WATCH YOUR STEP! (2)

(Ecclesiastes 5:1-12)

"To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools..." (v1)

Ecclesiastes has been teaching us that the only solution to life's futility and emptiness is a relationship with God. But approaching God is a hazardous business, fraught with danger. It is to be undertaken with great care. We saw last week that there are many wrong ways ("the sacrifice of fools") of approaching God. Such ways are very common in our world and share one characteristic: they seek to manipulate God and bend him to our own purposes on our own terms. These wrongful approaches to God are without exception foolish, ignorant and wicked, provoking the wrath and judgement of God. They must be avoided at all costs.

So how are we to approach God? Our text (v1) tells us what is better than the sacrifice of fools. It is: "to draw near to listen..." The "house of God" (v1a) is the place where God reveals himself to humankind. It stands for the revelation of God (see Genesis 28:17). When we draw near to God, therefore, we do so on the basis that he is a God who has chosen to speak and so reveal himself to humankind. On that basis, our relationship with God must start with us listening to what he has to say. The word 'listen' in the original language carries a double meaning. It means to hear and also to heed.

And the Preacher argues powerfully for such an approach. As ever, he is contending from the point of view of the secularist. He so adduces two arguments for listening to God in v2 that the secularist cannot deny: "...God is in heaven and you are on earth." Most people in the world who believe in God would agree with the notion that God is in Heaven. And everyone in the world would agree that they themselves are on earth. These are not difficult concepts to grasp or accept. Ecclesiastes simply puts those two incontrovertible ideas together and, given the contrast they make, simply poses the questions: Who should be doing the talking? And who should be doing the listening? It would the very height of arrogance and folly to suppose that given those relative positions we should be doing the talking and God should be doing the listening. Our relationship with God can only be established on the basis of our hearing and heeding what God himself has said.

And now we can see that this basis for establishing a relationship with God (God speaking and us listening) is the very opposite of "the sacrifice of fools" that Ecclesiastes has so witheringly described. Of course it is natural for human-beings to want to approach God on the basis of their own felt needs and an agenda they have formulated themselves. But such an approach, in the light of what Ecclesiastes has pointed out to us, must be arrogant folly. Evangelicalism is not therefore one element of a rich spectrum of acceptable churchmanship traditions. Evangelicalism (the belief that we can only approach God in response to his 'evangel' - his Gospel) is therefore the only valid means of establishing a relationship with God. God is in heaven and we are on earth. We are not to do the speaking but the listening - and God is there as a source of revelation - not just a sympathetic ear.

And when we do listen, we discover needs that we never knew we had - vital needs that transcend any earthly agenda. God tells us that we are by nature objects of his wrath and doomed to eternal destruction. He tells us that in Christ he himself paid the penalty of our sins in our place on our behalf. He tells us that we can lay claim to this invaluable benefit by grace through faith and so inherit eternal life as his adopted children. These truths are not to be found in the agenda of the world. It is therefore only through hearing and heeding this message from God that we can approach God. It is only through faith in Christ's death on the cross in our place that we can have a relationship with God. Any other basis for such a relationship is a "sacrifice of fools" .

This principle applies to the Christian believer too. Of course God delights to hear our prayers. But we should never forget the basis on which our relationship with God is founded. If our prayers are simply attempts to strong-arm God into serving our personal agenda, then we are surely getting things back to front. It is God who should set our agenda. We should be bending ourselves to his will, not vice versa. It is his purposes that our lives should be serving, not our own. And the basis for that must be listening to what he has to say concerning his will for our lives. The test to apply to ourselves is this: Are we truly willing to have our lives changed when we engage with God? Do we even see that as a possibility? Or do we simply try to get out of God what we think we need according to our own wishes? If that's the case, it's time we listened again to the revelation of his Word and rediscovered God's true purposes for our lives.

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