“When the son of David was king in Jerusalem, he was known to be very wise, and he said:
- Nothing makes sense! Everything is nonsense. I have seen it all – nothing makes sense!
- What is there to show for all of our hard work here on this earth?
- People come, and people go, but still the world never changes.
- The sun comes up, the sun goes down; it hurries right back to where it started from.
- The wind blows south, the wind blows north; round and round it blows over and over again.
- All rivers empty into the sea, one by one the rivers return to their source.
- All of life is far more boring than words could ever say. Our eyes and our ears are never satisfied with what we see and hear.
Someone might say, Here is something new! But it happened before, long before you were born.
No one who lived in the past is remembered anymore, and everyone yet to be born will be forgotten too.”
(Ecclesiastes 1:1-11 CEV)
INTRODUCTION
No other book in the canon of the Scriptures – at least from this preacher’s viewpoint – deals more candidly with life and the way things are (and apparently always have been) than does Ecclesiastes. I have shared the first eleven verses of Chapter as my textural reading and I will use Verse 9 for my topic. But first, I need to preface that with some things that will set the stage for these words that poured out of Solomon’s heart as he evaluated his life and life in general.
For a long time the Holy Spirit has been making it clear to me that all of the conditions of this world – and in the religious community – that are so painful, distasteful, and often totally objectionable are not new at all. It is behavior that is in clear violation of God’s expectations.
None of what some of us are so disturbed over is new and apparently each generation seems to have been pressed to both live and deal with the things that cut deep into the heart of God and yet God’s efforts to bring about reconciliation between Himself and mankind has really had minimal success given the fact that there are more than six billion souls now living on planet earth.
It all started when the first parents in Eden chose to disobey God. The battle between man’s will and God’s will didn’t take long to get into an all-out conflict. Granted, we do not know how long the first pair had been in the Garden of Eden before they flew in the face of God’s clearly defined rule regarding the one tree – the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Nor do we know how long it was before Cain and Abel got into their conflict and the first recorded MURDER was committed. We may not have an accurate timeframe for these events but we do have them recorded in God’s Word and Christians accept them as factual.
The Bible is full of all the things that are so deplorable in our world today – things that every decent person is concerned with. Note:
As early as Genesis 6 the human race had deteriorated so much (violence and corruption) that God made the decision to destroy man from off the face of the earth. Hence, the Great Flood with only eight survivors.
Genesis Chapter 19 gives us the first recorded incidence of HOMOSEXUALITY and INCEST. Out of Lot’s incestuous relationship with his two daughters came Moab and Ammon, tribal groups that would ultimately be a thorn in Israel’s side.
Abraham’s involvement with Hagar gave us Ishmael and his kin and Isaac’s kin continue to war with each other until this very moment in time.
Lying was instituted when Abraham had his wife lie to Abimelech and Isaac would later do the same thing.
Jacob would team up with his mother and lie in order to steal the birthright – jumping ahead of God because God had stated that the older (Esau) would serve the younger (Jacob).
Fornication and adultery are also part of the ugly picture that the Bible makes no attempt to hide from us. There was Judah going to bed with what he thought was a harlot. David pulled off the “Playboy” thing with Bathsheba. Murder followed. Rape and murder plagued David’s family thereafter.
Samson was a real “play boy”. Who knows what potential he had for being a great leader? God ultimately got the glory in dealing with the Philistines BUT it is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine that things went the way God would have preferred them to go.
Such incidents continue to roll around in my mind, but I must move on. You can finish the list. I just want to make my point that THERE IS NOTHING NEW and that we need to realize that what we have to deal with on a day to day basis is just “the same old flesh at work.” There is just more of it and it is more glamorized because of the media.
JEREMIAH probably puts it all in perspective when God, speaking through him said, “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9 KJV)
I submit to you that it is of the utmost importance that coming to grips with this matter, from God’s perspective, is of the utmost importance, eternal importance. For me, this has to do with what the call of God to ministry is all about. It is about how we see sin – through our eyes or through God’s eyes.
We can deplore it, give in to it – accept it as change that we cannot do anything about – or we can rise up as men and women of God in the power and might of the Holy Spirit and allow God to use us to make a difference. Indeed, we will have to pull some from the fire, but God forbid that we should fail, given the opportunity, and the opportunity is clearly ours to take.
WE DARE NOT LET THE SPIRIT OF FATALISM OVERCOME US!
WE DARE NOT GROW WEARY IN WELL DOING!
As bleak as things are there is hope. God is still alive and well! God is still on the throne! He is still in control. We dare not fall into Satan’s traps as so many have.
I have given you examples from the very start of our Bible that show that the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. We see it all around us…the same sins. And, although we do not seem to recognize it, the judgment of God continues to be poured out on this wicked world. Sadly, people – in every generation – have learned to accept whatever happens as being either, chance, bad luck, or normal – shaking it off, adjusting, going right on down the same old path. This attitude is not be seen as that of sinners alone.
“GOD IS DOING A NEW THING” … or so they say!
If one listens for a while to today’s contemporary Christian element, the Charismatics, he/she will soon hear it said that GOD IS DOING A NEW THING…that the Church is enjoying a great revival, and that all of this assumed reviving is going to hasten the return of Christ. What is happening is said to be that last great revival before Christ returns.
A study of church history will show that there have been many of these so-called spiritual awakenings and each has been touted as a new thing that God is doing in the earth and each has been promoted as what might well be the last great revival before Christ returns to take His Bride – the Church – out of this earth and into the Marriage Supper of the Lamb and her ultimate millennial reign with Him. Each of these awakenings has come and gone and we are still here and religious pundits continue to promote various waves of glory as some new thing that God is doing. Not so!
Jesus told His disciples quite emphatically – “in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of man cometh” (Matthew 24:44 KJV). Jesus warned the disciples about being deceived by false prophets (see Matthew 24:4, 11 KJV), stating clearly that these false prophets would “deceive many” (v. 11). In Verse 12 Jesus told them – and us – “because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold”. Of course, Jesus talked about many other signs of the end of the age that would be in evidence as signs of His coming, all contrary to the notion that there is to be some kind of universal turning to God in preparation for Christ’s return.
The opposite is actually true if the Bible is true, and it certainly is. Paul is clear on this subject in his second letter to the Thessalonian believers. “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition” (2 Thessalonians 2:3 KJV).
And it seems important to note that Christ’s messages to John on the Isle of Patmos – letters addressed specifically to the churches of Asia Minor, all representative of that has been in existence until now – all deal with issues that clearly point out the fact that human nature has not changed and the human race continues to chart its own course, even the churches, as they strive for acceptance in the world system. The last of this group of churches – Laodicea – certainly is a word picture of the church as it exists today.
“And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God.
I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would that thou wert cold or hot.
Because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth.
Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:
I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.
As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore and repent.
Behold, I stand at the door, and knock, if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.” (Revelation 3:14-22 KJV)
IN CONCLUSION
Could it be that Satan is successfully working his deception in our time in order to deceive God’s people and drag their souls with him into the Lake of Fire? Is this possible? If what is happening did not have the external evidence of being something good, spiritual, successful, etc., it wouldn’t be deception. It would not work if it didn’t look good on the surface. The challenge of this hour – and of this message – is that we would not be fooled and that we would take serious action – individually and corporately – to do what God has always called for…repent. This was His admonition to five of the seven churches in chapters two and three of Revelation. Dare we do anything short of serious soul-searching and repentance? This preacher thinks not. Eternity is a long time to be either saved…or lost.