Accepting My Limits
Acceptance • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 1 viewNotes
Transcript
Summary: Ecclesiastes shares the wisdom of acceptance.
There is a vanity that takes place on earth, that there are righteous people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked, and there are wicked people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the righteous. I said that this also is vanity.
I have to find meaning apart from outcomes, because outcomes are outside of my control.
And I commend joy, for man has nothing better under the sun but to eat and drink and be joyful, for this will go with him in his toil through the days of his life that God has given him under the sun.
I have to find satisfaction in the ordinary providence of God.
When I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done on earth, how neither day nor night do one’s eyes see sleep,
then I saw all the work of God, that man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun. However much man may toil in seeking, he will not find it out. Even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out.
I have to make peace with my limitations.
Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.
I have to learn the limits of being human.
Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all.
I have to learn that my gifts and my strengths do not promise me success.
Sidenote: We are so out of our depth trying to understand life that we invent ideas like “chance.”
pega
occurence, misfortune
But now the Lord my God has given me rest on every side. There is neither adversary nor misfortune.
For man does not know his time. Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them.
And when he had come to the king, the king said to him, “Micaiah, shall we go to Ramoth-gilead to battle, or shall we refrain?” And he answered him, “Go up and triumph; the Lord will give it into the hand of the king.”
But the king said to him, “How many times shall I make you swear that you speak to me nothing but the truth in the name of the Lord?”
And he said, “I saw all Israel scattered on the mountains, as sheep that have no shepherd. And the Lord said, ‘These have no master; let each return to his home in peace.’ ”
Now therefore behold, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; the Lord has declared disaster for you.”
So the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat the king of Judah went up to Ramoth-gilead.
And the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, “I will disguise myself and go into battle, but you wear your robes.” And the king of Israel disguised himself and went into battle.
But a certain man drew his bow at random and struck the king of Israel between the scale armor and the breastplate. Therefore he said to the driver of his chariot, “Turn around and carry me out of the battle, for I am wounded.”
And the battle continued that day, and the king was propped up in his chariot facing the Syrians, until at evening he died. And the blood of the wound flowed into the bottom of the chariot.
And about sunset a cry went through the army, “Every man to his city, and every man to his country!”
So the king died, and was brought to Samaria. And they buried the king in Samaria.
A Story ...
I have also seen this example of wisdom under the sun, and it seemed great to me.
There was a little city with few men in it, and a great king came against it and besieged it, building great siegeworks against it.
But there was found in it a poor, wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city. Yet no one remembered that poor man.
A great king might fail.
A poor beggar might succeed.
And we might forget them all.
Why would God make us this way? Has he made our lives pointless?
And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place,
that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us,
Our limits lead us to the limitless God.
for “ ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “ ‘For we are indeed his offspring.’
Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.
Our limits remind us of our dependence on someone unimaginably greater than us.
The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent,
because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
The gospel is the story of a man by whom God conquered every human limitation.