The Whole Duty of Man | Ecclesiastes
Life Under The Sun - Ecclesiastes : Part 6
Pastor Charles Price
Ecclesiastes 12:13-14
Let me read then from Ecclesiastes 12 and I am going to read the last two verses, which are the last two verses of the book – Ecclesiastes 12:13-14.
And if you have been here in recent weeks, you know we have been looking at this book, this sad, depressing book where Solomon is trying to find the meaning of life outside of God.
He was a man who had known God but turned away from God in his later years. It was his wives, of which he had many, that turned him away from God (it tells us in the book of 1 Kings).
And having written that wonderful book of Proverbs in his middle years, where he demonstrates such profound wisdom – a wisdom that had been given to him by God.
Having turned away from God, he is asking the question, what is it that makes it worthwhile to get up every morning, what is the meaning that lies behind life? And he explores a lot of avenues. And the recurring theme is this word meaningless, meaningless, utterly meaningless – everything is meaningless. Thirty-five times he uses the word meaningless.
Because, he says, life is being lived under the sun – that is purely materially, physically, what you can see, touch, taste, etc. is what is real. And when you live life on a purely material, physical basis, what is its meaning? And he keeps asking that question.
And then in Ecclesiastes 12, he begins to talk sense – sense that he has known – and he addresses it to young people (“Remember your Creator in the days of your youth”). We talked about that last week.
But now down to Ecclesiastes 12:13:
“Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter:”
These are important words – this is the conclusion.
“Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.”
And then here is the reason:
“For God will bring every deed into judgement, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.”
The question of course that Solomon asks in this book is a question that all of us ask, whether we are consciously asking it or not, we are subconsciously at least asking what is the ultimate meaning to my life?
I suppose this kind of question comes into focus very much when you go to a funeral and you think of the person who is deceased and you ask, what is the purpose of it all, what is the meaning that lies behind this? Is there any meaning?
We ask of ourselves, why do I do what I do? What am I here for? Who am I?
You look out on a clear night at the vastness of the universe – who am I - a little tiny little thing on one tiny little planet in a tiny galaxy that is one of a hundred billion.
About between 400 and 200 years before Christ was born, the superpower of the Middle Eastern world was Greece. It was the Greeks under Alexander the Great who conquered the Persian Empire that was then the dominant power. And Greece eventually ruled from the Atlantic right across to India and across North Africa.
And during that period of Greek supremacy, one of the lasting legacies they left to the world were the great Greek philosophers who asked the big questions of life and whose answers spread very widely because they created Greek as the universal language.
(Which is why our New Testament years later was written in Greek – that had become the universal language of the Greek world, then taken over by the Roman world. When the New Testament opens, Rome is the dominant power. But they didn’t make Latin the universal language – Greek had already become so.)
And these Greek philosophers have probably been the biggest influence in Western culture even up until today, only two and a half thousand years later. And there was a narrow period during that time when certain men, who most of whom knew each other or certainly overlapped with each other – names like Socrates, (many of us are familiar with that name). You have probably heard about these men in school even though you may not have thought a lot about them since.
But Socrates overlapped with Plato who overlapped with Aristotle who overlapped with Epicurus. And there were many others around that era. And they asked the big question: what is the meaning to life, what makes life make sense?
They relied on reason and logic to find the meaning of life. Plato determined that the meaning of life was found entertaining knowledge – the more you know, the more life makes sense, and so we need to pursue knowledge. Of course, he said so much more, but that was at the heart of what Plato talked about. Knowledge was the key to finding meaning.
Now a student of Plato’s, a man called Aristotle, said knowledge is important but knowledge is a means to an end. What is the end to which knowledge will lead? And he said knowledge must lead to our attaining the highest good. What is the highest good? And he decided the highest good was our happiness. So, if something makes you happy, that is your highest good.
And so, Aristotle says that goodness is the key to meaning and that means happiness is the key to meaning.
And then along comes a man called Epicurus and he says, well what do you mean by happiness? We need to define that. Happiness is pleasure – pleasure is the key to meaning.
Now Epicurus has given his name to what we call an epicurean. And an epicurean today is somebody who just lives for hedonism, you just do what you want to do, you just live sensual lives – eat, drink and be merry, etc.
Though actually Epicurus himself said that real pleasure was not found in self-indulgence; it was found in self-discipline. And if you were disciplined and controlled, then you can enjoy the pleasures and they would give meaning to your life. But Epicurus says pleasure is the meaning.
Then along comes a man called Antisthenes and he says that no, it is not pleasure, it is virtue, which may not be pleasurable – that is, doing what is good and right and is of moral excellence and is upright and shows integrity.
He founded what became known as the school of the cynics. They rejected wealth and power and health and fame as being the important things in life. And the cynics said no, it is moral excellence and integrity.
Now the word cynic has come to mean in our English a sort of suspicion of things that are supposedly excellent or virtuous. So, we’re cynical, you know, “I’m not sure that’s the real motive; there’s another motive behind this.”
But this is where it comes from because they rejected wealth, power, health etc. and saw integrity and uprightness, virtue as being the key to meaning.
Then the stoics came along and they said, yeah, you embrace pleasure but you need to avoid pain. They became known for their emphasis on avoiding suffering and pain.
So, if you do suffer, as you will, you try to overcome it so it doesn’t dominate you. And so, we have the word stoicism – somebody is a stoic, who kind of has a stiff upper lip and sticks their chin out (“I am not going to allow myself to be overcome by this pain”).
Now they were all looking for what makes life make sense. And their influence stays with us today. Every generation has its philosophers – there’s not a lot that is new and original anymore.
But probably today’s philosophers are our musicians. I can’t find who said this but somebody said,
“Don’t show me who writes your laws; show me who writes your music and I will tell you what your next generation will be like.”
Well music was once a very privileged thing. You had to hear it live or not hear it at all. Now of course we are bombarded with music – radio, iPods, everything else. We hear music all the time.
And 40 years ago, the Beatles sang a song that said all you need is love. I will read you the words:
All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love,
Love, love is all you need
Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love
All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love
Love, love is all you need.
Now if I sang it to you, it would be a lot better than reading it to you, but that was the chorus. And then the verses are:
There is nothing you can’t do
That can’t be done
There is nothing you can’t sing
That can’t be sung
All you need is love, love, love
Love is all you need
Love, love, love, love…
And of course, this was the philosophy, so out of that era we had the love-ins – remember Woodstock? And love had different meanings to different people.
But the new morality, as it was defined back in the 60’s was it’s determined not by law but by love. And as long as what you do is an expression of love, it doesn’t matter what you do.
There are some things there that aren’t bad actually, if we define love properly. Bob Dylan was a great philosopher – great insight. And one of his songs was “Let Me Die in My Footsteps.”
I don’t know if you know this song – I think it is a good one.
There’s been rumors of war and wars that have been
The meaning of life has been lost in the wind
And some people thinkin’ that the end is close by
’Stead of learnin’ to live they are learnin’ to die
Let me die in my footsteps
Before I go down under the ground
What he is saying there is I don’t want to be part of what everybody else is doing; I want to be myself, not die in somebody else’s footsteps – die in my own footsteps. I want to be independent; I want to be me - a very influential philosophy.
Interesting thing is that 3000 years ago, Solomon, a very wise man, who, as I have already mentioned, turned away from God and so his capacity for wisdom became a capacity for folly, wrote about all of these things long before Plato and Aristotle and Socrates and long before the Beatles and Bob Dylan. He addressed the very things that they were looking for.
You see if Plato says that meaning comes in knowledge, Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 1:18,
“With much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.”
In other words, says Solomon, I’ll tell you what I am concluding: ignorance really is bliss because the more you know, the more you worry about, the more grief it gives you.
So, he says, “I look down this road of knowledge being the key to life and man, I don’t want to know any more than I know because it brings me grief.
If Aristotle said meaning is found in goodness, Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 6:12:
“For who knows what is good for a man in life, during the few and meaningless days he passes through like a shadow?”
He says actually you say good, but what actually is good? I say one thing, you say another, she says something else, he says something else. So, you get on a boat and go to the next country and it’s totally different again. How can goodness bring meaning when you don’t know what is good, is what he says.
If Epicurus says meaning is found in pleasure, Solomon said in Ecclesiastes 2:1,
“I thought in my heart, ‘Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good.’ But that also proved to be meaningless.”
And you may remember we looked at that in Chapter 2 where he lists a lot of the areas in which he sought for pleasure, but it proved to be meaningless. He ends that chapter, “Meaningless, meaningless, utterly meaningless. Everything is meaningless.”
If the Stoic said you find meaning in avoiding pain, Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 2:22:
“What does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labours under the sun? All his days his work is pain and grief; even at night his mind does not rest. This too is meaningless.”
He said if you are going to be utterly realistic, even your work is pain and at night you lie awake churning over things. You can’t avoid pain. This is meaningless.
If the Beatles said meaning is found in love, love, love, love is all you need, Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 9:9,
“Enjoy life with the wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun – all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun.”
Now that’s a great verse to give somebody on their wedding day, isn’t it? Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love – well that sounds nice – as you live under the sun all these meaningless days, because it is all toilsome labor. Huh.
So, Solomon looked at love. He married – you remember? – 700 women. And he says it’s meaningless. That’s why he had 300 girlfriends as well, called concubines.
If Bob Dylan says the meaning of life is found in being your own man, not part of the flow; just be independent so that you die in your own footsteps being master of your own situation, Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 9:5,
“For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing.”
So okay, you die in your own footsteps; the only thing is you will never know that. The only people who don’t know they’re dead are the people who are dead.
That’s one thing I will never know about myself – I’m dead.
Solomon says, “I pursued all of these options and actually all of them ran down cul-de-sacs and went smack into a brick wall. But now, he says all has been heard (we’ve looked at everything – there is nothing new under the sun, which he told us anyway). Sorry about that Mr. Plato, Mr. Aristotle and all the rest of you. You should have read Ecclesiastes first.
“Now all has been heard – here is the conclusion of the matter. Says Solomon, “Okay, we have tried every logical avenue to find meaning and it’s ended up meaningless, meaningless. So, here’s the conclusion – and here it is:
“Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.”
This meaninglessness of life will never be avoided until (earlier in the chapter) you remember your Creator before your life is wasted (remember we talked about that last week), before you get old and before you die.
“And here I will sum it up: Fear God and keep His commandments. This is the whole duty of man.”
Now let me talk about the fear of God. It doesn’t sound a very attractive thing – fear of anything or anyone.
But do you know who talks most about the fear of God in the Bible? It is actually Solomon himself. When he wrote the book of Proverbs, it is one of the recurring themes.
“The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.”
“The fear of God is the beginning of knowledge,” he says.
“To fear God is to hate evil.”
“To fear God adds length to life.”
By the way, all these things are the things Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Leonard [Paul] McCartney, Bob Dylan, all these people were looking for. And he says the fear of God brings these things. The Lord adds length to life.
“The fear of the Lord gives a man’s children a secure fortress for them it will be a refuge.” (Proverbs 14:26)
“The fear of God leads to life.” (Proverbs 19:23)
“The fear of the Lord brings wealth and honor and life.” (Proverbs 22:4)
There are other verses there in Proverbs – I am just picking out a few of them for you there.
Whatever the fear of God is, says Solomon, it puts everything else into perspective.
Now what is the fear of God? We don’t like those two words in the same sentence: fear and God. Not least because 1 John 4:18 says,
“Perfect love casts out fear.”
And he is talking about there, enjoying the love of God and it casts out fear. So, what do we mean?
According to one Bible scholar I consulted on this, he says that the fear of God has 15 shades of meaning in the Hebrew use of that word fear.
I won’t bore you with all those shades of meaning, but I would summarize it as this: because he says Fear God and keep His commandments (this is the whole duty of man), that a person who fears God is a person who takes God seriously, takes His words seriously, takes all His promises seriously and takes all His warnings seriously.
It is possible, you see, to be a casual Christian that says, “Okay what do I need to get on the right side of God? Confess my sin, acknowledge Him and be forgiven and be reconciled to God. Good, I am very happy for that but, I’m really not taking Him seriously in the way I live life.”
(Which doesn’t mean you lock yourself away from everybody in a monastery – that is a total misunderstanding of that and sometimes people assume that’s what it might mean.)
But it means you take His promises seriously and you take His warnings seriously. What kind of promises? Of course, there are many, but in the context of Ecclesiastes, he is seeking for meaning and purpose in life and not finding it. But Jesus said in John 10:10,
“I have come that you might have life and have it to the full.”
(“Have it more abundantly”, as a familiar translation says.)
Now Solomon is searching for life in its fullness, as most philosophy is about finding meaning and the fullness of life, whatever that is, as best you can. What the Scripture says, what Jesus said is, “I have come to provide that for you. You will never find it outside of Myself.”
But there are conditions to that because Jesus also said in Matthew 16:18 [Matt. 10:39],
“Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for me will find it.”
In other words, if you want to hang on to your life, if you want to live your life simply your way and that’s it, period, what you will ultimately do is lose it.
But if you will lose your life – that is, you give it away to Me – that is when you will discover that Jesus Christ will give His life away to us. It’s an exchange. I give my life to Him; He gives His life to me.
Then, he says, you find life in all its fullness.
You know, every road leads to Rome, is the old saying (it doesn’t in Canada but, every road leads to, I don’t know, Whitehorse I suppose). But every road eventually will link up and lead to whatever is on the same land mass.
Every truth of Scripture leads to Christ. That’s why Jesus said, “I am the Truth”, not “I preach it” but “I am the Truth.”
Ultimately everything that the deepest need of the human heart seeks for is Christ Himself and what is found in Him.
And the person who fears God takes God seriously, takes His promises seriously, because you will be offered and I will be offered things that glitter and are attractive, which are not Christ. They look good; they look satisfying; I would love to enjoy this; the only problem is they are empty.
All of us find those things. And remember all the glitter is not gold. It’s – you see most of us are fearful of taking what Jesus Christ says seriously – not because we are willingly rejecting of Christ but because we are actually looking for the very thing that He is offering. But you find it in being willing to lose your life, and that’s when you find it.
Do you know, by the way, the first time that the phrase “fear of God” is used in the Scripture? It’s very interesting, as illustrative of this.
It’s when God came to Abraham after he had given Him his son Isaac. You remember the story. God called Abraham from Ur of the Chaldeans (which is in today’s Iraq) up to the land of Canaan.
He said to him one day, “Look at the stars in the sky. I will give you as many descendants as the stars in the sky. I am going to give you a son and from this son will come a family and from the family a nation. That nation will bless the world.”
Abraham was an old man at this stage, married to a woman 10 years younger, but still old, past the menopause and she had been barren anyway, had been unable to conceive. So, it was an impossible situation, but Abraham believed God and said, “You said it; I believe You.”
And it says it was credited to Abraham as righteousness. He started well. But he probably expected the son in the next 9 months and he didn’t come. He didn’t come for 25 more years.
You know when God makes a promise, He doesn’t always just fulfill it. Twenty-five years later, when Abraham and Sarah were even older than they had been at the time of the promise – and when they were promised the son, it says about Abraham, he was as good as dead (so he wasn’t healthy and she was worn out.) I mean they were a pretty decrepit pair.
But twenty-five years later, even more worn out, even more decrepit, even deader, they produced a son, Isaac. Now they have messed up along the way – we won’t talk about that. But now they have got the son (Abraham is thrilled) at last through whom God is going to bring a nation to bless the world.
And then God said to Abraham one day, “Abraham, take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love. Take him to Mt. Moriah and offer him in sacrifice, in a burnt offering sacrifice to Me.”
This is the son through whom every promise God had ever made was going to come to fulfillment (ever made to Abraham), was going to come to fulfillment. Now He says, “Take your son and kill him.”
It says early the next morning Abraham set off. Early. (Probably before Sarah woke up so that she wouldn’t know what he was doing.) They travelled for three days with some servants, got to the foot of Mt. Moriah (which is where Jerusalem is today). And leaving the servants behind, Isaac and Abraham together climbed Mt. Moriah.
And Isaac said, “We’ve got the wood (which they were obviously carrying), we’ve got the fire (flaming torch); where is the lamb?”
If you are going to offer a burnt offering you are going to need a lamb. Abraham, probably fighting back his tears in his broken heart, said, “God will provide a lamb.”
And together they built the altar. I am sure Isaac loved the fact he was building the altar with his dad. They laid the wood on the altar. I don’t know how Abraham got Isaac into that position – maybe he put his arm around him and began to wrap a cord around him, tied him up, laid him on the altar, took the torch to set it on fire.
And God spoke, “Abraham! Do not lift a finger on the boy.”
And then God said this:
“Now I know that you fear God.”
It’s the first time that word is ever used – fear of God. What does it mean?
When Abraham went up that hillside, he was struggling. We know this because it tells us in the book of Hebrews. He was struggling with the fact everything God promised is in this son and He is asking me to slay him.
But he said, “I am going to do what He told me and if God has to raise him from the dead, that’s God’s business, not mine. My business is to do what He said.”
In Hebrews, the writer says figuratively speaking He did raise him from the dead in the sense that he was suddenly released and free.
But you know something, Abraham struggled with God, Abraham made a lot of mess in his life, but from then on, Abraham settled the issue.
Abraham went down to Egypt and told lies about his sister to save his own skin. And when there was no son coming, when Isaac was not being born, he decided that he would have the son through the maid, Hagar, who was young and fertile and forget about Sarah – she’s too old. So, he tried to produce the son - he got Ishmael and of course all the mess that came from that.
So, what does it mean for Abraham to fear God? You take God seriously including His promises even when it looks as though everything is in total opposition to the promises.
See you don’t build your life on the promises of God; build your life on God Himself – He will fulfill the promises.
So, the first time this phrase is used is of a man who takes the promise of God seriously, meaning this is God’s business even if He has to raise Isaac from the dead.
And do you know, God will probably lead us down paths where something that is very precious to us, we’ve got to entrust to God, period, because we ourselves are not going to be able to control it. That’s usually a very healthy time. It can either be a decisive moment that turns you away from trusting God, or the moment of Abraham, “Now I know you fear God” and you continue to live knowing you can trust Him for His promises, knowing you don’t have to manipulate His promises to make them work. You trust Him.
But a person who fears God also takes His warnings seriously. And when he says this in Ecclesiastes 12:13, his next verse, Ecclesiastes 12:14, he says,
“For God will bring every deed into judgement, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.”
And he talks about the judgement there of God.
You know it’s the judgement of God that gives us dignity, that God cares enough to hold us responsible. We’re not just meaningless objects that God can dispense with.
And we take the warnings of Scripture seriously. You know, in Hebrews 10:26,
“If we deliberately keep on sinning”
That is, we keep on living in independence of God,
“after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left,”
Because the only sacrifice for sins is that that Jesus Christ (I am adding this), that Jesus Christ paid in full for us. But if you ignore that and you keep on sinning, even though you know that, keep on living in independence of God,
“there is no sacrifice for sins left, but only a fearful expectation of judgement.”
And a person who fears God takes that seriously.
One of the problems in our day is that we no longer value truth as an objective reality. That is, truth has become what’s good for you. Now of course we all have different perspectives and we respect people’s perspectives, but somewhere along the line, there is a truth.
And he is talking there about a person who has received the knowledge of the truth, a person who, yes, I understand the gospel, but I am not willing to turn from sin. There is an expectation of judgement he says, a fearful expectation.
And a couple of verses later he says,
“It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” (Hebrews 10:31)
We don’t like to think about that or talk about that, but you cannot read the Scripture and avoid that. It’s not that we all get washed up eventually by the skin of our teeth onto the shores of heaven, (Whew, we’re there). There is a wholesome, healthy fear of God that is the beginning of wisdom and the beginning of knowledge. And Solomon calls it here that it is the whole duty of man.
Is God just a casual acquaintance in your life? Yes, an acquaintance, yes, I’m here this morning because of that. But there’s a rather casualness. It’s a process to get to there.
You go back to stories of people in the Bible. There are some, but fewer, who overnight are totally transformed. Saul of Tarsus would be one. But Abraham was not one; Moses was not one. God did a work in Abraham’s life and there was a process and eventually comes to this point: “Now I know you fear God.”
And some of us are on that journey. We recognize God is good. We recognize the cross of Christ makes it possible for me to be forgiven, redeemed and reconciled to God. But there is a process that is going on and it’s a process that God leads us on that must bring us to that point where, if we are going to enter into the fullness of life, and we are going to find that meaning that is deep, deep in our hearts despite whatever else is going on around us, there comes a point when you fear God. You say, “God, You are the most real thing in every part of my life.”
You don’t become perfect of course, but it becomes the reference point when things do go wrong, when you do struggle (as we all do), when you battle with temptation (as we all do), when you battle with what I want (which we all do), when you battle with the attractive glitter of things that you think, you know, I don’t think that’s of God but it really looks good. Deep in your heart your reference point is the fear of God. I take His warnings seriously; I take His promises seriously; I take Himself seriously.
I love that verse when Paul says,
“I know whom I have believed and I am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I commit to him against that day.” (2 Timothy 1:12)
I probably said this to you before, but this verse meant a lot to me some years ago. He is able to keep what I commit to Him.
Conversely, therefore, what I don’t commit to Him, He does not undertake to keep. What I commit, He undertakes to keep, to look after. What I don’t commit He doesn’t undertake to look after.
And if I have mentioned this before, as I – no doubt I have – I have probably used this illustration. If I put my money into the bank, they undertake to look after it for me. And when I come and cash a cheque or come and take something out, they will give it to me because it is mine and they are looking after it for me, and it’s safe.
But if I put my money under my mattress and one day some burglar explores my house and uncovers the mattress and takes the money, I can’t go the bank and say, “I just lost a couple of hundred bucks; would you give that to me?”
They would say, “Sorry, you didn’t commit it to us. Therefore, we didn’t undertake to look after it.”
But if the bank gets into some difficulty and I go back and I say, “Look, I gave you a couple hundred bucks; would you give it to me back?” They are obligated to do so. They will keep what you commit; what you don’t commit they don’t undertake to keep.
And sometimes, you know, we are trying to put our lives under the mattress and say, “I hope it is going to work out okay.”
But when we give our lives to Jesus Christ and say, “Lord Jesus, I know all the weakness that my life consists of, I know all the failure that my life consists of, and You know it, but I give myself to You and thank You. You will look after what I have committed to You and You will bring Your purpose to pass through my frailty, through my ineptitudes, through my sin. Despite all of that, I am safe.
The fear of God takes God seriously, takes the promises of God seriously, takes the warnings of God seriously. And as a result, rather than living with a sense of fear (perfect love casts out fear), the wonderful thing is that the fear of God moves to living with a consciousness of the love of God and the security that comes from that.
Now I don’t know where you are this morning. Maybe there are many of us here; we are on a journey with God but we still haven’t found what we are looking for because that journey with God, that relationship into which we may have entered, must come to this point of complete abandonment to God irrespective of the consequences.
That was Abraham’s experience. Taking His promises seriously in the face of the fact that life seems to be working against them, taking His warnings seriously and not living lightly with Him, but living in communion with Him.
And I am going to lead you in a prayer and if God has spoken to you this morning and you know that there is still that searching and seeking and restlessness deep down, you can say to Him this morning, “Lord I want to surrender to You, give all that I am over to You, that in that, rather than losing my life, I find it in its fullness and live out of that fullness.
Let’s pray together. Father, I thank You for every person in this building this morning. Thank You for the motivation that brought us here, whether strong or weak; we are here because we recognize that You are God.
Thank You for dealing with us so gently and kindly. Thank You for the way in which, by the Holy Spirit, You draw us more fully into a deeper awareness of You, a deeper trust in You, a wholesome fear of You.
And I pray this morning that we may not be pushed into full surrender, but drawn, drawn by the loving Spirit of God, drawing us into that realization that it is only in Christ that life in all its fullness is to be found.
Make us men and women, we pray, who live in that spirit of repentance that turns from ourselves to You, of obedience that trusts and obeys as You lead us and guide us. And I pray that for some of us, even this morning might be a turning point. Those of us who don’t know You, Lord Jesus, we pray that we will come to know You, knowing that in knowing You, everything else makes sense in a way it cannot apart from You. This is Your work in our hearts; we ask that You will do it and bring us into the joy of knowing Christ. We pray it in Jesus Name, Amen.
Let me read then from Ecclesiastes 12 and I am going to read the last two verses, which are the last two verses of the book – Ecclesiastes 12:13-14.
And if you have been here in recent weeks, you know we have been looking at this book, this sad, depressing book where Solomon is trying to find the meaning of life outside of God.
He was a man who had known God but turned away from God in his later years. It was his wives, of which he had many, that turned him away from God (it tells us in the book of 1 Kings).
And having written that wonderful book of Proverbs in his middle years, where he demonstrates such profound wisdom – a wisdom that had been given to him by God.
Having turned away from God, he is asking the question, what is it that makes it worthwhile to get up every morning, what is the meaning that lies behind life? And he explores a lot of avenues. And the recurring theme is this word meaningless, meaningless, utterly meaningless – everything is meaningless. Thirty-five times he uses the word meaningless.
Because, he says, life is being lived under the sun – that is purely materially, physically, what you can see, touch, taste, etc. is what is real. And when you live life on a purely material, physical basis, what is its meaning? And he keeps asking that question.
And then in Ecclesiastes 12, he begins to talk sense – sense that he has known – and he addresses it to young people (“Remember your Creator in the days of your youth”). We talked about that last week.
But now down to Ecclesiastes 12:13:
“Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter:”
These are important words – this is the conclusion.
“Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.”
And then here is the reason:
“For God will bring every deed into judgement, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.”
The question of course that Solomon asks in this book is a question that all of us ask, whether we are consciously asking it or not, we are subconsciously at least asking what is the ultimate meaning to my life?
I suppose this kind of question comes into focus very much when you go to a funeral and you think of the person who is deceased and you ask, what is the purpose of it all, what is the meaning that lies behind this? Is there any meaning?
We ask of ourselves, why do I do what I do? What am I here for? Who am I?
You look out on a clear night at the vastness of the universe – who am I - a little tiny little thing on one tiny little planet in a tiny galaxy that is one of a hundred billion.
About between 400 and 200 years before Christ was born, the superpower of the Middle Eastern world was Greece. It was the Greeks under Alexander the Great who conquered the Persian Empire that was then the dominant power. And Greece eventually ruled from the Atlantic right across to India and across North Africa.
And during that period of Greek supremacy, one of the lasting legacies they left to the world were the great Greek philosophers who asked the big questions of life and whose answers spread very widely because they created Greek as the universal language.
(Which is why our New Testament years later was written in Greek – that had become the universal language of the Greek world, then taken over by the Roman world. When the New Testament opens, Rome is the dominant power. But they didn’t make Latin the universal language – Greek had already become so.)
And these Greek philosophers have probably been the biggest influence in Western culture even up until today, only two and a half thousand years later. And there was a narrow period during that time when certain men, who most of whom knew each other or certainly overlapped with each other – names like Socrates, (many of us are familiar with that name). You have probably heard about these men in school even though you may not have thought a lot about them since.
But Socrates overlapped with Plato who overlapped with Aristotle who overlapped with Epicurus. And there were many others around that era. And they asked the big question: what is the meaning to life, what makes life make sense?
They relied on reason and logic to find the meaning of life. Plato determined that the meaning of life was found entertaining knowledge – the more you know, the more life makes sense, and so we need to pursue knowledge. Of course, he said so much more, but that was at the heart of what Plato talked about. Knowledge was the key to finding meaning.
Now a student of Plato’s, a man called Aristotle, said knowledge is important but knowledge is a means to an end. What is the end to which knowledge will lead? And he said knowledge must lead to our attaining the highest good. What is the highest good? And he decided the highest good was our happiness. So, if something makes you happy, that is your highest good.
And so, Aristotle says that goodness is the key to meaning and that means happiness is the key to meaning.
And then along comes a man called Epicurus and he says, well what do you mean by happiness? We need to define that. Happiness is pleasure – pleasure is the key to meaning.
Now Epicurus has given his name to what we call an epicurean. And an epicurean today is somebody who just lives for hedonism, you just do what you want to do, you just live sensual lives – eat, drink and be merry, etc.
Though actually Epicurus himself said that real pleasure was not found in self-indulgence; it was found in self-discipline. And if you were disciplined and controlled, then you can enjoy the pleasures and they would give meaning to your life. But Epicurus says pleasure is the meaning.
Then along comes a man called Antisthenes and he says that no, it is not pleasure, it is virtue, which may not be pleasurable – that is, doing what is good and right and is of moral excellence and is upright and shows integrity.
He founded what became known as the school of the cynics. They rejected wealth and power and health and fame as being the important things in life. And the cynics said no, it is moral excellence and integrity.
Now the word cynic has come to mean in our English a sort of suspicion of things that are supposedly excellent or virtuous. So, we’re cynical, you know, “I’m not sure that’s the real motive; there’s another motive behind this.”
But this is where it comes from because they rejected wealth, power, health etc. and saw integrity and uprightness, virtue as being the key to meaning.
Then the stoics came along and they said, yeah, you embrace pleasure but you need to avoid pain. They became known for their emphasis on avoiding suffering and pain.
So, if you do suffer, as you will, you try to overcome it so it doesn’t dominate you. And so, we have the word stoicism – somebody is a stoic, who kind of has a stiff upper lip and sticks their chin out (“I am not going to allow myself to be overcome by this pain”).
Now they were all looking for what makes life make sense. And their influence stays with us today. Every generation has its philosophers – there’s not a lot that is new and original anymore.
But probably today’s philosophers are our musicians. I can’t find who said this but somebody said,
“Don’t show me who writes your laws; show me who writes your music and I will tell you what your next generation will be like.”
Well music was once a very privileged thing. You had to hear it live or not hear it at all. Now of course we are bombarded with music – radio, iPods, everything else. We hear music all the time.
And 40 years ago, the Beatles sang a song that said all you need is love. I will read you the words:
All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love,
Love, love is all you need
Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love
All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love
Love, love is all you need.
Now if I sang it to you, it would be a lot better than reading it to you, but that was the chorus. And then the verses are:
There is nothing you can’t do
That can’t be done
There is nothing you can’t sing
That can’t be sung
All you need is love, love, love
Love is all you need
Love, love, love, love…
And of course, this was the philosophy, so out of that era we had the love-ins – remember Woodstock? And love had different meanings to different people.
But the new morality, as it was defined back in the 60’s was it’s determined not by law but by love. And as long as what you do is an expression of love, it doesn’t matter what you do.
There are some things there that aren’t bad actually, if we define love properly. Bob Dylan was a great philosopher – great insight. And one of his songs was “Let Me Die in My Footsteps.”
I don’t know if you know this song – I think it is a good one.
There’s been rumors of war and wars that have been
The meaning of life has been lost in the wind
And some people thinkin’ that the end is close by
’Stead of learnin’ to live they are learnin’ to die
Let me die in my footsteps
Before I go down under the ground
What he is saying there is I don’t want to be part of what everybody else is doing; I want to be myself, not die in somebody else’s footsteps – die in my own footsteps. I want to be independent; I want to be me - a very influential philosophy.
Interesting thing is that 3000 years ago, Solomon, a very wise man, who, as I have already mentioned, turned away from God and so his capacity for wisdom became a capacity for folly, wrote about all of these things long before Plato and Aristotle and Socrates and long before the Beatles and Bob Dylan. He addressed the very things that they were looking for.
You see if Plato says that meaning comes in knowledge, Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 1:18,
“With much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.”
In other words, says Solomon, I’ll tell you what I am concluding: ignorance really is bliss because the more you know, the more you worry about, the more grief it gives you.
So, he says, “I look down this road of knowledge being the key to life and man, I don’t want to know any more than I know because it brings me grief.
If Aristotle said meaning is found in goodness, Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 6:12:
“For who knows what is good for a man in life, during the few and meaningless days he passes through like a shadow?”
He says actually you say good, but what actually is good? I say one thing, you say another, she says something else, he says something else. So, you get on a boat and go to the next country and it’s totally different again. How can goodness bring meaning when you don’t know what is good, is what he says.
If Epicurus says meaning is found in pleasure, Solomon said in Ecclesiastes 2:1,
“I thought in my heart, ‘Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good.’ But that also proved to be meaningless.”
And you may remember we looked at that in Chapter 2 where he lists a lot of the areas in which he sought for pleasure, but it proved to be meaningless. He ends that chapter, “Meaningless, meaningless, utterly meaningless. Everything is meaningless.”
If the Stoic said you find meaning in avoiding pain, Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 2:22:
“What does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labours under the sun? All his days his work is pain and grief; even at night his mind does not rest. This too is meaningless.”
He said if you are going to be utterly realistic, even your work is pain and at night you lie awake churning over things. You can’t avoid pain. This is meaningless.
If the Beatles said meaning is found in love, love, love, love is all you need, Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 9:9,
“Enjoy life with the wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun – all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun.”
Now that’s a great verse to give somebody on their wedding day, isn’t it? Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love – well that sounds nice – as you live under the sun all these meaningless days, because it is all toilsome labor. Huh.
So, Solomon looked at love. He married – you remember? – 700 women. And he says it’s meaningless. That’s why he had 300 girlfriends as well, called concubines.
If Bob Dylan says the meaning of life is found in being your own man, not part of the flow; just be independent so that you die in your own footsteps being master of your own situation, Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 9:5,
“For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing.”
So okay, you die in your own footsteps; the only thing is you will never know that. The only people who don’t know they’re dead are the people who are dead.
That’s one thing I will never know about myself – I’m dead.
Solomon says, “I pursued all of these options and actually all of them ran down cul-de-sacs and went smack into a brick wall. But now, he says all has been heard (we’ve looked at everything – there is nothing new under the sun, which he told us anyway). Sorry about that Mr. Plato, Mr. Aristotle and all the rest of you. You should have read Ecclesiastes first.
“Now all has been heard – here is the conclusion of the matter. Says Solomon, “Okay, we have tried every logical avenue to find meaning and it’s ended up meaningless, meaningless. So, here’s the conclusion – and here it is:
“Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.”
This meaninglessness of life will never be avoided until (earlier in the chapter) you remember your Creator before your life is wasted (remember we talked about that last week), before you get old and before you die.
“And here I will sum it up: Fear God and keep His commandments. This is the whole duty of man.”
Now let me talk about the fear of God. It doesn’t sound a very attractive thing – fear of anything or anyone.
But do you know who talks most about the fear of God in the Bible? It is actually Solomon himself. When he wrote the book of Proverbs, it is one of the recurring themes.
“The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.”
“The fear of God is the beginning of knowledge,” he says.
“To fear God is to hate evil.”
“To fear God adds length to life.”
By the way, all these things are the things Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Leonard [Paul] McCartney, Bob Dylan, all these people were looking for. And he says the fear of God brings these things. The Lord adds length to life.
“The fear of the Lord gives a man’s children a secure fortress for them it will be a refuge.” (Proverbs 14:26)
“The fear of God leads to life.” (Proverbs 19:23)
“The fear of the Lord brings wealth and honor and life.” (Proverbs 22:4)
There are other verses there in Proverbs – I am just picking out a few of them for you there.
Whatever the fear of God is, says Solomon, it puts everything else into perspective.
Now what is the fear of God? We don’t like those two words in the same sentence: fear and God. Not least because 1 John 4:18 says,
“Perfect love casts out fear.”
And he is talking about there, enjoying the love of God and it casts out fear. So, what do we mean?
According to one Bible scholar I consulted on this, he says that the fear of God has 15 shades of meaning in the Hebrew use of that word fear.
I won’t bore you with all those shades of meaning, but I would summarize it as this: because he says Fear God and keep His commandments (this is the whole duty of man), that a person who fears God is a person who takes God seriously, takes His words seriously, takes all His promises seriously and takes all His warnings seriously.
It is possible, you see, to be a casual Christian that says, “Okay what do I need to get on the right side of God? Confess my sin, acknowledge Him and be forgiven and be reconciled to God. Good, I am very happy for that but, I’m really not taking Him seriously in the way I live life.”
(Which doesn’t mean you lock yourself away from everybody in a monastery – that is a total misunderstanding of that and sometimes people assume that’s what it might mean.)
But it means you take His promises seriously and you take His warnings seriously. What kind of promises? Of course, there are many, but in the context of Ecclesiastes, he is seeking for meaning and purpose in life and not finding it. But Jesus said in John 10:10,
“I have come that you might have life and have it to the full.”
(“Have it more abundantly”, as a familiar translation says.)
Now Solomon is searching for life in its fullness, as most philosophy is about finding meaning and the fullness of life, whatever that is, as best you can. What the Scripture says, what Jesus said is, “I have come to provide that for you. You will never find it outside of Myself.”
But there are conditions to that because Jesus also said in Matthew 16:18 [Matt. 10:39],
“Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for me will find it.”
In other words, if you want to hang on to your life, if you want to live your life simply your way and that’s it, period, what you will ultimately do is lose it.
But if you will lose your life – that is, you give it away to Me – that is when you will discover that Jesus Christ will give His life away to us. It’s an exchange. I give my life to Him; He gives His life to me.
Then, he says, you find life in all its fullness.
You know, every road leads to Rome, is the old saying (it doesn’t in Canada but, every road leads to, I don’t know, Whitehorse I suppose). But every road eventually will link up and lead to whatever is on the same land mass.
Every truth of Scripture leads to Christ. That’s why Jesus said, “I am the Truth”, not “I preach it” but “I am the Truth.”
Ultimately everything that the deepest need of the human heart seeks for is Christ Himself and what is found in Him.
And the person who fears God takes God seriously, takes His promises seriously, because you will be offered and I will be offered things that glitter and are attractive, which are not Christ. They look good; they look satisfying; I would love to enjoy this; the only problem is they are empty.
All of us find those things. And remember all the glitter is not gold. It’s – you see most of us are fearful of taking what Jesus Christ says seriously – not because we are willingly rejecting of Christ but because we are actually looking for the very thing that He is offering. But you find it in being willing to lose your life, and that’s when you find it.
Do you know, by the way, the first time that the phrase “fear of God” is used in the Scripture? It’s very interesting, as illustrative of this.
It’s when God came to Abraham after he had given Him his son Isaac. You remember the story. God called Abraham from Ur of the Chaldeans (which is in today’s Iraq) up to the land of Canaan.
He said to him one day, “Look at the stars in the sky. I will give you as many descendants as the stars in the sky. I am going to give you a son and from this son will come a family and from the family a nation. That nation will bless the world.”
Abraham was an old man at this stage, married to a woman 10 years younger, but still old, past the menopause and she had been barren anyway, had been unable to conceive. So, it was an impossible situation, but Abraham believed God and said, “You said it; I believe You.”
And it says it was credited to Abraham as righteousness. He started well. But he probably expected the son in the next 9 months and he didn’t come. He didn’t come for 25 more years.
You know when God makes a promise, He doesn’t always just fulfill it. Twenty-five years later, when Abraham and Sarah were even older than they had been at the time of the promise – and when they were promised the son, it says about Abraham, he was as good as dead (so he wasn’t healthy and she was worn out.) I mean they were a pretty decrepit pair.
But twenty-five years later, even more worn out, even more decrepit, even deader, they produced a son, Isaac. Now they have messed up along the way – we won’t talk about that. But now they have got the son (Abraham is thrilled) at last through whom God is going to bring a nation to bless the world.
And then God said to Abraham one day, “Abraham, take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love. Take him to Mt. Moriah and offer him in sacrifice, in a burnt offering sacrifice to Me.”
This is the son through whom every promise God had ever made was going to come to fulfillment (ever made to Abraham), was going to come to fulfillment. Now He says, “Take your son and kill him.”
It says early the next morning Abraham set off. Early. (Probably before Sarah woke up so that she wouldn’t know what he was doing.) They travelled for three days with some servants, got to the foot of Mt. Moriah (which is where Jerusalem is today). And leaving the servants behind, Isaac and Abraham together climbed Mt. Moriah.
And Isaac said, “We’ve got the wood (which they were obviously carrying), we’ve got the fire (flaming torch); where is the lamb?”
If you are going to offer a burnt offering you are going to need a lamb. Abraham, probably fighting back his tears in his broken heart, said, “God will provide a lamb.”
And together they built the altar. I am sure Isaac loved the fact he was building the altar with his dad. They laid the wood on the altar. I don’t know how Abraham got Isaac into that position – maybe he put his arm around him and began to wrap a cord around him, tied him up, laid him on the altar, took the torch to set it on fire.
And God spoke, “Abraham! Do not lift a finger on the boy.”
And then God said this:
“Now I know that you fear God.”
It’s the first time that word is ever used – fear of God. What does it mean?
When Abraham went up that hillside, he was struggling. We know this because it tells us in the book of Hebrews. He was struggling with the fact everything God promised is in this son and He is asking me to slay him.
But he said, “I am going to do what He told me and if God has to raise him from the dead, that’s God’s business, not mine. My business is to do what He said.”
In Hebrews, the writer says figuratively speaking He did raise him from the dead in the sense that he was suddenly released and free.
But you know something, Abraham struggled with God, Abraham made a lot of mess in his life, but from then on, Abraham settled the issue.
Abraham went down to Egypt and told lies about his sister to save his own skin. And when there was no son coming, when Isaac was not being born, he decided that he would have the son through the maid, Hagar, who was young and fertile and forget about Sarah – she’s too old. So, he tried to produce the son - he got Ishmael and of course all the mess that came from that.
So, what does it mean for Abraham to fear God? You take God seriously including His promises even when it looks as though everything is in total opposition to the promises.
See you don’t build your life on the promises of God; build your life on God Himself – He will fulfill the promises.
So, the first time this phrase is used is of a man who takes the promise of God seriously, meaning this is God’s business even if He has to raise Isaac from the dead.
And do you know, God will probably lead us down paths where something that is very precious to us, we’ve got to entrust to God, period, because we ourselves are not going to be able to control it. That’s usually a very healthy time. It can either be a decisive moment that turns you away from trusting God, or the moment of Abraham, “Now I know you fear God” and you continue to live knowing you can trust Him for His promises, knowing you don’t have to manipulate His promises to make them work. You trust Him.
But a person who fears God also takes His warnings seriously. And when he says this in Ecclesiastes 12:13, his next verse, Ecclesiastes 12:14, he says,
“For God will bring every deed into judgement, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.”
And he talks about the judgement there of God.
You know it’s the judgement of God that gives us dignity, that God cares enough to hold us responsible. We’re not just meaningless objects that God can dispense with.
And we take the warnings of Scripture seriously. You know, in Hebrews 10:26,
“If we deliberately keep on sinning”
That is, we keep on living in independence of God,
“after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left,”
Because the only sacrifice for sins is that that Jesus Christ (I am adding this), that Jesus Christ paid in full for us. But if you ignore that and you keep on sinning, even though you know that, keep on living in independence of God,
“there is no sacrifice for sins left, but only a fearful expectation of judgement.”
And a person who fears God takes that seriously.
One of the problems in our day is that we no longer value truth as an objective reality. That is, truth has become what’s good for you. Now of course we all have different perspectives and we respect people’s perspectives, but somewhere along the line, there is a truth.
And he is talking there about a person who has received the knowledge of the truth, a person who, yes, I understand the gospel, but I am not willing to turn from sin. There is an expectation of judgement he says, a fearful expectation.
And a couple of verses later he says,
“It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” (Hebrews 10:31)
We don’t like to think about that or talk about that, but you cannot read the Scripture and avoid that. It’s not that we all get washed up eventually by the skin of our teeth onto the shores of heaven, (Whew, we’re there). There is a wholesome, healthy fear of God that is the beginning of wisdom and the beginning of knowledge. And Solomon calls it here that it is the whole duty of man.
Is God just a casual acquaintance in your life? Yes, an acquaintance, yes, I’m here this morning because of that. But there’s a rather casualness. It’s a process to get to there.
You go back to stories of people in the Bible. There are some, but fewer, who overnight are totally transformed. Saul of Tarsus would be one. But Abraham was not one; Moses was not one. God did a work in Abraham’s life and there was a process and eventually comes to this point: “Now I know you fear God.”
And some of us are on that journey. We recognize God is good. We recognize the cross of Christ makes it possible for me to be forgiven, redeemed and reconciled to God. But there is a process that is going on and it’s a process that God leads us on that must bring us to that point where, if we are going to enter into the fullness of life, and we are going to find that meaning that is deep, deep in our hearts despite whatever else is going on around us, there comes a point when you fear God. You say, “God, You are the most real thing in every part of my life.”
You don’t become perfect of course, but it becomes the reference point when things do go wrong, when you do struggle (as we all do), when you battle with temptation (as we all do), when you battle with what I want (which we all do), when you battle with the attractive glitter of things that you think, you know, I don’t think that’s of God but it really looks good. Deep in your heart your reference point is the fear of God. I take His warnings seriously; I take His promises seriously; I take Himself seriously.
I love that verse when Paul says,
“I know whom I have believed and I am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I commit to him against that day.” (2 Timothy 1:12)
I probably said this to you before, but this verse meant a lot to me some years ago. He is able to keep what I commit to Him.
Conversely, therefore, what I don’t commit to Him, He does not undertake to keep. What I commit, He undertakes to keep, to look after. What I don’t commit He doesn’t undertake to look after.
And if I have mentioned this before, as I – no doubt I have – I have probably used this illustration. If I put my money into the bank, they undertake to look after it for me. And when I come and cash a cheque or come and take something out, they will give it to me because it is mine and they are looking after it for me, and it’s safe.
But if I put my money under my mattress and one day some burglar explores my house and uncovers the mattress and takes the money, I can’t go the bank and say, “I just lost a couple of hundred bucks; would you give that to me?”
They would say, “Sorry, you didn’t commit it to us. Therefore, we didn’t undertake to look after it.”
But if the bank gets into some difficulty and I go back and I say, “Look, I gave you a couple hundred bucks; would you give it to me back?” They are obligated to do so. They will keep what you commit; what you don’t commit they don’t undertake to keep.
And sometimes, you know, we are trying to put our lives under the mattress and say, “I hope it is going to work out okay.”
But when we give our lives to Jesus Christ and say, “Lord Jesus, I know all the weakness that my life consists of, I know all the failure that my life consists of, and You know it, but I give myself to You and thank You. You will look after what I have committed to You and You will bring Your purpose to pass through my frailty, through my ineptitudes, through my sin. Despite all of that, I am safe.
The fear of God takes God seriously, takes the promises of God seriously, takes the warnings of God seriously. And as a result, rather than living with a sense of fear (perfect love casts out fear), the wonderful thing is that the fear of God moves to living with a consciousness of the love of God and the security that comes from that.
Now I don’t know where you are this morning. Maybe there are many of us here; we are on a journey with God but we still haven’t found what we are looking for because that journey with God, that relationship into which we may have entered, must come to this point of complete abandonment to God irrespective of the consequences.
That was Abraham’s experience. Taking His promises seriously in the face of the fact that life seems to be working against them, taking His warnings seriously and not living lightly with Him, but living in communion with Him.
And I am going to lead you in a prayer and if God has spoken to you this morning and you know that there is still that searching and seeking and restlessness deep down, you can say to Him this morning, “Lord I want to surrender to You, give all that I am over to You, that in that, rather than losing my life, I find it in its fullness and live out of that fullness.
Let’s pray together. Father, I thank You for every person in this building this morning. Thank You for the motivation that brought us here, whether strong or weak; we are here because we recognize that You are God.
Thank You for dealing with us so gently and kindly. Thank You for the way in which, by the Holy Spirit, You draw us more fully into a deeper awareness of You, a deeper trust in You, a wholesome fear of You.
And I pray this morning that we may not be pushed into full surrender, but drawn, drawn by the loving Spirit of God, drawing us into that realization that it is only in Christ that life in all its fullness is to be found.
Make us men and women, we pray, who live in that spirit of repentance that turns from ourselves to You, of obedience that trusts and obeys as You lead us and guide us. And I pray that for some of us, even this morning might be a turning point. Those of us who don’t know You, Lord Jesus, we pray that we will come to know You, knowing that in knowing You, everything else makes sense in a way it cannot apart from You. This is Your work in our hearts; we ask that You will do it and bring us into the joy of knowing Christ. We pray it in Jesus Name, Amen.