In this sermon, Pastor Jim continues the dissection of Ecclesiastes 12:13 by analyzing the next point, obedience to God’s commandments. In this transition he explains that the first instruction, fear God, produces in us the second instruction, obey His commandments. Pastor Jim then details three reasons why we obey God: we are responding to God’s love; we desire God’s fellowship; and we desire to be more like Christ. Finally he wraps up with what heartfelt, loving obedience to God looks like.
Pleasing God, Making Disciples of Jesus Christ
Pleasing God, Making Disciples of Jesus Christ
Old Testament
The voice came from the vicinity of where our dinner table is located, “Would you please come and hold this for me?” My wife was packing something away and needed another hand. So, to the rescue I came, not with one hand, but two and the task not able to be accomplished by one was easily taken care of. All she needed was someone to come alongside with another set of helping hands. Have we recently thought about the security and help we find in God’s hands? As we walk through this sin-cursed and treacherous world, no safer place exists than walking spiritually and by faith, hand in hand with the Lord Jesus.
A faith untested and untried is a faith which must not be trusted. It will fail every time the storms of life come. It will not stand the crashing waves of tough circumstances. It is of sand, not the solid rock of Christ and His Word, and will be washed away at the first sign of difficulty. And to ensure we have the type of faith which holds during trying times, God tests us. He tries His children with intense and severe tests. He told us so – “Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction” (Isaiah 48:10).
In today’s scripture, Jacob says something which is soul-searching for every Christian – “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” I wonder if some of us would have to say that about church yesterday? Did we go to church and leave unmoved, unchanged, and not hungering more for God? Did we come to church, go through church, and leave church having never encountered the Lord Jesus? What I am referring to as encounters with the Living Christ are two things which always occur when we meet God.
In this sermon, Pastor Jim continues the exposition on the conclusion of Ecclesiastes. After a brief review of the previous week he launches into how the fear of God should influence and guide the life of the believer. Pastor Jim follows that up with a discourse on where a healthy fear of God originates from, its definition, and its evidences. He wraps up warning about the primary opponent to a true, healthy fear of God; pride.
The Christian life from start to finish is all of grace. God saves us by His grace. He grows us by His grace. He makes us like His Son by grace. He will bring us to heaven by grace. Yes, everything we have and are is all of God’s amazing grace. Every day we should be a people humming along the grand hymn of the faith written by John Newton – “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.” There is another aspect of grace we may not think of much; “The Preventing Grace of God.”