“Pay What You Have Vowed”

Well this morning we continue on in chapter 5 as we've begun for several weeks now this little glimpse of what it means for us to come to the house of God, to approach God and draw near to Him in corporate worship.

The impact that that ought to have in our lives, not just when we're in the house of God but all that flows in and through our lives as a result of corporate worship. We begin in verse 1, walk prudently when you go to the house of God.

Draw near to hear rather than to give the sacrifice of fools. So we're to guard our manner of life, our way of walking when we enter into the house of God, to make sure that we've understood rightly the gospel, that we've cleansed our hands and our feet when we draw near to the God of all grace and when we draw near we're to receive from Him.

We draw near to receive Him, receive His offer of mercy, His word and then we respond to the things that we've received. We draw near to hear and also to obey, to listen rather than to simply go through the motions or tick off the box or do that little ritual we always do on a Sunday morning.

Looking at verses 2 and 3 last week we saw that goes hand in hand with putting a guard over our mouths. So we guard our walk, we guard our mouths, we don't let our heart utter hasty things, we don't moat our mouth our way through worship.

God is in heaven, we are on earth, that's why we let our words be few. Again all this is describing an ancient worshiper approaching the temple and with that there would be of course prayer and sacrifice and as we'll see this morning and next week there would be a vow either made or a vow fulfilled and that would have accompanied the prayer and the sacrifice.

This is really holding together verses 1 through 7 and I struggled with whether I should preach this morning verses 4 through 7 but I thought there was just a little too much to unpack in our time so I'm just looking at verse 4 this morning and then next week we'll look at verses 5 through 7.

If I could put it this way, we're looking at this issue of vows, of commitment, of fulfillment and we're looking at it sort of as a foundation this week and then more practical application next week. Or if I could put it this way, the what of vows this morning in verse 4, a little bit of application and then the how and the why next week.

Alright, so this is foundational, if I've titled it pay what you have vowed you could almost scribble in part 1, next week will be pay what you have vowed part 2. Ecclesiastes 5 verse 4, when you make a vow to God do not delay to pay it for he has no pleasure in fools.

Vows as Solemn Commitments to God

Pay what you have vowed. Now this is practically a quotation from Deuteronomy 23 verses 21 and following, a very conscious echo or quotation of this passage. When you make a vow to the Lord your God you shall not delay to pay it for the Lord your God will surely require it of you and it would be sin to you.

Verse 23, that which is gone from your lips you shall keep and perform for you voluntarily vowed to the Lord your God what you have promised with your mouth. So again we see the issue of words. We saw that last week, God is in heaven, don't motor mouth or mindlessly speak things or certainly commit to things in a hasty way, in a thoughtless way that you have no intention of being able to follow through, no.

Pay your vow. As we'll see next week, it is far better not to vow than to vow and not pay. We're going to unpack some of that practically next week. If last week the message was let your words be few, this week the message is let your words be true.

Pay what you have vowed. Vows of course were common in the Old Testament. It was a solemn promise, a solemn act of committing a gift or devoting a service or making a sacrifice to God and that was usually done in the expectation that God was going to respond.

God would answer. Maybe you were in a position of great difficulty or need and the idea was you were expressing your commitment to God. Lord, I know that you are the one who controls these things. If you would please hear my cry, if you would respond to me and answer, I will serve you in this way or of what you would provide, I will give in this way.

A vow was never, for the ancient worshiper, a vow was never a way of binding God's response. If I make the right vow, if I use the right language, if I offer a lot more, God's going to have to act. But we're uncomfortable with the idea of making a vow to God to begin with.

I was at a talk on Friday night that was unpacking some of this. It was really fascinating to me that it dovetailed with the passage this week. A vow never presumed to bind God's response. It was rather a sort of faithful expectation that God was hearing and would respond.

You think of Hannah in 1 Samuel. God, if you would give me a child, I will devote the child to you. That child will be for your service in your house. And when God responded to that cry, in His time, she fulfilled her vow.

That was not binding God's response so much an expression of her faith in God's ability to provide a commitment of devotion and sacrifice to Him. So we can put it as one commentator said, it externalized the worshiper's faith.

I know that you're in control. I know that you can provide. I know that you can deliver. Lord, if you deliver in this way, this is how I will respond. This is what I will do. This is how I will use the things that you give.

This is how I will use the time that you spare me. That was the idea. You're externalizing your devotion, your commitment, even your faith to God. So in the ancient worship of God, vows were part and parcel of the commitment and faith of God's people.

It's interesting that vows are not something in our experience of worship that we're familiar with or comfortable with. I'm hoping to unpack a little bit of why. You might be surprised that even in our confessional framework, this is an expectation in worship.

I'm going to try to create the foundation for that this morning. Let me just show you a few glimpses of this. Psalm 65. I could give you dozens. Let me just give you a few. Psalm 65, verse 1. Praise waits for you in Zion, O God, and to you the vow will be performed.

So somehow praise and vows go hand in hand. When we come to worship God, we're not just giving praise and thanksgiving, prayers and sacrifice, we're performing the vows, we're fulfilling the commitments we made to you, Lord.

That's our act of worship. Now often, this was tied in, again, with need or trial, Psalm 50, verses 14 and 15. Again, this depiction of what worship involves. Offer to God thanksgiving. We certainly do that.

Pay your vows to the Most High. How does that fit in to our experience of worship? Pay your vows. And notice what follows this. Pay your vows to the Most High God. Call on me in the day of trouble. I will deliver you, and then you will glorify me.

Somehow verse 15 is answering verse 14. You're offering thanks. Thanks for what? Thanks for God's response. Thanks for God's provision. Thanks for God's deliverance. Now you pay your vows, and God says, you can always call on me.

I will deliver you. That's how you glorify me, with prayers, with praise, with thanksgiving, with paying your vows, with fulfilling your commitments that you made to me. Psalm 66, verse 13 and 14, even more clear.

I will go into your house with burnt offerings. I will pay you my vows, which my lips have uttered, which my mouth has spoken when I was in trouble. So the psalmist is telling you what it was like to go to the house of God.

I went in trouble, in need, in sorrow, and I laid that out to you, and I asked for you to move. I asked for you to deliver, and I made a vow about what I would do as a result of your work, and I'm here to pay it.

I'm here to glorify you. I've paid my vows. Eric Ortland, in his masterful commentary, he's one of my favorite writers right now on Ecclesiastes, and as he's summarizing verses 4 through 7, he puts it in this way, in light of the whole.

He says, it's wise for us who live under the sun, who can accomplish nothing of permanence during our short life, to fear the one who is enthroned in heavens, and keep a guard on ourselves when we come to worship.

That's verse 1. Keeping a guard over our mouth with few words, that's verse 2. And having an assiduous completion of every pledge and promise we make, that's verse 4. There will be no shallowness, no sentimentality in how God is addressed.

We will not pontificate about things we don't really know or understand, confident all the while that God would back up everything that we say. We will avoid pledging ourselves to ministries or making great promises before God without carefully counting the cost.

That's what it means to approach His worship in reverence, to follow through on our commitments to Him. Now, of course, Jesus is correcting this in His own day. In the days of Jesus, the scribes, the Pharisees, they had developed an approach to oath-taking and vow-swearing that would allow a different formula to have relative flexibility.

If you don't vow to God, if you don't swear by God, then perhaps there's lesser penalty or lesser degree of stricture when you don't fulfill or pay your vow. In fact, the whole tractate in the Talmud devoted to this, the tractate Shebuot, the whole idea is, well, what's valid to swear by and to what degree does this bind the suppliant, the worshiper?

As Bob Gonzales says, the Pharisees took the command, do not swear falsely, but pay your vows to the Lord, and they shifted the emphasis from the integrity of the vow to the formula of the vow. I can just swear by something else.

I can swear by the temple. I can swear by the gold. I can swear by the altar. I don't have to swear by God and His holy name. That means when I break it or I play fast and loose or I fall short, my neck won't be on the line.

Jesus Condemns Evasive Oaths

This is what Jesus is responding to in Matthew 23, verses 16 and following. Woe to you blind guides who say, whoever swears by the temple, it's nothing. Whoever swears by the gold of the temple, he's obliged to perform it.

Fools and blind, what's greater? The gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold. And whoever swears by the altar, another quotation, it's nothing. But whoever swears by the gift that's on it, he's obliged to perform it.

Fools and blind, what's greater? The gift or the altar that sanctifies it. Therefore, he who swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it. He who swears by the temple, swears by it and by him who dwells in it.

And he who swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by him who sits on it. In other words, Jesus says there's no escaping what it means to make a vow, to pledge a commitment to God or to involve God in a commitment we make to others.

I didn't really mean it. I didn't know what I was getting into. Well surely no one could walk in this way for long. Surely you should have known that. Jesus says fools. Ecclesiastes 5 says fools. The sacrifice of fools, the motor-mouthing of fools, the inability to follow through on commitments and service, that's the way of the fool.

It's not the way of the wise and wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord. So Jesus says don't swear in this way. In fact, he says let your yes be yes and your no be no. It's another way of saying pay your vows.

The law, of course, just in the third commandment calls us to recognize the irreverence and the abomination of taking God's name in vain. And one of the ways we profane God's name is by having a profession of walking in him and then failing in the things that we commit.

When we're not walking in the yes of our yes and the no of our no, we are in many ways breaking the third commandment of God. Our whole life is to be, as it were, a vessel of showing forth his light, of bearing his name rightly and therefore not lightly, and that means we're men and women of integrity.

Paul, of course, in his letters, he has no problem calling upon God to witness him. God is my witness, he says to the Romans. Second Corinthians 1, I call God as a witness against my soul, Philippians 1, God is my witness.

There's no problem invoking God as a way of showing the sincerity, the truthfulness of what he's about to say. He does that because he's in the fear of the Lord, not because he's taking God's name lightly.

Of course, God himself swears by himself. As the writer of Hebrews points out, for there's none greater by which he could swear by, so he swears by himself. But God himself undertakes vows, oaths, makes promises, makes covenant with his people.

Numbers 14, as I live, that's vow language, it's on my life. Deuteronomy 32, now see that I, even I am he and there is no God besides me for I raise my hand to heaven and say as I live forever. God is almost condescending as if he were a man swearing by himself, as if he was raising his hand to heaven to say, I swear by God that I'm about to do this.

So God enters into covenant, God makes vows. And of course, that shows us just how foundational the truth of God's promises are. It really can be an anchor to our soul because he's sworn it by himself.

There's nothing greater by which he could swear. By myself, he tells Abram, by myself I have sworn, blessing I will bless you. You can take that check to the bank. Of course, God's yes is God's yes. Does he need to use this kind of language?

But he does it as a condescension to our own senses and experiences. He does it so that we can understand just how tenacious his commitment to his promise is. He does it with full integrity, with full truthfulness.

Oaths and Vows in Christian Confessions

And he does it as an example for us as well. In the 17th century, Christian groups were struggling with whether believers ought to take oaths or make vows. That was largely, I think, because of a misunderstanding of Jesus' words regarding oaths and vows and letting your yes be your yes and your no be your no.

And of course, they weren't taking in the larger biblical revelation in light of that. But you had groups like the Quakers or the Anabaptists, and they rejected any form of taking, for example, an oath of office or entering into a vow before God.

It's really important that we understand our own heritage, the things that we're standing on confessionally. They're really coming out of some of these controversies and understanding, no, there is a rightful place for oaths and vows among God's people.

And so in their confessions about 300, 400 years ago, they would delineate, well, what is an oath? What is a vow? What's the difference between them? We need to understand that as we're laying out this foundation.

Before we look at the 1689, just in a moment, here's a rather wonderful little catechism, a question and answer format that was put together by James Fisher. It's known as Fisher's Catechism. It's a catechism that he built out of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, and questions 17 through 31 deal with oaths.

Question 17 says, well, what's an oath? Notice the first thing that's said about it. It is an act of religious worship. We've lost the idea of oaths and vows being part of entering into God's worship, making a commitment, giving a pledge to God, saying, if you move in this way, I will respond in this way.

But this is actually part of worshiping God. An oath is an act of religious worship in which God is solemnly invoked or called upon as a witness for the confirmation of some matter. Question 18, well, why is it said to be an act of religious worship?

Because there is, or there ought to be in every oath, a solemn invocation of the name of God. Deuteronomy 6 .13, you shall fear the Lord your God and shall swear by his name. You shall swear by his name.

We're seeing it again as a positive commandment. The questions go on to that. Question 55, see how massive this catechism is? Question 55, what is a vow? Answer, it's a voluntary and deliberate engagement to God alone, respecting matters of a sacred or religious character.

Next question, what's the difference between an oath and a vow? In an oath, man is generally the other party and God is witness, but in a vow, God himself is always the sole party and himself the witness.

Sam Waldron would put it this way very simply, vows are promises made to the Lord, oaths are promises made before the Lord. The purpose of an oath is confirmation. With the Lord as my witness, I confirm this is what I'm going to do, this is how I'm going to be.

That's an oath. The purpose of an oath is confirmation. The purpose of a vow is commitment. The purpose of an oath is confirmation, but the purpose of a vow made to God and to God alone is commitment, Lord, I'm committing this to you.

That's what Ecclesiastes 5 is interested in. Pay your vow, fulfill your commitment to the Lord. Again, looking at now our own confession, the Second London Confession, they have chapter three devoted to oaths and vows.

They repeat the language from the Westminster, a lawful oath is part of religious worship. In paragraph five, they talk about the vow in this way. A vow, which is not to be made to any creature but to God alone, is to be made and performed with all religious care and faithfulness.

And they quickly go on to say, popish monastical vows of perpetual single life or professed poverty and regular obedience are so far from being degrees of higher perfection or higher holiness, they are superstitious and sinful snares and no Christian ought to entangle himself in them.

So they're saying the kind of vows that were done by those entering into the monasteries, those entering into holy orders, he says no, no, these are not the kind of vows that Christians are to engage in, but rather a vow is a commitment made to God alone and it's to be fulfilled with all care and faithfulness.

But please notice what they're saying there. They're saying a vow is an act of religious worship and is to be made. Isn't that interesting that we just don't think in this way anymore? We just don't think in this way anymore.

I have some reasons why I believe that's the case for next week. So let me just pause and ask the question, do you see making a commitment, making a pledge, making a vow to God as a part of worshiping God?

Vows as a Response to God's Grace

Not a hasty vow, not a foolish, thoughtless kind of vow, but a serious commitment. Lord, you over these many months have done a wondrous thing and you've heard my cry and now I've come to pay my vow. It's going to be different now.

When the Lord intervenes in our life, when He responds in some powerful, perhaps even surprising way, it ought to be an act of worship that we're offering to Him something different in the way we've responded to Him before.

We want to walk in a newness. We want to show that we have rightly received and understood what the Lord has done and we want to magnify Him. We want to glorify Him. We want to serve Him. I think there's something of that.

It's very, very hard to find New Testament examples of this. One that comes to mind that we might look at in more detail next week is Zacchaeus at the end of the sort of regular ministry of Jesus. The last episode of encounter we have before the Passion is Jesus' encounter with Zacchaeus.

And it's Zacchaeus in this incredible response to Jesus' self-invitation. Zacchaeus, come down from there. I'm going to dine at your house. Jesus saw right through him what kind of man he was, a selfish man, a prideful man, a man that had so much pride, was so selfish.

He could steal and enrich himself and justify it. And if he was the scoundrel in the village, it meant nothing to him. At least I've got all the little luxuries surrounding me. Who cares what people think of me?

And Jesus sees all that filth, Zacchaeus hiding in the tree. Come down. I'm going to honor you today. I'm going to make you the center of the village. I'm going to bestow great honor upon you. And Zacchaeus understands the significance of that.

And what does he do as a response? Lord, look, I give half of everything I have to the poor. And if I've defrauded anyone, form a line. You're getting back fourfold. What is that? Notice that that doesn't happen before.

It's not Zacchaeus saying, Lord, who said that? Up here in the trees. Listen, listen, I'll give half of what I have if maybe you'd be willing to come over for dinner. He doesn't do that. It's not bartering.

It's a response to God. You would do this in my life in this way? You would so change my life? You would bestow and risk almost honoring me in front of all of these people? Well, then I'm a changed man.

And here's what I'm going to vow. Here's what I'm going to do. Look, I'm doing it already. These are active verbs. Look, Lord, I'm giving. I'm doing it right now. That's someone who's paying a vow. I think another example could be if we read between the lines.

Paul in 1 Corinthians 9, when he's describing all the rights that the other apostles have that he has deprived himself of, but he says, you know, it's not incumbent upon me to do this. This wasn't necessary for me to be deprived in this way.

Do I not have the rights of the others? No, but this is what I give to the Lord. It's like he's saying, Lord, you saved me in this way? The chief of sinners, someone who blasphemed you, who hated you and hated your people, and you would save me?

It's not enough that I just, well, let me know what I can have because I'm going to cling and get as close to the line as I possibly can. No, this I give sacrificially. I pay my vow to you. I want to give something of myself to you, Lord.

You see that kind of commitment? A vow like that is to be made. A commitment to God is to be made. No one walks away from Ecclesiastes 5, 4 through 7 and says, I'll just never commit anything, and then I'll never be in trouble.

I'll never commit to anything. No, a commitment is to be made. I will go to Zion. I will perform my vow. Lord, you've moved in this way, and here's how I'm responding. Lord, if you move in this way, here's what I promise I will do.

And I will pay that vow, so help me, God. That's an act of worship. What does that require? We're going to look at it in verse 7. It's impossible apart from the fear of God. The fear of God is what allows us to make a vow thoughtfully, carefully, and wisely rather than foolishly, uttering something we can't fulfill and won't fulfill.

There, we're trying to bargain and lay hold of God rather than expressing our faith in God. And so there's a faithless, unfearing kind of way we can rashly commit ourselves in acts of service and devotion.

We're trying to work something out of God, trying to manipulate or gain leverage over God. That's not the idea here. This is a response to God. This is an act of commitment of faith and service. It's behind every missionary biography.

I think every missionary is somehow embarking on that kind of sacrificial lifestyle because they've received a glimpse of the glory of God. And the response is, send me. Send me. Here's what I'm going to do.

You've shown me your glory, and here's what I'm going to do. And I will perform my vow. I will pay my vow. It's a response to the glory of God. It's a response from the fear of God. This is why Christians let their yes be their yes and their no be their no.

And as Jesus explains, whatever is more than this comes from the evil one. Satan is the father of lies. There's no integrity there. A lot of false promises, a lot of empty offers, a lot of words, but they're all just lies.

We let our words be few because in those few words, we want to be faithful, indeligent, faithful servants. We make commitments to the Lord, and by His grace and by His Spirit, we follow through on those commitments.

And where and when we fall short, we hang our head low in contrition. We repent and ask the Lord to forgive us. By the way, this is why covenant renewal is a norm in the Scriptures. This is why as a church, we have a covenant renewal twice a year, because we read the things that we have committed to each other with God as witness and say, we've failed again.

And here we feast and we're reminded that it's not our failure nor even our faithfulness that causes us to abide with you, our God of grace, but it is your faithfulness, your commitment to us. Help us be more faithful.

Help us to pay our vow. That's the idea. Above all, my brethren, James writes, do not swear either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath. Let your yes be your yes, your no be your no, lest you fall into judgment.

That's exactly where Ecclesiastes 5 is going in verses 5, 6, and 7. Why should God destroy the work of your hands? Judgment attends the people of God when they don't pay their vows, when they don't follow through on the commitments they've made to the Lord.

Judgment doesn't just fall upon the people of God, but on the land. You read Hosea 4, the whole land mourns because everyone swears falsely. Everyone invokes the name of God and they never actually walk in the way of God.

He says the whole land mourns. Isn't that true? Don't we see a society where words mean nothing? In fact, even footnotes underneath the asterisk mean nothing unless a lawyer can twist something and make a case out of it.

When you have an increasingly litigious society, you're moving away from business done on a handshake for the sake of relationship or reputation, that's how it used to be, to my own hurt. I shook on it.

I'll take a loss rather than that my name be tarnished or ruin that relationship with the guy down the street. Well, now it's like call my lawyer. You didn't read the fine print. Why several times a year do I have to filter through a 50-page user agreement and everyone just hits accept?

Lord only knows what we're accepting when we do that. Some AI overlord future that we're all willfully voluntarily saying yes to. Doesn't the land mourn? There was a time in our country when there was a general fear of God in society and when people solemnly took the oath of office and they put their hand over the holy word of God and they said this is the office, this is the function that I will perform so help me God, that meant something.

And it raised eyebrows and it shook the foundations of the society if someone scandalized that oath or broke the function of that office. That was the horror. That was the shock. They took an oath to God.

Now the only thing that would raise our eyebrows and cause a shock is if a politician kept their oath. Like what? He actually wasn't corrupt? He didn't do insider stock trading? What? Could there be such a politician as this?

The land mourns because there is no fear of God. People don't follow through on the words. There's nothing that's sworn by. You can see why we've lost it in the society because we've lost it in the church.

The idea of committing something that we pay, that we fulfill, a commitment. And if we do it in that way unto God it trickles out into other areas in our lives. We become men and women of integrity who know what it means to have our yes be our yes and our no be our no.

For James this is at the very heart of what it means to be not just a hearer but a doer of the word. To not be one who draws near to motor mouth but draws near to hear and obey. Pay your vows. Of course we recognize too people of the word are going to be people of their word.

So the first question is do our words have integrity? Do our words have integrity? As you probably know by a handful of sermon illustrations every now and then I like watching old reruns of cops. I don't know why I'm just so fascinated by it.

I'm so fascinated by what people do in a desperate moment to get out of trouble. I think you could do ministerial case studies just by watching reruns of cops but anyway. And what happens a lot when all of a sudden the name is shown to be false and there's warrants and you know usually there's some haggling going on and the suspect in question will say I swear on my mother's life.

I swear officer I swear there's nothing in the trunk. I swear on my children's lives and you're going like oh don't do that. This poor mother these poor children. There's absolutely no integrity in speech at all like that doesn't mean anything.

The only thing that matters is can I get out of this? The one that goes to the house of God foolishly and they're just mounting up words. Look what I'm doing Lord and I'm just gonna you know I promise I'll be like this and I know I said I would change the last thing but this week I'm really gonna change and I just really need things to go this way.

That's not what we're talking about at all. That's someone who has no integrity in their speech. When you come near to the house of God let your words be few. Don't let your heart hastily utter things.

Are you pressed? Are you in trial? Are you in need? Are you facing great oppression? Are you asking for the Lord to provide or deliver? Lord here I am again. Lord will you deliver me? And if you deliver me Lord I will devote myself to prayer in ways I never have.

So deliver me Lord. I want to pay that vow. I want to see your power move. I want my life to be changed. I don't want to keep going in this way anymore. Who is that describing? Someone who's come to the house of God to draw near to God.

As we said last week someone who doesn't view coming to worship as the end but rather views coming to worship as the means to a far greater end. I come to worship to draw near to God. No wonder the ancient worshiper could say I've come near to ask God, to seek God, to thank God, to implore God.

And I want him to move and I've committed myself in this way. And when I come to worship I've come to pay my vows. Can I ask you brother, sister? Was there some way that you committed yourself? That perhaps you've now stumbled and backslid from?

Something you said, look at what the Lord has done. From now on we're going to be doing this. From now on our family's going to be going this way. From now on in our marriage we'll be doing this. You find yourself backslidden.

You find yourself following through. Can I just tell you this morning? Pay your vows. Pay your vows. Follow through on what you committed to the Lord. Don't let Satan pull apart that good intention, that good purpose.

The fruit that was just beginning to shine through it. No wonder there was all sorts of assault and pressure and reasons why you couldn't fulfill. But listen, pay your vow. At your loss, through discomfort, through even suffering, pay your vow.

In these ways God is glorified. In these ways your faith is shining. At my loss I fulfill what I've committed myself to. And so it begs a second question. Is it hard to pay your vow because you're caught up with your comfort?

It's hard to fulfill the commitments we make to the Lord. That usually cost us something. That's why we use it in the language of sacrifice. It's a sacrifice to follow through on our commitments. Lord, in Psalm 15, the psalmist asked, Lord, who can abide in your house?