears every word that we say,
and he knows every thought that we think, and
one day this is the God that we will stand before,
then maybe if we stopped and thought about that
a little more than we do, then our actions would
change. If you think about that for a second
and your actions don't change, then you need
to do some more thinking. Because maybe you don't
know the fear of the Lord. You can tell pretty
quick, you can tell pretty easy, if a child has
a fear for their parents or not, because the
parent will say, you better not do that. And
if the kid don't do it no more, then you know
that, well, that parent, they probably got a
good fear of them. So many times you better stop
doing it. And the kid just keeps on talking,
just keeps on doing what they want to do. And
then the parent does what I'm talking about.
They really drop the hammer. You know what the
parents do? They say, if you do that one more
time, I'm going to count to three. Oh, you can
see the kids, the fear. They're shaking in their
boots. I never learned how to count to three.
My daddy never did that. But I learned what a
belt was like. And I learned what fear was like.
And you know what that fear caused me to do?
Not as much as it should have. I needed a lot
more weapons. But that fear caused me to do what
was right. At the end of Ecclesiastes, the scripture
says, when all is said and done, this world is
full of all kind of evil and all kind of horrible
things, and it is depressing, and it is just
rotten. Because it's full of people like us and
we're just rotten to the core. On our own, we're
just rotten, evil people. And when all is said
and done, the only solution to our problem, the
only thing that we can cling to, the only thing
that we can find hope in, is to fear God and
to keep His commands. That's what we're called
to do, is to fear God and to keep. His commands.
Maybe we failed at that. Maybe we have failed
at that miserably today. Now look, you can't
be perfect. I'm not telling you you can be. I
wish we could do better than we could do. And
we can do better than we can do, but we can't
be perfect. And I'm not saying that you're never
going to fail. And I'm not going to say that
if you fail once, that doesn't mean you fear
God. But the fact of the matter is that we need
some help that is beyond us and our help comes
from Jesus Christ. That's where our help comes
from. He is the one who can be obedient to God.
And when we sin, we should never be okay with
our sin and just keep sinning and say, well,
Jesus has died for me. I'll just keep sinning.
We don't fear the Lord and we don't really understand
and appreciate and respect and love Jesus Christ
in the way we should if our excuse is, well,
let sin abound all the more so grace can abound
all the more. Paul says absolutely not. There
needs to be a love of God there. And a fear of
God there that we realize that we cannot do it
on our own. We are powerless on our own, but
through the power of God, through the power of
Jesus Christ, God can help us to overcome the
things that we fail at. And it's when we seek
Jesus Christ that our hearts can really begin
to be changed. And it's only when we really fear
God that we will begin to keep his commands.
That's why it's so important for our world to
hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. People in our
world are not going to change. You can outlaw
guns and knives and melt them all down. You can
do anything you want to. You can take away any
weapon that anybody can get their hands on, and
guess what? They'll still have their hands. And
you cut their hands off, and they'd still find
a way to kill somebody because evil comes from
the heart. That's our problem is evil comes from
our heart, and we don't fear God, so we're willing
to do anything to those who are around us. We'll
lie, cheat, and steal and won't think twice about
it because we don't fear God as a people. And
until we know who God is, until people know who
Jesus Christ is, until they begin to trust in
Him, until we realize that we are sinners in
need of a Savior, until we realize that one day
we are hopeless and helpless and we will have
to stand before God and apart from Jesus Christ,
that's going to be a bad day. Until we humble
ourselves and realize who God is, we cannot fear
Him. But the moment we begin to fear God, he
can begin to change our heart, he can begin to
change our lives, and he can begin to change
our world. So whatever laws or whatever rules
we make as humanity, they will fail. Only the
law of love will succeed. If we would love the
Lord our God with all our heart and love our
neighbor as ourself, our world would change.
And we can experience such a love when we experience
the fear of God. So when all is said and done,
the end of the matter is this, to fear God and
keep his commands. Let's pray. God, we come to
you today and we thank you for being good to
us, dear Lord. And maybe sometimes we just get
so lax in our lives that we just kind of forget
who you are. We think about your goodness and
your grace and your blessings, and those things
are awesome, God, and they are who you are, and
we praise you for them. God, you're a pretty
serious God, too. And you don't wink at sin and
turn a blind eye to it. You forgive us for it.
We praise you for that through Jesus Christ.
But you're not okay with us, God, just continue
to live in it. You don't desire for us to, dear
Lord. Even if it is forgiven, you don't desire
for us to live in the burden of that sin. And
so, God, I pray that today that we would fear
you and humble ourselves before you this morning,
God. That we would not be so foolish to think
that we would come up with laws and rules that
are going to change our world, God. God, our
world will only be changed when our hearts are
changed. And our hearts will only be changed
through Jesus Christ. So God, our world is in
such a mess today, God. There are so many people,
dear Lord, that are in darkness and they are
seeking and they are searching and they want
deliverance and they want help and they don't
even know where to find it. They don't even know
that they need it sometimes, God. But we know
that your word tells us that we need Jesus Christ.
And it's only when we come to you and seek you
and fear you and humble ourselves before you,
God, that we will find you and that we will begin
to listen to you and that we will stop seeking
to be wise in our own eyes, dear Lord. But that,
God, I pray today we would realize that the fear
of the Lord is wisdom. God, help us to be a wise
people today. so that we would be those who would
turn away from our foolishness and turn away
from our evil. I pray that you can start with
us, dear Lord. Let us not look around at everybody
else that may need these words. I pray that you'd
help us to look at our own lives, God. Maybe
we're the one that needs it today. Maybe there
are some things in our life and we just need
to repent and we need to turn away with them
and we've been just dabbling with them and going
along in these sins for far too long. I pray,
God, today that we would... repent of our sinfulness
and come to you, God. We know you're a loving
Father, but God, we also know that you deal with
us sometimes, but your word says that you discipline
the one that you love, and so God, I pray that
you would help us to feel that love today. I
do pray for our world, dear Lord, that they would
know of Jesus Christ, that they would know of
love, that they would know of grace, that they
would know who you are, God, that they would
fear you, And keep your commands. And I ask these
things in Jesus' name. Amen.