Sermon Tone Analysis

Wisdom’s Warning

GWFL

Welcome

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Introduction

Solomon Calls for the Dividing of a Child

Now Is the Time to Serve God

Ecclesiastes is a book of wisdom.

And it involves the theme of judgment.

And judgment is an inconvenient topic.

There’s a lot of times that we look at our world as being inconvenient, but truly, we’re living in a time of convenience that’s BEYOND that of the wildest cotton-picking dreams of the generations before us.

You can order your whole Thanksgiving meal - and it’s a pretty good meal, too.

I will NOT fight Black Friday crowds because I am NOT an idiot - the same deals are online.

You can get an online order at your doorstep within a few days.

Hit a traffic jam and aren’t going to be able to get home at a decent hour to make dinner?

Get out an app, order ahead… pick it up on the way!

But here’s the deal… we’ve got a problem.

With all of these modern conveniences we’ve got going on, we’re having trouble making time for the things that we really need to be doing.

We’ve got devices that provide us access to all the world.

You can be connected to all kind of things!

And we’ll get so connected to everything, that we’re cut off from family and friends and purpose.

But I’ve worked up a considerable amount of righteous indignation toward what these phones are doing to us.

Not just the world, but Apostolics, as well.

The thing is, it’s hard to be effective in the spiritual world when your mind is unendingly attached to the social media world.

It’s like this: you simply want to check in on your cousin’s Thanksgiving get-together.

A video of their family is there, so you watch it.

But then, you can scroll, and you see a video of a cat that someone scares and it does a backflip, next video pops up and it’s a video about the fight going on in Congress (which angers you), next video is a graphic video of a fight on the street with tons of heavy language, and the next is a video of some dogs who are being rescued locally.

Hear me: OUR BRAINS WERE NOT DESIGNED TO PROCESS THIS BOOMERANG OF INFORMATION.

We eventually set our phone down and we’re mentally exhausted.

Forget about prayer.

That’s out of the question.

Our minds can’t as much as think peacefully, not to mention talk to God.

Here’s what I’m calling for: DISCONNECT.

It’s not all that different from fasting.

And DEVELOP SOME RESISTANCE IN YOU.

Resisting connection with the world will open up greater connection to God!

Recommendation: Curiosity Vs.

Conviction by Zach Hammond

PAUSE

In this comfortable, user-friendly world, we often think in our minds: “I just don’t have a lot of time for God.”

And we’ll even look for a more convenient season to serve Him.

We would make time to seek the face of God, but many of us here feel extremely busy.

Despite all those comforts.

We would turn to God, but something else has caught our attention.

Well - at least for the next thirty seconds or so.

Then it’s on to something else.

In the midst of all of the convenience, I need somebody to realize that NOW IS THE TIME TO SERVE GOD.

PAUSE

Somebody here, what I’m talking about is heavily resonating with your spirit.

And you’ve had trouble praying.

And you’ve been thinking something’s wrong with you.

It’s not.

It’s just you’ve got a heavy weight of things and scheduled items on you and it’s time to be released from that.

Lift your hands.

BUSY IS NOT BETTER.

Time Will Eventually Rob Us of Both Opportunity and Strength

I’ll say it again: The time to serve God is now.

I’m talking about devotion.

Really serving God.

It’s a lifestyle.

Someday, age will have pulled us from opportunities and strength that we once had.

In Ecclesiastes, the Preacher said:

When we are young, we have to remember our Creator then, because the aging process radically changes our lives later on.

Ecclesiastes 12 is really interesting.

It gives us some metaphors to help us understand how our eyes, ears, legs will deteriorate with age.

I don’t believe I would recommend sending verses from this chapter in an attempt to encourage someone who is ill or infirm.

But as you read through it, you can see age causes us to stoop over, lose our teeth, and have our vision to fade.

It talks about death being nigh.

…and I don’t see anyone running aisles about all that.

But the Preacher, here, was not just trying to warn us about getting old.

CONTEXT.

He wanted us not to forget God when we are still young.

Think about this…

An older person might struggle to hear the sermon, while a young person with perfect hearing will ignore t.

An older person might have a difficult time reading the Word because their eyes are starting to have trouble.

And the teenager may just choose to not read it at all.

This chapter (Ecclesiastes 12) also helps us think about eternal things… like returning to our Creator at death.

It pushes us to look past the here and now and to prepare for the hereafter.

I Will Serve God Now

But that sort of hard reality about aging and life is needed.

We need to understand that IT’S BETTER TO SERVE GOD NOW.

And not just make that decision out of fear.

We should serve God willingly and faithfully instead of thinking of salvation as a fire insurance policy that will deliver us from the flames of Hell.

I mean, that’s part of it.

But fearing and remembering Him is far more important than being afraid of dying.

And having that fear of the Lord will help us to keep His commandments.

Respect the Lord and His ways, and you’ll prosper.

So there’s a good balance to have: a healthy appreciation that there is an end to this life, plus a strong faith in the Lord who has gone to prepare a place for us.

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God Will Righteously Judge Every Work

So… what comes with this end-of-life view, is something that is a reality that is coming… and that’s Judgment Day.

It’s when the Lord will review our lives.

And this reality should help us to have fear of the Lord and to prepare for the future.

There is that line that has become so popular… so popular that people have gotten it tattooed on their arms and stickered on the back of their trucks.

For the person who is knowingly doing wrong, they will say it: “Only god can judge me.”

And they are correct.

And that should make them very afraid.

But they are only thinking in this moment.

They don’t have an eternal mentality that what they are saying is 1000% correct.