The Point Is: The Fear of the Lord Makes Us Fully Human

Ecclesiastes 12:9-14

     A few years ago, I took my Dad back to visit the place where I lived and grew up until age 12.  It was on Maxwell Hill in Beckley, WV.  We visited the old Maxwell Hill Elementary School where I went to school for six years.

     My Dad commented on how little it all had changed over the many years.  The school looked the same.  The wooded areas too.

     But, even though everything may have looked the same, it seemed so much different.  And, I came to realize that the difference was that I had changed.  I had lived in that place as a boy with all the hopes and dreams of a young boy.  But, between the time I had grown up there and that I had returned there I had lived in Illinois, Wisconsin, Germany, England and California.  I had been to a lot of schools and experienced countless things.  In light of the 50 years that had gone by, everything may have been somewhat the same – but, at the same time, everything was different.  It no longer looked like home. And, I knew that the world was much bigger than what I once what it was – than the world of my boyhood that had once been my entire world.

Ecclesiastes Ends Where It Began

     If you’ve ever had an experience like that, i.e., of returning to something again only to find that it had not changed but you had, then you can understand one of the most profound things about the book of Ecclesiastes. I want you to notice that Solomon ends Ecclesiastes exactly the way he started it.  In 1:2 and in 12:8, we find exactly the same message: “Meaningless! Meaningless!”says the Teacher..” 

     This putting the same message at the end as at the beginning was a very common way of teaching among Jewish rabbis.  When we see that Ecclesiastes starts and ends exactly the same way, unless we’re paying no attention at all, it should be impossible to miss Solomon’s single goal in writing it: To demonstrate that, in this fallen world, everything that people live for apart from God is like a vapor, i.e., it all passes away.

    This is not to say that Solomon is merely repeating himself when he says the same thing at the beginning and at the end.  No, not at all!  Although we come back to the same words at the end, when we do return, we are not the same people.  By 12:8, we should have gained a bigger perspective on life than we once had.  In this world, almost all people think that we can find something worth living for “under the sun” – but Solomon says no!    

     Over the past three months, we have let Ecclesiastes investigate one thing after another we might live for:

• Try education and learning: You’ll think you have grown, but you will soon find it’s empty on its own.
• Live life for pleasure -- “wine, women and song” -- but the short thrill of pleasure won’t satisfy long.
• Build houses; buy lands and pretend they will last but the status they bring will soon be in the past.
• Expand your career; make money in stashes but what good is it all when the stock market crashes.

    Read through Solomon’s words in Ecclesiastes and you’ll see he addresses everything “under the sun” that everyone has ever tried to live for.  He declares that if anything “under the sun” is placed in the center of your life -- as your reason for living and source of your contentment -- it will prove to be meaningless.  It will be like a vapor that is here one moment and gone the next.   Everything is meaningless under the sun. 

     Solomon tells us that we can find short term enjoyment in things in this world.  Indeed, they are gifts from God.  But, there is nothing under the sun that is worthy of being at the core of your being.  Bottom line:  Ecclesiastes shouts out to us that we were made to live for something eternal.  “God has placed eternity in the human heart (3:11).”  There is nothing temporary that can fill that spot.  

     So, Solomon begins by saying, “Meaningless! Meaningless!”says the Teacher..”  When you return to this at the end in 12:8, you know much more about the truth of that.

The P.S.:  That’s Not the Last Word (12:9-14)

     You need to envision a poignant pause between v.8 and v.9.  Then, he says, "You know that the one who wrote this did was gifted with the gift of wisdom."  This writer (Solomon himself, I believe) says, “I have written this book with great care – weighing, studying and arranging my teaching as diligently and truthfully as possible (12:9-10). 

     And, he says, “I taught this way as a “goad” (12:11) – as a prod to help all of you who read it to think consequently through the whole of your lives.”  He’s like a loving pastor here, seeking to guide his flock through the dangerous alternative ways of life offered by people under the sun.

      The main point he wants us to grab hold of at the end of the book is that meaninglessness is not the last word -- though he’s said at the beginning and the end that everything under the sun is meaningless, that is not his last word.  Why?  But because there is more to existence than what is under the sun!  God is!  God is to be known.  If you will live, you must live in light of what is real – and God is real!

     God did not create you to live a meaningless life but a life full of meaning! But, the way to find life is not the way secularists try to tell you to live.  The only possible path to life, the Bible says, is to live your life in relationship to God.  The way he puts this may, at first, seem foreign to us – but it truly is profound.  He says that, if you will discover what your life is all about, this is what you must do: 

Fear God and keep his commandments,
    for this is what it means to be fully human (12:13).

Three Essential Phrases

#1:  “Fear God”  

     We don’t like to think about fear potentially being a good thing in SoCal.  We all know how destructive fear can be. Here in Southern CA, the center of the world’s entertainment industry, we know how actors, musicians, chefs, etc. live in fear of what the audience will think of what they have done.  There are many stories of how a bad word from a movie or restaurant critic can destroy a person’s career and self esteem.  We know that a life lived in constant fear can be a debilitating life. 

     Back in 2007, Pixar made a movie about a character named Remy in Paris who loved food and wanted to be a chef.  The only problem was that Remy was a rat and most people don’t want rats around their food.  But, Remy is able to form an alliance with a garbage boy named Linguini to become the chef of a hot new restaurant in Paris.  There is a scene in the movie that every actor, singer and chef understands very well, i.e., when the feared food critic named Anton Ego walks into the restaurant.  All chefs feared him.  They thought he could destroy them.  That fear made them want to please him. And Mr. Ego was a proud man.  He liked to destroy those he reviewed.

     I won’t say anything more about the story except to let it show you that those people we fear often determine the direction of our lives.  We want to please them so we make decisions that we think will please them.

     It’s with that in mind that the Bible calls us to fear the Lord.  The Psalms and Proverbs say repeatedly that the very foundation for doing anything that is wise is to fear the Lord, i.e., the One who made everything and is in charge of everything “under the sun”. 

     Do not miss this:  The amazing thing is that when you open your eyes to see what the God is like whom you are called to fear, you look and you see that he is not like Anton Ego.  The God of the Bible is the one who loves you with an everlasting love.  He is the one who sent his Son in this world out of love, the Son who then gave his life on the cross for your sin so that you might find forgiveness and a life full of meaning. 

     The phrase “fear God”, for the Jewish people, directed them to the first command, i.e., to put nothing before God – nothing in the place of God.  When you live in the fear of God, you have nothing to fear.  When you seek only to please God, then you will love the world God made and the people made in his image.  The fear of God casts out every other fear.

#2: “Keep God’s Commands” -- If we don’t like to consdier that the fear of the Lord can be a good thing, then we also really, really don’t like to think it’s good to let someone else command us.  Adam and Eve reacted against God’s one command in Gen.2-3 and disobeyed him.  And, you and I still do the same.

     But, once you have seen that God is your Maker, that he knows how he made you to live, and that he loves you with an everlasting love, then you can understand why Jesus said, “If you love me, keep my commands.”  And he said, “When you do, you will find I have not come to destroy your life but to give you life to the full.”

    After reading Ecclesiastes, then your response should be, “Everything else under the sun promises so much but, when I give my life to it, it kills, steals and destroys.  It promises so much and then lets me down.”  And Jesus says, “That’s true.  You were never meant to have those things at the center of your life.  Follow me.  Keep my commands and find life.”  Jesus claims that keeping his commands is the key to living a life that is not meaningless – that is not a mere vapor.

     Do you believe him?  Are you ready to recommit today to obeying him? 

#3: “This Is What It Means to Be Human” – In most Bible translations, v.13b translated as something like “this is the whole duty of a human being.”  But that word “duty” is not in the Hebrew text.  What Solomon says is simply, “Fear God and keep his commands for this is the whole – or essence -- of being human.”

     What Solomon is doing here is calling us back to Genesis 2-3.  When life had meaning in Gen 2, people walked with God and kept his commands.  In Gen. 3, people ignored God and disobeyed his command.  Throughout Ecclesiastes, Solomon has been forcing us to come to grips with how meaningless life is when we try to find meaning in anything under the sun – because we were made to have our relationship to God as the single most important part of our lives.  When that’s true then everything finds meaning.  You are I are human beings.  You and I were made to know and live a life that pleases him.  Live to please him – and you will find life.  Put anything else in his place and you will find meaninglessness.  That’s the message of Ecclesiastes.

     It used to be that people that the sun revolved around the earth. We now know that this belief was wrong. The earth revolves around the sun. If JPL/NASA will do anything effectively, they need to make decision based on what is true about reality.

     Today, many people think the whole world revolves around us.  To live as if that were true, is at the heart of meaninglessness.  It just isn’t true that everything revolves around you.  There is a God, Maker of heaven and earth. God doesn’t revolve around you. You and I revolve around Him. When you fear God and keeps his commands, you will discover that “meaningful, meaningful, everything is meaningful” – when the God who is over the sun is at the center of your life.

     Now, I’ll ask Pastor Jeff to come and talk with you about how you might apply this message to your life this week – and beyond.