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Preacher: Ross Macdonald
Scripture: Ecclesiastes 5:2-3
It's good to see so many brave, the blustery Nor 'easter that we've had, or at least they said we would have yesterday into today. Hopefully no one's behind tree branches or in some new gorge that's opened up off 68.
But it's good, as now we head in further in chapter 5. We began chapter 5, verse 1 last week with this idea of approaching the house of God. When you approach the house of God, when you come to gathered worship, draw near and listen.
That's verse 1, and as we'll see, that relates directly to where we're going this morning in verses 2 and 3. I've titled this sermon partly a quote from this passage in verse 2. Let your words be few.
So verses 1 through 7 as a whole hold together our worship of God. Verse 1 again, walk prudently when you go to the house of God. Draw near to hear. Draw near to receive. Draw near to obey. That's all included within that language of hearing.
Rather than give the sacrifice of fools. That's a key word from verses 1 through 7. The way of the fool in wisdom literature. The way of the wise is always in sharp contrast to the way of the fool. Rather than give the sacrifice of fools, draw near to hear.
The immediate context of this whole passage, verses 1 through 7, would suggest a worshiper coming to the temple. If we think of this theme of Solomon behind the wisdom of Ecclesiastes, we think of the one who saw the temple built.
The one who was king and actually oversaw the construction of the dwelling place of God in Jerusalem. And so we can imagine a worshiper approaching the temple to profess a vow. That's very important in verses 4 through 7.
The idea is to make a promise, to commit something to the Lord. And that promise, that commitment would be joined with prayer as well as the offering of a sacrifice. And so we're led, by example, throughout the Scriptures to consider worship as a drawing near to God in order to offer something and receive something.
And the Psalms, just as one example among many, brings us to the very heart of worship. The heart of worship is to acknowledge God, to thank God, and to magnify God in His acts of creation and in His acts of redemption.
That's essentially what the Psalms give to us. There's a lot more than that. There's exceptions to the rule. But the idea is we are taught that we are to offer to God our praise, our thanks, our revel in the fact that He is our Creator.
He has made this world full of its glory, has a purpose for all of its darkness and evil, and is bringing about His redemption first and foremost in the lives of His people and then to the very ends of the earth.
That's the heart of worship. But such worship can ring hollow. Such praise can be empty if we're not rightly responding to God, if we're not rightly relating to Him in worship. And that's the concern of verses 2 and 3 this morning.
The way that our words are simply empty. The way that our worship falls flat. We're not rightly viewing God, rightly relating to Him, rightly responding to Him. So our passage this morning, verses 2 and 3, Do not be rash with your mouth, and let not your heart utter anything hastily before God.
For God is in heaven, and you on earth. Therefore, let your words be few. For a dream comes through much activity, and a fool's voice is known by his many words. We'll look at these verses in two big chunks.
The first chunk is limiting words. That's the title of the sermon. Let your words be few. Limiting words. Do not be rash with your mouth. Let not your heart utter anything hastily before God. As we said, this flows out of verse 1 last week.
We draw near to listen far before we draw near to speak. Draw near to hear. Draw near to react and respond and receive. This is part of being quick to listen, slow to speak. Not being rash with our mouth.
We've actually been reflective. We understand the significance of what we are about to do. This is a solemn act that human beings offer to their Creator. This is a time of sacred worship to a holy God.
And if you'd notice, words then must follow. Words are not the act, but the reaction of proper worship. So we begin with acknowledgement, with reflection, and then we react with words. That's very, very important.
Worship does not begin with the act of words, but all of worship is essentially the reaction of words. We respond to who God is, to what He's done, and what He's promised to do. John Goldengay points out, words have a prominent place in worship.
You can just take your bulletin. I brought one up here just for this reason. And just take a look at our order of service here, and imagine what our worship service would be like without words. What would we have to cross out if we did not have words in worship?
Could we do a call to worship? No. Opening hymn? No. Any of the hymns? No. Corporate prayer? No. Scripture reading? No. Sermon? No. Interaction? No. Preparation and observance in the institution of the Lord's Supper?
No. Closing hymn? Prayer? The whole worship service is words. And so the idea is we're responding to God with our words. Worship, as one said, is worth-ship. We recognize, we acknowledge, we magnify the worthiness of God.
We react to His worthiness with words. That's worship. Words of praise. Words of song. Words of celebration. Words of thanksgiving. Words of contrition. Words of lamentation. Words of stinging conviction.
Words of calming forgiveness. Words of peace that is rested on our soul. Words of encouragement to keep going in the Christian life. Worship is full of words. The danger is when those words take on a life of their own and become slowly but surely separated from rightly relating to and reacting to who God is and what He's done.
This is what it means to be rash with our mouths. This is what it means to have a hasty heart. I love that language there. Let not your heart utter anything hastily before God. That's a beautiful little twist there.
Because the mouth, as Jesus taught us in Matthew 12, is just the overflow of what's going on in your heart. You want to know what's in your heart? Pay attention to your mouth. That's the idea. So don't let your hearts utter things hastily.
The mouth does not have a mind of its own. The mouth is always tied to the condition of our hearts. When my heart is not rightly relating to and responding to God, I'm prone to offer empty praise, thoughtless reactions.
I'll just read words on a page or words in a devotion. I'll flip pages through Scripture looking for something to interest me. There's not a proper engagement with God. And that is false worship. That's the concern of these verses.
What's right worship? Jay Packer points to this great sermon by the Puritan Stephen Charnock, a sermon titled Spiritual Worship, based on John 4, 24. And this is how Charnock defines the heart of true worship.
Worship, he says, is an act of the understanding. We have to know something. We have to grasp something. Something must be known. It's the act of understanding and applying itself to the knowledge of the excellency of God, the actual thoughts of His majesty.
Notice we have not got to the lips yet. Something's happening in our minds, in our memory, in our imagination, in our recounting, in our conscience. That's beginning to affect our heart. Our heart now is going to begin to frame speech because when you're thinking and reflecting on the excellency of God, the heart will utter forth praise.
You cannot experience something glorious or wonderful and restrain praise. As soon as that experience of bliss or glory or pleasure or wonder hits your heart, it will come out of your mouth. When you have Thanksgiving dinner and you finally take that first bite of something you've labored for, your mouth will not remain silent.
No one just shovels it in and just blandly looks. It's like, oh, and then you've got to praise it with the people. Oh, this is really good. Who put the marshmallows on the sweet potato? That was great.
You have to praise it. Praise is a spontaneous response to something worthy of praise. But it's not just in the understanding. It's also an act of the will. Charnock says, the soul adores, reverences His majesty, is ravished with His kindness, embraces His goodness, enters itself into an intimate communion with this most lovely object and pitches all affection on Him.
How many of you came here this morning for that? That's true worship. Something's happening in my mind. As I reflect, as I remember, as I recount who He is, what He's done in me and for me, as I look around and experience the wonder of what He has made, my heart begins to melt, praise begins to frame in my mouth.
I'm now casting my will and my mind and my soul upon Him. And this is in sharp contrast to what, in our translation, Proverbs calls the prating fool. The one who can sit right next to the one who's lost in wonder and love and praise and say, yeah, no, amen, yeah, it is amazing.
And they're just motor-mouthing their way through worship. They haven't experienced any of those things, but they compare it and mimic the experience of those things. A prating fool. And Proverbs has a lot to say,.
Wisdom literature has a lot to say about the use of our mouth, the danger of our words. Jesus says every careless word will be held against us in judgment. Proverbs 10, 14, in fact, much of chapter 10 revolves around the mouth.
Wise people store up knowledge, but the mouth of the fool is near destruction. You see right there in that passage, the idea is a wise person is not motor-mouthing their way through life. They're what?
They're storing up knowledge. How do you store up knowledge? You listen. And you learn. So the wise is not hasty in their speech. They're listening, they're reflecting, they're remembering, they're storing up knowledge.
The prating fool, the mouth of the foolish, he can't learn, he can't receive, he can't remember, and that's why he's near destruction. He was never able to slow down his mind, his anxiety, his thoughts to actually receive from the Lord.
The lips of the wise, 15 .7, disperse or spread knowledge, but the heart of the fool does not do so. The idea is the wise who has stored up that knowledge now can spread that knowledge, disperse that knowledge.
I want to tell you about this thing that I've reflected on, that I'm digging at, that I'm learning about, but the fool doesn't do that. The fool has the memory span of a goldfish. They leave and by 12 .15 p .m. on a Sunday, everything is already out of the ear.
They can't remember anything. 10 .19, in the multitude of words, sin is not lacking, but he who restrains his lips is wise. So the idea is that where there's an abundance of speech, where there's sort of this thoughtless filling of the time with empty words, there's going to be no wisdom.
There's going to be folly. In fact, sin is always creeping at the door. In abundance of words, there is a great danger of sin. You may not be righteous or virtuous just because you're a man or a woman of few words, but you're probably a lot less prone to sins when you're a man or a woman of few words.
Again, it's every careless word that we're held to. This should be a warning that when we're hanging out with the guys or ladies, perhaps young ladies on the phone, you have to be very careful. Where there's an abundance of words, where there's three-hour phone conversations, sin is not lacking.
You have to be very mindful about these things. Wisdom is shown in the restraint of our speech and our ability to actually compose our thoughts and muzzle our words. We're thinking of our brother now departed to Georgia.
I think he was, I'll say this because he's not here, I think he was a tremendous example of that. I think both him and his wife were a tremendous example of that kind of wise restraint. And some of you maybe felt like I do.
If you were around him for more than an hour in conversation, you would feel like a prating fool because he seemed to have a restraint and would search for the wisest thing to say. The tongue of the wise in this way, Proverbs 15, 2, uses knowledge rightly.
I'm not just here to blabber things. I don't open my mouth to unload everything that I've learned because I want to make an impression on people. I know how to use knowledge rightly. Jesus, of course, being the master of this, who knew more of the Scriptures than Jesus?
And yet he has far more questions to ask than comments to make. He never puts his knowledge of God's Word on display to build himself up or gain traction or a following. He actually understands how to use that limitless knowledge given to him in the Spirit rightly and wisely.
What's the pressure point? What's the thing that must be said? What's the skeleton key to get out of that Sadducean trap or Pharisaical trap? What's the pressure point of the conscience in this person who's come to me?
He sees through it all. He sees through the rich young ruler. He sees through the way we use verbal gymnastics to soothe and assuage our conscience. The tongue of the wise uses knowledge rightly, but listen to the mouth of the fool.
It pours forth foolishness. That sounds a lot like verse 3. The voice of a fool is known by many words. It's just pouring out. No restraint. Zac Eswine in his book, Recovering Eden, puts it this way. Foolery loves religious talk.
Fools possess a religion of the unstoppable mouth. Foolish churchgoers have very little tolerance for quiet. They always chatter. They perform and multiply their God talk as if God would be impressed with the more that they say.
Listen to this. They are first draft people. I haven't even thought through what I'm saying. It's halfway out of my mouth. That's a first draft person. What a great... Some of you children in school, you never submit your first draft.
No, no, no, no. You never submit your first draft. Engineers and architects know the first draft is never the final draft. Imagine approaching our speech, our words, about God and to God and to one another in that same way.
I've got to compose this. I need to be careful. How can I use knowledge rightly? How can I bless and edify and build up? I know my tongue can destroy. I know a little spark from this mouth can cause a forest to engulf in flame.
I don't want to be a first draft person. And of course, the person who is pouring out folly is an impatient person. Time is of the essence. We've got to go, go, go. There's always more to say because there's always more to do.
It takes patience to be able to slow down and be quick to listen but slow to speak. We'll be coming back to this theme in some months in Ecclesiastes 10. And it'll be a sort of litmus test of how well we've done in light of this passage and perhaps the passage next week.
Ecclesiastes 10 and verses 12 through 14 puts it this way. The words of a wise man's mouth are gracious but the lips of a fool swallow him up. I think the idea is that the fool consumes himself. His own folly, as it were, devours him.
The words of his mouth begin with foolishness but the end of his talk is raving madness. He keeps going and going and it's so far gone he just keeps going and now he just sounds like a madman. A fool multiplies words even though no man knows what is to come.
Who can tell him what comes after him? The idea is now we venture into things unknown and even unknowable. Now there's just absolute fantasy and speculation and assumption and prejudice. He's gone from folly to madness.
This you know, James says. And the question is, do we know it? This you know, my beloved brethren. Everyone must be quick to hear and slow to speak. Everyone must be quick to hear and slow to speak. Cautious speech, composed words honor God.
That's true always. That is especially true in worship. And so we come to our second chunk in verses two and three. We've gone from limiting words to locating worship. Look how this verse elaborates itself.
Why should we limit our words? Why should we compose our speech? The answer is given right here in verse two. Because or for God is in heaven and you on earth. That's the first reason given as to why we should limit our words and compose our thoughts especially when we approach the house of God.
God is in heaven. You are on earth. We're certainly here confronted with the sovereignty of God. The mystery of God. That's something that Ecclesiastes is very concerned to put out front. But of course by pointing to heaven we're indicating the dwelling place of God.
God is in heaven. Now please remember where we were in verse one. When you draw near the house of God. So where's God dwelling in his house? Well thinking of Solomon he's dwelling in the temple. He's dwelling in Jerusalem.
He's present with his people. He's tabernacling among them. But what does Ecclesiastes 2 say? God is in heaven. So there's a danger in making it so comfortable and easy to approach God. He's somehow always here and he sees it all and that's actually a very comfortable thought for me.
And we burst that bubble with this thought. No, you're on earth in a profound way. God is in heaven. We're going to come back to this. This is of course the balance that we must hold together in every act of worship which is the transcendence of God.
The fact that he is high and far above us. He is not like us. His ways are not our ways. We cannot make him like a man writ large. But then also his imminence. He's Emmanuel. God with us. God near us.
God dwelling in our midst. So when we read God is in heaven and we are on earth, we're reminded that for a book looking at life under the sun, life in all of its crooked disparities under the sun, there is a God, there is a creator and a redeemer who is above the sun, beyond the sun.
He dwells in the highest of the heavens. Who is like him? That's the first thought of all worship. To disrupt the comfortable familiarity of our God. You have to begin there. Only then can you begin to tread carefully without sandals and bowed face to Emmanuel.
His majesty exceeds our highest thoughts of glory. Can we wrap the tentacles of our imagination around eternality? Omniscience. Omnipotence. All-knowing. All-powerful. Without beginning. Without end.
Who is like God? Of course, our words need to respond to this, react to this. We come to Him first and foremost as creatures to our Creator. Please do not begin with the sacrificial lamb. Please begin as a creature entirely dependent upon the Creator who's now made Himself known to you as your Savior and Redeemer in the person and work of Christ.
You begin with the fact that you are a creature. Who are you? When we're asking the question, who is like Him, the follow-up question that stands with it is, who are you? Who are you? A creature. An image-bearer.
A human being made in the likeness of God. Made by God for God. Yet disrupted and slain by the fall into sin. We're talking about the transcendence of God. You begin with the fact that you're a creature to draw near to the fact that God is your Creator.
And then the wonder that the Creator would send His only Son in our likeness to take to Himself a human nature, to show us what a human being was meant to be and to bear our burdens and our diseases and our impurities upon Himself and to take the judgment and curse of God upon His body on the tree so that we might have salvation in God and be able to dwell with Him as He always intended.
You begin with transcendence and you come down to imminence. But you can't end at imminence. Imminence must give way to transcendence again. In that scene, the imminence, like some cosmic funnel, must give way to the vision where the 24 elders and the 12 foundation stones and a host innumerable are casting crowns before Him and bowing out as Sephirim are crying, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty.
That's imminence giving way to transcendence. He's never comfortable. He's never familiar. You can never put God in a box or in your pocket. He's not driving the steering wheel as a co-captain in your life.
This is the beauty that Moses realized in Deuteronomy 4. Holding together as worship must hold together the fact that God is far away and very near, far transcendent and in our midst. He says this, Deuteronomy 4 .39, The Lord is God in heaven above and on earth beneath.
The danger is that we, for different reasons at different times, think of Him in one extreme or the other. Worship must hold them together. We're praying for a young girl who's being received into the errant Roman Catholic Church this morning.
Generally speaking, when Roman Catholics convert toward an evangelical understanding of the gospel, what happens is for the first time in their lives they encounter the imminence of God. It was like Luther's transformation when he believed in the transcendence of God and that transcendence, that majesty that was so far above him and so unlike him was like a guillotine hovering over his neck.
Yeah, God is high and holy and lofty and that's a terror to me. As he reflected later in life, I hated God, even though I was a monk devoting every spare minute to His service. That's transcendence run amok.
That's transcendence without imminence. But then the danger is that sometimes those evangelical conversions go astray in their own way. Now he's so imminent that he's comfortable, he's friendly, he's familiar.
Jesus told me to go get a chocolate frosted donut and so I did that today. Whatever actually I'm okay with, Jesus is okay with. He's so near and comfortable and he endorses whatever I do. If I feel it's good, he feels it's good too.
You see the challenge of worship here. We actually have to wrestle with how we worship a holy God who is transcendent and yet near. In other words, we need to have the humility of a creature approaching the Creator and yet also the comfort and peace of a child approaching a Father.
A beloved, heavenly Father. You have to wrestle with that in worship without going to either extreme so that God remains God in heaven and on earth beneath. In other words, we dare not domesticate the worship of God.
This is the key to understanding why you should let your words be few. When God is comfortable to you, you'll let your mouth run without thought, without hesitation. But when God is so lofty that He perhaps is against you because He's so unknowable, you wouldn't even know what to say or how to say it.
You're not relating to Him then, so how could you react to Him with praise and worship? To let our words be few is to wrestle with the transcendence and imminence of our God, our Creator, our Redeemer, our Maker and our Heavenly Father, our Savior and the lover of our souls.
We don't treat Him lightly. We don't treat His worship lightly. That means we don't have careless, flippant speech, especially not in the house of God. If ever there was a place to learn how to guard our mouths and compose our thoughts, it ought to be here.
But there's something in the human fallen nature that always wants to make God comfortable, place God somehow on equal footing with us. We want God to be like us. We want God to think like we think and act like we act.
We want God to rubber stamp our ambitions and ideas because wouldn't He want this too? Wouldn't He want me to have my life go in this way? In all these ways, we can begin to bear resentment against God because we don't actually want Him to be God.
And that affects our worship then. Well, I'm only here because I'm really hoping that my life will go in this way and I really want these things and if I keep doing this, maybe that'll work. Is that any different than paganism?
It's another way of reducing God. There's an impulse in fallen human nature to reduce God. Do you see how powerful this verse is? God is in heaven and you are on earth. When you were driving here this morning, did you peer through the clouds and think of a realm that's beyond human sight?
And think there's a place that only the Maker dwells? He spoke everything that is into its being. There's no place you can go. Sheol itself could not hide you from His presence. Who can enter in? Who can behold the glory of the Lord face to face?
We want to reduce Him. We want to denigrate His majesty. We want to have comfortable thoughts that don't actually provoke us or cause us to tremble. But Christian worship is always a joyful and trembling activity.
Never so uncomfortable that you're not joyful, but never so comfortable that you don't tremble. That's Christian worship. Didn't Jesus teach us to pray Ecclesiastes 5, 2, and 3 in His own way? He teaches, Our Father who is in heaven.
You begin with the transcendence of God. But then how does that prayer unfold? He has His eye on the sparrow. Help me today to dodge the darts of the evil one. Help me to persevere through trial and temptation.
Give me my daily bread that I can eat and help me to be grateful for the way that you've provided for me. You go from, again, transcendence to eminence. But then back to transcendence. Thine is the glory and the kingdom and the power, at least as early Christian liturgy would have it.
Jesus warned about this in the Sermon on the Mount. If you remember, in Matthew 6, He said, When you pray, don't use vain repetitions. Don't have hollow speech and empty words. The pagans think that if they have really, really long prayers, that means that their prayers will be heard by God.
But that's not how it works. A heartfelt prayer could be a sentence long, and that prayer is heard by God. My child in need, my daughter, if she runs to me in need, she doesn't have to compose some presidential speech.
She could literally just say one word and my heart is there. She could just say, help. That's all that's needed. Sometimes the most sincere and faithful prayer you can give to God as a believer is, Lord, help me.
Right now, help me. Help me right now. What fathers? That wasn't enough? I need more elaboration. I need eloquent words. I need vain repetitions. You can let your words be few, not just because God is transcendent, but because God is imminent as well.
What does Jesus go on to say in that very passage? Your heavenly Father knows what you need. You don't have to convince Him or twist His arm. He also knows better than you what you need. So sometimes waiting for prayer is the answer to prayer.
Blessed are those who wait upon the Lord. Listen to this. The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him. It is good that one should hope and wait quietly. Ooh, there's that key word.
For the salvation of the Lord, it is good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth. Let him sit alone and keep silent because God has laid it on him. Do you notice what's being said there? It doesn't say it's good for those who wait for Him and keep heaping up words and have these really long speeches and they fill their mouth and they let it run because they're really struggling with the yoke that's on them and they're really suffering.
No, what does it say? You're not waiting on the Lord when your mouth is running in that way. You're trying to harness control. You're trying to effect a change. That's not good. This is what's good. Hoping and waiting on Him quietly.
Let your words be few. God is in heaven. You're on earth. As we follow the idea of King Solomon, this idea of Ecclesiastes' wisdom, we're brought not only to the Proverbs that we looked at in Proverbs 10 or Proverbs 15, but also to the way that Solomon himself prayed in the way he would encourage us to pray.
And I just want to point out to you when Solomon dedicates the temple of God in prayer to God, it is not a short prayer. So letting your words be few does not mean that you should only have short, little, succinct prayers.
And it's not even a dig against someone who has a personality to be a little more, shall we say, verbatious. This is, in other words, not a ringing endorsement for the strong, stoic type that let out three words.
Some of us speak more than others. I certainly can raise my hand to that. Some of us speak less than others. I don't think this verse is necessarily against or behind either of those positions because letting your words be few in approaching God in worship with words, in 1 Kings 8, Solomon, from verses 22 to 53, has one of the most elaborate and lengthy prayers in all of Scripture.
We can think of Ezra and Nehemiah and some of the great long prayers like in Nehemiah 8 and 9. This is nine paragraphs of prayer in our translation. Nine paragraphs of prayer. So the idea is it doesn't count unless it's short.
The idea is the sincerity. That it's not mindless. It's not empty. It's composed. It's reflective. It's responsive because there's a right relationship between worshiper and the one to be worshipped. I'm just going to show you the beginning of this because it holds it all together.
God is in heaven. We're on earth. A right relationship to God that allows me to reflect and react to who He is and what He's done. Solomon stood before the altar of the Lord in the presence of all the assembly of Israel, spread out his hands toward heaven.
Now we're locating worship. He spread out his hands toward heaven. He was amidst of the assembly, all the builders and all the worshippers, the priests in all their glittering garments. The choruses of praise, the lyres and timbrels.
All of that was spread before him, but he wasn't addressing them. He was addressing God. He spread out his hands to heaven, and he prayed thus, Lord God of Israel, there is no God in heaven above or on earth below like you.
Is that not Ecclesiastes 5 .2? God is in heaven. We are on the earth. There is no God in heaven or on earth like you, who keeps covenant and mercy with your servants who walk before you with all of their hearts.
You have kept what you have promised your servant David, my father. You have both spoken with your mouth, and you have fulfilled it with your hand, as it is this day. Therefore, Lord God of Israel, keep what you promised your servant David, saying, you shall not fail to have a man sit before me on the throne of Israel, only if your sons take heed to their way, and they walk before me as you have walked before me.
When you go to the house of God, guard your steps carefully. God is in heaven. We're channeling into this prayer of 1 Kings 8. And now I pray, O God of Israel, let your word come true which you've spoken to your servant.
But will God indeed dwell on earth? There's no God in heaven but you. There's no God like you. Could that God who made all that is dwell on earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain you.
How much less this temple which I have built. You see? Transcendence. There's no God like you. Funneling toward imminence. But you've made a promise to my dad. And if I, as his son, walk in this way, you will fulfill that promise even through me.
You'll be back to transcendence. If the heaven of heavens can't contain you, what's this little stone building going to do? You see how he's engaged? He's rightly relating to God in his transcendence and his imminence.
So his words are worship. And yet, regard the prayer of your servant in his supplication. Listen to my cry, the prayer which is being prayed before you today, that your eyes will be open toward the temple both night and day, toward the place where you said, my name will be there.
Here in heaven, your dwelling place. And when you hear, forgive. I'll just end there. We're just at verse 30. It goes on all the way to verse 53. Do you see how we keep going between transcendence and imminence?
God who is so high and lofty, and yet he's near. Will you hear? Will you look upon me? Will you hear in heaven your dwelling place? And when you hear, will you forgive me? Help me walk in the way of my Father, and let me find the fruit of your promise?
That's transcendence. Do you notice that for Solomon, the nearness of God is never a reason for him to not call upon God? Oh, I think that's a real danger for us as believers. That God we know is always near.
We tell our kids, he's always watching, he's always listening. There's nothing he cannot see. Mom and dad might not be in the room, they might not be downstairs, but God always is. He's always with you.
And you have to stand before him someday. The only way you could bear to stand before a God like him is sheltered under the sacrifice of our Savior. But yet sometimes we make God so near, so comfortable, we domesticate his worship so much that we think there's never a reason to call upon him.
Well, he's near, so he sees it and he knows it, so why should I pray, and why should I speak, and why should I cry out in this way? It's interesting how many conversions occur when the person who is convinced God is so far away that they have to yell out their cry for help.
God is in the heaven of heavens. I've always known he's there. I've always dreaded that distance. I know how far above he is, and I've tried to keep my mind and my eyes on the earth, and they cry out, Lord, help!
Lord, save! Lord, forgive! And they don't realize in that moment he's more near to them than they could ever imagine. His nearness is what has softened their heart and opened their eyes. Sometimes we get so comfortable with the idea of God's nearness that we don't cry out for help or for mercy or for forgiveness in the ways that we ought to.
How many times have you this week audibly said, Lord, help! Lord, forgive me! You see, his nearness is never a reason to not call upon him, just as his transcendence is never a reason to have flippant speech.
He's so far away. Surely this reading means something to him. No, we wrestle with the transcendence. We wrestle with the imminence. Can I just guide you through a few more passages as we come to a close?
1 Timothy 6, beginning in verse 15, He who is the blessed and only potentate, in other words, the one who alone has power, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, who alone has immortality dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen nor even can see.
To him be honor and everlasting power. That's the transcendence of God. Paul is stoking Timothy. Never domesticate the worship of God. You've got a busy and difficult ministry there. You're a young man.
You're about to get mowed down by all these suitors in the house of God. They're despising you because of your youth. You cannot afford to react against them and keep the worship at that level. Remember who it is that you gather to.
He dwells in unapproachable light. To him be honor and praise. That's your job, Timothy. Think of Paul in Acts 17 as he's preaching to the Orophagists, this ragtag group of philosophers and orators there in Athens.
And he says, Therefore the one whom you worship without knowing, him I proclaim to you. You believe in transcendent God. Ancients were wise enough to know all the way up until the so-called enlightenment, what we would call the endarkenment, that of course there must be something other than what we can see.
Something has to come from nothing eventually. So the wise philosophers that built the very tectonic plates of Western understanding and reason that made the process that led to the enlightenment possible, he recognizes you understand transcendence, but you don't know God.
So let me help you know him, God who made the world and everything in it. He is the Lord of heaven and earth, and he does not dwell in temples made with hands, nor is he worshiped with men's hands, as though he needed anything, since he gives to all life, breath, and everything.
That's transcendence, but look at where that funnels. Eminence. He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on the face of the earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times, the boundaries of their dwellings, that they would seek the Lord, and the hope that they might grope for him and find him, and he is not far from them.
Eminence. You've been searching for the eternal form. You've been looking for that which is peerless and unapproachable, and let me tell you, that very one is also near you. Has put himself so near that he would be found by you.
Desires to be known to you. In him we live and move and have our being. Transcendence. Eminence. Where can I go from your spirit? David says. Where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend into heaven, you're there.
If I roll up my blanket in Sheol, behold, you're there. If I could take the wings of the morning and dwell to the uttermost parts of the sea, what is that? That's transcendence. But where does Psalm 139 go?
Even there your hand will lead me. Eminence. The righteous cry out. The Lord hears, delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart. It's always God's transcendence funneling toward his eminence.
We read it responsibly at the very start of our service. His mercy reaches to the heavens, even to the clouds. We're starting with the mercy that's showered down upon me and that mercy has no limit. It returns all the way up to the source.
That's the idea. Listen again to Jaya Packer reflecting on Stephen Charnock's sermon about true worship. Packer writes, Charnock goes on to show that spiritual worship is performed only by the Spirit's act of help.
How are we going to actually worship a worthy God engaging and trying to hold together his transcendence and his eminence, his distance and his nearness, his eternality and his proximity? We cannot do it without the Spirit of God.
Charnock says somewhere in that sermon, dead men offer dead worship. You have to be made alive by the Spirit of God if you would worship God. So you need the Spirit. And what does the Spirit do in helping us engage God in worship?
Well, the Spirit brings us to a singleness of mind. So he says the Spirit's act of help brings sincerity and singleness of heart. Charnock in his sermon calls it unitedness. Packer says a better understanding of that would be concentration.
Some of you are distracted as you're doodling on the sides of your bulletin. You realize you need the Spirit's help for concentrating in worship. You cannot do what worship requires without the Spirit of God.
He says a spiritual worshiper actually aspires in everything to know God. Listen to this. This is, if you forget everything else, please hold on to this. To desire worship as an end is carnal. Just pause there.
To think, yeah, we're coming here because it's a worship service, this is what we do on Sundays, I'm going to do that, hear a message, it might be helpful, it might encourage me a little bit, and that's that, and then I'll call it my week.
I've just come here because the end of what I'm doing here right now is coming to worship. In other words, gathering to worship, worship is the end of everything we're doing. And Charnock rightly says no, to desire worship as an end is carnal, it's fleshly.
To desire it as a means, gathering here to be among the people and to hear things and to feel encouraged, no, no, no, gathering here is not the end, it's a means. To desire it as a means is an act in it to commune with God.
That is spiritual. That is what the Spirit will bring about. That is the fruit of a Spirit-filled life. Approaching our Creator. Funneling transcendence toward imminence. The whole idea here is I've come to worship that I might draw near to listen, to hear, to reflect, to wonder, to respond, to offer words filled from Scripture, filled in song, filled from testimony.
I'm here to draw near to God. There is a difference between drawing near to the house of God and drawing near to God. Far be it from us that we come on Sundays to simply accomplish this. The whole point of this is to draw near to God.
Am I going to commune with God through worship, through words that I carefully reflect upon and compose? Am I letting my words be few in this way? Let me close with a few questions. What difference would it make in your approach to worship beginning with transcendence and then allowing that transcendence to draw you into the almost unthinkable thought of God's closeness, of God's nearness to us?
How can we as parents help our children understand things like infinity, eternity, all power, all knowledge? How can we help them understand they are on a plot line that had a beginning and has an end?
How can we begin with the transcendence of who God is when at the very essence of God is something unapproachable, unknowable? It simply devolves into mystery for human contemplation. What does it mean to approach worship with transcendence and allow that worship to draw us toward communing with our God in Christ by the Spirit?
And then what effect does our words have? Have you consciously made an effort to compose your speech today? Have you mindlessly muttered things that were printed to read or words on a page? Can you remember any phrase, any stanza, or any line of any of the hymns that we sang to make it your own song to God, to make it your own confession and act of worship?
Can you remember any of the things that we sang today? Can you remember any of the words that were offered in public prayer? Have you slowed your mind to realize that God is in heaven and you are approaching a holy God who is to be worshiped not lightly, but with great gravity?
And do you recognize that your mouth is the sacrifice that an ancient worshiper would bring, that we no longer come with calves or lambs or turtle doves for that reason, but rather God is desiring the very words from our mouth to be a sacrifice, a sweet-smelling aroma to Him?
If you don't believe me, let's just look at an Old Testament passage and a New Testament passage to prove the point, and then we'll close here. Hosea 14, verse 2. This is speaking of the restoration that Israel had awaited for.
And the prophet is depicting what that restoration will look like. Hosea 14, chapter 2. O Israel, return to the Lord your God. You have stumbled because of your iniquity. Take words with you. Return to the Lord.
Say to Him, Take away all iniquity. Receive us graciously. We will offer the sacrifices of our lips. The word sacrifices there is the word calves. What is the prophet relaying about this time of restoration?
Of God forgiving the people? We're not coming to You like we used to, as the writer of Hebrews would say, as if the blood of bulls and goats could take away sin. We understand that You are the One who's forgiven.
You've appointed a sacrifice. When You save us and restore us in this way, we'll make sacrifice. It will be the fruit of our mouth. It will be the offering of our lips. It will be reactive, responsive reflection on who You are and what You've done.
That's the sacrifice I bring to You. Have you made that sacrifice today? Or have you had many words like a fool without thought or reflection or pause? If I read along, if I sing the tune, if I'm distracted, if I'm not asking the Spirit to help me because this is an act of worship and devotion, are you not a fool according to Ecclesiastes 5?
Hebrews 13, 14 and 15. The writer of Hebrews is describing the difference between the city of God and that former city which seemed to have the appearance of godliness, but not its substance, not its power.
For here we have no continuing city, but we seek the One to come. Therefore by Him, that is by Christ, let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God. What's the sacrifice? The sacrifice is praise.
And then he defines it further. That is the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name. You didn't realize that you came just like an ancient worshiper, but instead of carrying a calf, you come with words, reflective words, responsive words, relating to a holy God who has made you and who has redeemed you.
So for this reason, do not be rash with your mouth. Let not your heart utter anything hastily before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore, let your words be few. Amen? Let's pray.
Father, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You, Lord, that You receive and accept and are even pleased by such unreflective, unresponsive, motor-mouthed, empty-phrased, mimicked worship such as ours.
And that it's acceptable to You and even a pleasure to You because You receive it through the finished work of Your Son, our Savior. And His blood cleanses even our failing worship. Thank You for Him, Lord.
Thank You for sending Him to be our sacrifice. Thank You for the love that You've poured out in our lives through Him. And Lord, forgive us for not taking the time to reflect and prepare and compose our thoughts.
And even now, Lord, send Your Spirit to help us concentrate as we again hear Your Word and respond to it by taking the symbols of His broken body and poured out blood. As we again rehearse and indeed celebrate the fact that there is forgiveness with You and Your mercy extends to the heavens.
Help us not just this afternoon, but Lord, for the days to come to put a guard over our ways and indeed a guard over our tongue that we would not be a fool with many words, thoughtless speech, that we would not speak as ones who are not held to account, that Lord, we would be mindful of the flamethrower tongue we have that the Apostle James warned us about.
So let our words be few. Whether we're more talkative than others or not, let us remember and approach You and each other knowing that You are in heaven and we are on earth. And You alone are worthy of our worship and our praise.
And so bless us in these ways, we praise. In Jesus' name and for His sake, Amen.