In the Hands of the Living God - Ecclesiastes 5
Read: Ecclesiastes 5 and Hebrews 10
Listen: A Song - “Vapor” by The Liturgists
Listen: A Meditation – “Vapor Meditation” by The Liturgists
Have you ever sat in church, staring at the preacher or the worship team, and realized you have no idea what is going on? Your mouth is singing the words, or you’re nodding to the pastor’s sermon, but absolutely nothing is filtering through your brain. Yeah, that’s happened to me often enough. When it does, I must stop and ask myself, where is my mind? Where is my heart? What is distracting me? Why do I feel apathetic? What am I believing about God? Finally, why does it matter?
For these past weeks in Ecclesiastes, we have been considering the question – what’s the point? Why does any of it matter? We can easily find this attitude interfering with our worship of God, and that is a very dangerous place to be. Today, we are going to camp in Ecclesiastes 5:1-7. We looked at Ecclesiastes 4-5, specifically the repetition of “better than” and the theme of oppression. Today's passage is an interlude between chapter 4 and the rest of chapter 5. After the Preacher begins his commentary on oppression, he interrupts it to discuss approaching the presence of God. Ultimately, he decides it is simply best to “fear God.”
Fear, in this sense, is more than just feeling afraid, although it is an element of the definition. Fear means to reverence and hold awe for another, specifically God. To fear God is to recognize that He is Sovereign and we are subordinate. He is Creator and we are created. He is Holy and we are sinful. He is God and we are not.
Fearing God is an integral aspect of our worship of God. As sinful humans, we are impure beings unable to be in the presence of our holy God. In the Christ-Centered Exposition commentary for Ecclesiastes, the authors write, “…the whole sacrificial system was put in place so Holy God could live with sinful man in a reconciled relationship, but it required the shedding of blood and specific rules” (64). When we considered the laws and regulations and tabernacle design given to Moses in the Israelites’ wilderness wanderings, they were designed to allow sinful man to approach holy God. Yet it was an imperfect system requiring repetitive sacrifices because humans kept messing up. The old law could not perfectly save anyone because it was administered by imperfect humans (see Heb. 10:1-4, 11). Philip Graham Ryken, in his commentary on Ecclesiastes, writes, “When we consider the holiness of God and compare it with our own unholy worship, it is a wonder that any of us is still alive” (121). Yet we dare to approach God in our worship with laziness, apathy, and carelessness.
Ecclesiastes 5 offers a few guidelines for approaching God in worship. The Preacher cautions us to check the attitude of our hearts. In David’s repentant song in Psalm 51, he says to God, “You do not want a sacrifice, or I would give it;/you are not pleased with a burnt offering./The sacrifice pleasing to God is a broken spirit (51:16-17a). Broken, in this instance, means something like a broken heart – a heart and spirit that are submissive toward God. We must approach carefully, with sincerity and obedience.
Additionally, we must watch our words and what we promise to God. James describes the problem with our words in his letter: “With the tongue we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in God’s likeness. Blessing and cursing come out of the same mouth. My brothers and sisters, these things should not be this way” (3:9-10). Our words reveal the status of our hearts, so what have we been saying?
Alternately, if we let our “words be few” (Ecc. 5:2), then we should be listening. Romans 10:17 says, “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (NKJV). God gave us His Word to reveal Himself to us, so are we listening to what He has to say?
At the end of the day, the simplest answer for approaching God – fear Him. We approach Him with respect and reverence. We trust that Christ’s sacrifice has sanctified us, so that we might approach Him in the first place. Hebrews 10:22 says, “…let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed in pure water.” Christ took on our sin at the cross, so that we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21). We dare not take Christ’s atoning sacrifice lightly. We must remember our appropriate place in the order of things. Ryken writes, “To fear God is to recognize his might and majesty. It is to acknowledge that he is in Heaven and we are on earth, that he is God and we are not” (127).
So the next time we find ourselves sitting in church, apathetic and zoning out, perhaps we should remind ourselves just who God is, and may that truth change everything for us. After all, “[i]t is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:21).
