Community Reflection Guide [4.18.10] Ecclesiastes 5:1-7

Introduction Next week marks 2 years in the life of Redemption Hill. One of my biggest fears for us as a community and my biggest fear for you as an individual is that we’ll mistake exterior growth for interior growth. We’ll mistake all the movement and expansion that we see around us for real depth and cultivation on the inside.

We don’t want to look around one day and realize that for all of the stuff going on that looks like right worship of God...it’s being done by men and women whose hearts are far from Him...Living the Evangelical Illusion. Found to be fools.

Where have we slipped into “self-realization” instead of God-pleasing? Are we less than content when things are not as we prefer? What are we really hoping in when we do this?

Solomon, the proto-evangelical? He was also a man who knew what it was like for the heart to wander. For the heart to get seduced away...for the soul to get deceived by illusions. A lot of people see this book, ‘Ecclesiastes’ as a look back over his life and a book written from a repentant perspective.

Approach Rightly 5:1a Guard your steps when you go to the house of God.

Remember worship in the Temple. There was a reverence, an awareness of His holiness and your sinfulness. There were sacrifices that had to me made and a strict order to follow.

But those things only pointed to what would be accomplished for God’s people through God’s own Son. Jesus made the final for our sin on our behalf and that sacrifice exhausted the holy wrath of God towards sin for those who trust Him and that sacrifice cleansed us of the shame and guilt and defilement that our sin leaves on us and others.

Have you retained the right fear of God? When was the last time you shuddered in light of God’s holiness? Have we lost the sense that God in Christ saves us from God? As a community take some time to reflect on God’s holiness. Then see how the gospel comforts us in light of it.

Worship is not an event. It’s a way of life. We were wired to worship...to ascribe worth to things. Our worship of Jesus is to extend into every aspect of our life...it’s not meant to be a Sunday morning only activity. Our reverence for Jesus and our appreciation of Him is to inform and transform how we live. We need to guard our worship of God by paying close attention to the things that are capturing our affections and attentions. The things that have begun to deceive us into thinking that they can be for us what only God in Jesus can. We need to fight our hearts deception by returning to the things that stir our affections for Jesus...and give ourselves to them. While finding the things that rob those affections and walk away...

Have you slipped into the trap of thinking that worship is a commodity to be have preferences about? Enumerate the traps of thinking that worship = singing. Honestly, have you had wrong ideas? How are those ideas challenged seeing the centrality of the heart?

Listen Deeply 5:1b To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they are doing evil.

The reading, praying, teaching of Scripture is the centerpiece of our time. People have all different kinds of wants when it comes to gathered worship services...but few people want to listen. We don’t want to listen to the Scriptures as kids who listen to their dad. We just want the happy and the encouragement. We don’t want the correction and the discipline. It takes a humble posture...it takes shutting up and quieting our opinions. Wise people listen. The take time to be deep and watch their lives and their worship...they’re after cultivating a posture of surrendering to the Scriptures and repenting of their illusions.

Describe to your community what activities help you listen and center your affections on God? Reading the bible? Reading theology? Extended times in prayer? Do you need to find time for these things? What have you lost by not doing these things?

What do you gain by doing other things instead? Really.

Repent Honestly 2 Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few. 3 For a dream comes with much business, and a fool’s voice with many words. 4 When you vow a vow to God, do not delay paying it, for he has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you vow. 5 It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay. 6 Let not your mouth lead you into sin, and do not say before the messenger that it was a mistake. Why should God be angry at your voice and destroy the work of your hands?

When the word of God is taught and when you surrender to the Scriptures, what will happen is that a lot of times, things that are spoken and things that are said from Scripture will begin to resonate within the soul. Yet, often We get convicted, the HS stirs our soul and moves us to respond and here’s what happens...we make the really quick, really rash deals with God. We make the vow to God while we sit in here, “This is the week. I'm doing this. I'm walking away. I'm getting this out...” And then we leave and we do nothing...by the end of lunch we can’t even remember what we said an hour earlier.

What foolish vow have you made to God? To not do _____ again? To do better at ______? What conditions have you set up? Have you hit wall yet because your heart has not changed? Ask your Community to help you see how God’s grace can help you instead. If its hard to see, be sure you are listening.

Realize vanity 7 For when dreams increase and words grow many, there is vanity;

We can get you all fired up and you can make all kinds of proclamations and boasts about what you’re going to do...and lots of people do. But what we often dream of doing and what we actually do are very different. God is after a people who will listen and respond with humility. God is after a day to day worship of Him and dependence upon Him.

Dreaming and proclaiming is the easy part...living is the hard part.

Live in Awe ...but God is the one you must fear.

Fools come into this place and think that everything is all about them or should at least be all about them. But right worship begins and ends with God and is between is a life lived in awe of God. We can get so caught up in our own agendas that we totally miss Him. We can come in and do all the right things and all along miss God while thinking that we were worshipping Him. But there’s no affection, , no awe.

Has Sunday corporate worship starting to become mundane in any way? Be honest. Why do you think this is? Why are you tolerating it? How would you like your community to pray for you?

But real worship produces awe of God and decimates the self-centered awe of you. What a transition in Ecclesiastes here...from the pursuit of identity and meaning from the self to a right worship of God that decimates the ego.

Have you started thinking: I like this and I like that...I don’t like that...this needs to change”. Rather than approaching the gathered worship of God asking “is my life pleasing to God”? “Is he pleased with my steps, my words, my ears, my vows”? Have you found yourself dreaming of all the things that you are going to do for God? Instead of all the things that he has done for us and promises to do through us by his grace? Do we get what a strong motivator this is? Encourage one another in this!

Reflection Questions: 1. What stood out to you from Sunday’s message? Why? 2. What keeps you from living in relationships that reflect God’s glory? 3. Do you think that you can change your relationships without “you” actually changing? 4. What steps do you need to take to connect here at Redemption Hill? 5. What would keep you from taking those steps?