Ecclesiastes Lesson 13

Human viewpoint religion – 5:1-7

Beginning today we come to an entirely new section of the book of Ecclesiastes, one which is very pertinent for Palm Sunday because it deals with the problem of the violation of true religion by the mobs of Jerusalem when the Lord Jesus Christ presented Himself as the Messiah of Israel. We have dealt so far in this book with two section. The first report consisted of chapter 2; the second report consisted of chapters 3-4. In chapter 2 we found out that the individual cannot attain fulfillment outside of the will of God, whether that person is an unbeliever or whether that person is a believer who is carnal, that is, in disobedience to his heavenly Father at that point in time, regardless of whatever the cause is, no person can be happy outside of the will of God. This is why there’s so many miserable Christians around.

When you receive Christian God puts you in union with Christ; that’s the top circle, that’s your legal position, that never changes. That is eternal security. But in the bottom circle, this is your problem in history. This is the problem that at any given moment you are either in that circle or out of the circle, and no believer outside of the circle is ever going to be joyful, is ever going to experience any happiness. He is going to be too busy either cranking out personal sins or human good, whichever he is most proficient at. If he’s the self-righteous type he’ll be cranking out human good to impress people, to impress his family, the church, society. Or if he doesn’t care he’ll just be cranking out personal sin. So it’s either one or the other but they’re both equally abominable in God’s sight. They’re both products of life outside of the bottom circle.

That’s what Solomon concluded in chapter 2. In chapter 2 he tried every conceivable test to see if happiness is outside and all he could come up with was relative fulfillment, eat, drink and get what you can now. Chapters 3-4 dealt with a little bit more profound and Solomon showed you that there is a purpose behind the universe, there is a purpose in the world but he couldn’t find it, nor can you outside of the bottom circle. And the second thing that he found in chapters 3-4 is that the principle of justice is not being enforced in the world today. Obviously there is injustice, obviously people are getting faked out, obviously the weak are the victims of the stronger and he says this leads to despair.

So out of these two reports of chapter 2 and chapters 3-4 Solomon now takes us to the third report which extends from 5:1- 7:25, and this report number three deals with the first set of human viewpoint proverbs. He is going to start to give you some positive answers now, based upon these previous findings. So these are the human viewpoint proverbs. There are only two ways of looking at the world, the divine viewpoint that you receive from Bible doctrine and the human viewpoint which you receive from the culture around you, and your own sin nature. So there are only two ways of looking at the world; one or the other, both involve total views of the world.

So Solomon is going to give us a set of proverbs on how to be happy though out of it, and the instructions on how be happy though out of it are contained in these sets of human viewpoint proverbs. The first set, 5:1-7:25 can be broken down into two parts. From chapter 5:1-6:12 we have the emphasis in more of the form of a discussion in proverbs; the emphasis is upon avoiding squandering your uncertain lifetime. In other words, God has given to you certain resources or chance has given to you certain resources, and you don’t want to blow it; you want to be careful how you use it so you don’t want to get involved and so the theme for this first section is avoiding squandering your uncertain lifetime in religion, society and business. There’s going to be three areas of discussion here of avoiding involvement in religion, society and business. These are the three areas that he is going to tell you about getting overly involved where you squander your life. Of course, this is the person looking at life from the human viewpoint, if God has led you into these areas then you’re not squandering your life, but Solomon has rejected diving guidance at this point, he’s on his own. Therefore being on his own the only counsel that he can come up with is play it cool, don’t get involved.

Then the second part of this first report extends from 7:1-25 and that has to do with golden/mean proverbs, in other words, perfect balance, don’t go to any extreme to the left nor to the right, stay right in the middle; the golden/mean. So these are going to be the two divisions in this third report. We’re going to study the first division, from 5:1-6:12, the first half of this third report and this first half deals with the problem of wasting your uncertain life. See, if you were certain of your life you could spend it more carefully but the whole claim here is that you can’t know. So since you can’t know you have to be very cautious about how you spend your time.

Therefore we’re going to come to the first of these three involvements and that is avoiding squandering your life in religion. Remember Christianity is not a religion; religion is defined as God receiving the works of man. So we have God and we have man and man, and man seeks to know God and he seeks to give God and reward God and he seeks to do good things for God. That’s religion, utterly opposite to Christianity. In Christianity we have God giving to man and that’s called grace; religion is works and that’s what separate the two. Biblical Christianity knows nothing of religion, absolutely nothing. Religion is condemned in the Word of God, it’s condemned particularly in Matthew 23 because it is external and is really a façade for negative volition.

In 5:1 Solomon begins and here he’s talking about not getting involved with religion. So in verse 1 he says, “Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of idiots [fools, for they consider not that they do evil.]” Now “keep” is a Hebrew word which means to guard that which is your own, don’t let it get away from you. So he says “when you go to the house of God” which was the temple in Solomon’s day, don’t get involved, and particularly don’t get involved in all the frothy goings on of the emotional ecstatic religious crowd, “keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God,” the “house of God” is a term used of the temple. The liberals say that this word, “house of God” in verse 1 is a sign that this book must have been written after the exile; evidently they haven’t looked at the concordance because it is used in Psalm 42:4 and it’s used in Isaiah 2:3, both written before the exile. So this is not an evidence that the book was written late. The “house of God” was a normal term for the temple in Solomon’s day.

“Keep thy foot when thou goest into the temple, and be more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools,” now remember Solomon is operating as a perceptive human viewpoint person. In other words, he has rejected… there are only three positions, he has rejected divine viewpoint, he is in human viewpoint all right, but there are two kinds of human viewpoint people; there are the wise people and the stupid. And Solomon is saying if you’re going to be a human viewpoint person then let’s be wise about, don’t be stupid.

And here in verses 1-7 is a contrast of how the wise person behaves himself in religion and how the stupid person behaves in religion. So he says it’s better when you go into that temple that you hear than to give the sacrifice of fools. Now what are you going to hear in the temple? Most of the teaching of the Word of God, probably was done either in the outside parts of the temple or in the outer city, not really in the temple. What went on in the temple, to which he’s referring by the verb “to hear,” was the discussions about the Word of God that went on. For example in Luke 2, remember when Jesus was a teenager his parents came to town and talk about a generation gap, they had it then because his parents did not understand who He was and they lost Him, and for three days his parents couldn’t find Him and they were rather angry that He’d just taken off on them, and they found Him in the temple. And when they found Him in the temple they found Him in one of these discussions, or discussion groups that went on periodically in the outer realm of the temple.

This was the place where men taught religion, etc. And a lot of the discussions were sheer human viewpoint but Solomon says it’s better to get involved in one of those discussions than it is to get involved with the ritual or the sacrifice of fools. If you don’t believe in the basis behind the vows and the sacrifices, then don’t get involved with them, just go there, relax and discuss things, but don’t get involved. And that’s his counsel, it’s better to hear “than to give the sacrifice of fools.” Now “the sacrifice of fools” is in the context here religious ritual, probably mostly referring to the vows which we will get into later, but include all religious ritual. And this is the religious ritual that people would go on doing even though they had previously rejected the doctrine behind the ritual.

For example, many “Christians” (quote, end quote) today would take communion, and yet really participation in the Lord’s Supper is a farce if you don’t believe in it. This is why when we have communion here we always give you a chance to forego; if you don’t want to take it, it’s up to you, nobody is going to tap you on the shoulder, send you a card, hound you because you didn’t take communion. You are free to take it or leave it and that is the way it should always be because no person should ever feel compelled to engage in religious ritual if there is no reality behind it. And a fool, the Hebrew word for “fool” mean fat or thick, it means one who is absolutely impermeable to spiritual influences. And the word is that this person is a nitwit, dull, zombie would be a better term to translate it, spiritual zombies. And that is what it means.

It’s better to hear and get involved in the discussions of the temple than to participate in all this mad ritual that’s going on, everybody running this way and that way, etc. when they’re all a bunch of spiritual zombies and they haven’t got the foggiest idea what they’re doing, and the proof that Solomon has this idea of how stupid these people are is the next phrase, which is wrongly translated in your Bible; all it has to be is translated literally. The translators couldn’t believe it when they translated it literally so they fudged it. “For they,” literally, “are not knowing how to do evil.” That’s the literal translation. “They are not knowing how to do evil.” “Knowing” is a Hebrew participle, a Hebrew participle always indicates extended action, there’s never a time in their lives when these people know how to do evil. This is an idiom that means they are so stupid they don’t even know how to do evil, the easiest thing to do, these people can’t figure it out. So here you have the situation where people are so thick that it’s actually impossible for them to think up and arrange how to do evil. It’s not saying that they don’t do evil, it’s saying they just don’t know how to do it, they just stumble into it. I don’t know about you but I’ve never met a person that has had to be taught how to do evil; it’s funny how quickly kids…people that don’t believe in sin natures ought to have a few children, it comes out all over the place. It’s funny, you never have to teach a child how to be bad; you always have to teach them how to be good though. They have a sin nature and it spills out all over the place. So it’s here that these people are such spiritual nitwits that they don’t even know how to do evil, that’s how dumb these people are.

Turn to the New Testament and you will see one of the greatest examples of spiritual idiots that’s ever been assembled in one location at one time. Turn to Matthew 21 for the Palm Sunday episode. The Lord Jesus Christ was presenting Himself as the King on Palm Sunday. This is not some little sweet ceremony where everybody laid palms down on the street and sang hymns. If you have that idea of Palm Sunday you’re mistaken. Palm Sunday was a political event; it was an event by which the Lord Jesus Christ demanded His kingship. He was riding into Jerusalem on a donkey; the reason He was riding on a donkey was because the kings of Israel were not permitted to ride horses under the Deuteronomy code, “thou shalt not have horses.” Solomon had horses, he disobeyed, but God’s ideal king was to ride a donkey, not a horse. Why? Because riding a donkey would show the world that his authority and his power do not come from himself but he receives it from his father. So the donkey was a symbol of humiliation, and the fact that the king himself could not flaunt his authority but he received what power he had from the heavenly Father. So therefore the king of Israel was to ride a donkey.

This is why in Matthew 21:3 it says, “And if any man say ought unto you, you shall say, ‘The Lord has need of them,” and straightway he will send them.” This was all prearranged in the sovereign program of God to send these animals this way. [4] “All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of by the prophet, saying, [5] Tell ye the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy King comes unto thee, meek and sitting upon an ass, and a colt, the foal of an ass. [6] And the disciples went and did as Jesus commanded them, [7] And brought the ass and the colt, and put on them their clothes,” and these are not the royal garments for a king, the disciples just took their clothes off that they had, the outer garments and they laid it over the back of this donkey. And the Lord Jesus got up and began to ride. Verse 8, “And a very great multitude,” these are the multitudes that had heard the Lord Jesus Christ preach, it was this fickle mob that within hours would be the same ones that would cry to Pilate, let His blood be upon us, we would prefer Barabbas, this is always the result of mobs; mobs cannot make decisions, mobs cannot be reasoned with. You don’t negotiate with a law-breaking mob of people. You negotiate within the framework of law and order. And if they don’t like it they can lump it, but that’s the only way you can negotiate with anybody. You cannot speak to people rationally when they’re in the form of a mob and the mobs here later crucified the Lord Jesus Christ.

You are going to see something fantastic; this mob is all excited, they’re seeing this King that they think is going to be their King and they’re going to shout some words in the next few verses that show how stupid these people are, absolutely stupid. They shouted the worst thing they possibly could. And it shows you that they are victims of a religious system; they themselves were unregenerates who did not have any perception whatever of that which they were shouting. So therefore a great, great multitude “spread their garments in the way,” a sign of Oriental welcome, “and others cut down branches from the trees and spread them in the way. And so you have this tremendous thing, a tremendous mob moving in from the east into Jerusalem, and remember, the authorities are concerned. The Lord Jesus Christ over the last three years has been slowly gathering pockets of people here and there and all over the society and now all of a sudden the authorities are upset because here He comes and He’s got a tremendous mob of people with Him. But also remember that after the Lord Jesus Christ comes through this mob scene He disappears and He doesn’t address the mob; He goes immediately to brief with His disciples and you find that in the Gospel of John, chapters 14-16. He doesn’t pay attention to the mob because the Lord Jesus Christ knows you can’t deal with a mob, you can’t teach a mob, and therefore there’s no sense in fiddling with a mob. Now this shows you how bad the mob needs some Bible doctrine.

Verse 9, “And the multitudes that went before and that followed cried, saying, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David; Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest!’ [10] And when He was come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, ‘Who is this?’ [11] And the multitude said, ‘This is Jesus, the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee.’” This is a man who has assembled His force behind Him and is moving in, and there’s a tremendous confrontation here, a confrontation between the mobs that had gathered around the countryside as they began to move into the city of Jerusalem with a vanguard of Jesus Christ and the disciples and the mobs that were in the city for the mobs that were in the city did not know what would happen, they didn’t mix too well with these other peoples from Galilee, etc. but they were wondering and all through the city, in verse 10, there were rumors, rumors, rumors, who is this person, what has He come to do, is there going to be a coup, is He going to seize control, is there going to be a revolution, is there going to be a civil war?

This is a political event; Palm Sunday is not a religious festival, Palm Sunday is commemoration of one of the great political events in history when Jesus Christ came to present Himself as King. But the center and crux of Palm Sunday is in verse 9, when the crowd sang, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” the word “hosanna” comes from a Hebrew word “Jehovah saves now,” literally not even Jehovah, it’s understood, but they’re shouting save now, save now, deliver now, that’s what hosanna means, it’s not just a sweet word to sing, it’s a word full of meaning and it means save now, save this instant, and it’s a cry for a takeover. It is a cry that in the eyes of this mob they want Jesus of Nazareth to seize control. It is a cry for a political revolution, seize now, seize control, save or deliver, deliver now, “Deliver now to the Son of David” they shouted this, “Save now to the Son of David,” the word “Son of David” denotes that they considered Jesus Christ to be Messiah, but Messiah on their terms, just like Solomon is going to conceive God in his terms, they conceived of Messiah as a human being, as a natural political figure and that’s all they considered them as.

And the great deficiency of this crowd was that they would receive a political Messiah but they would not receive God as their Messiah; they would not accept that the Messiah had to be God Himself. This is why when the high priest, in the trial, he said, say who you are! And you remember Jesus had been using the word “Son of God,” and then in the middle of the trial Jesus stood and He pointed to Caiaphas and He said, you’re going to see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of glory and with His holy angels, and with that the text says the high priest tore off his garments, this man blasphemed. Why did the high priest do this? Because he got the message, when Jesus Christ claimed to be the Son of Man coming in the clouds of glory He referred back to Daniel 9 and 10 wherein God Himself comes at the Second Advent, and therefore this pronouncement was made, this man blasphemes. The people were prepared to accept political deliverance but they were not prepared to accept spiritual deliverance.

This is the same thing in our day, we have in this country a group of people who want to save this country politically; they want to bring in conservative principles, they want to stem the tide of the radical movement and yet they are doing exactly the same thing that this crowd is doing on Palm Sunday, who cried “save now,” take over, Jesus, take over now. But they were not willing to let Him take over their individual lives; take over the political thing because that’s separate from me but don’t touch me and don’t bother me personally. Now that’s the attitude of a lot of people in this country. And that’s why this country has a long hard road ahead of itself before it wakes up to the fact that you cannot save society with personal evangelism and winning people to Jesus Christ. And you can talk all about your conservative principles, which are Biblical, I’m not knocking them, basically they are Biblical, but the problem is that you’re trying to get them in an unbiblical manner. You’ve got a Biblical goal but you’re trying to get there by human viewpoint gimmicks and human viewpoint gimmicks are a lot of conservative politics today, just a lot of gimmicks.

It’s hypocritical to complain about what’s going on when you aren’t doing anything about it spiritually. How many people have talked to one person over the past year about Jesus Christ. If you asked that question, all of a sudden the rocks are dropped and the people turn around, like Jesus, when the people wanted to condemn the woman caught in adultery. Jesus was not condoning adultery, and I am not condoning breakdown of law and order, I am simply saying that it’s hypocritical to oppose radical movements when you don’t get at the root cause, which is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It’s the same thing with this Palm Sunday mob, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” take over now, have a revolt. Now let me take you back to where they got those words from; those words weren’t just generated in some pamphlet that somebody handed out to the crowd and said hey, when Jesus comes by chant this. Oh no, these words they had gotten from Psalm 118. Turn there and let’s see what the whole Psalm says. This is part of one of the great prophetic Psalms of the Old Testament. And it was Psalm 118 that was changed on Palm Sunday. It is a prophetic Psalm looking forward in history from the ancient past to that time when the Lord would deliver Israel.

Psalm 118:15, “The voice of rejoicing and salvation is in the tabernacles,” or the tents “of the righteous; the right hand of the LORD does valiantly.” And “the right hand” is a Messianic term; the right hand is always used in Scripture for that which accomplishes the plan of God. “The right hand of the Lord does valiantly” is a reference to now He is bringing in His kingdom, the right hand is here. In verse 16, “The right hand of the LORD is exalted; the right hand of the Lord does valiantly. [17] I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the LORD. [18] The LORD has chastened me sore, but He has not given me over unto death. [19] Open to me the gates of righteousness,” this is the new millennial kingdom that the Lord would set up, “Open to me the gates of righteousness and I will go into them, and I will praise the LORD. [20] This gate of the LORD; into which the righteous shall enter. [21] I will praise thee, for Thou hast heard me, and art become my salvation.”

But I want you to notice a little verse in 22, that just is before the sentence that the crowds were shouting on Palm Sunday. “The stone which the builders refused has become the headstone of the corner.” This is a reference to the fact that the people in prophecy, it was predicted that when the moment came in history for deliverance and the Messiah came to offer His kingdom, the builders, the builders of this kingdom that were going to build the kingdom, a political kingdom, on human viewpoint principles, those builders of that kingdom, of that perfect society, rejected the cornerstone of the society which is Jesus Christ. So we have the human viewpoint builders trying to build a perfect society, bring it in by political revolution and yet they reject the foundation stone. So that also is predicted in prophecy.

And then the Psalm goes on, verse 23, “This is the LORD’s doing, it is marvelous in our eyes. [24] This is the day which the LORD has made, We will rejoice and be glad in it.” And here is verse 15-26 which the crowds were chanting, “Save now,” and that word “Save now” is Hosanna, “Hosanna, I beseech Thee, O LORD; O LORD I beseech Thee, send now prosperity. [26] Blessed be He that comes in the name of the LORD; we have blessed you out of the house of the LORD.”

Now that is what the crowd chanted and I want you to observe two things about verses 25-26 that show you something very pathetic about these fools, people who were spiritual zombies, who had no spiritual perception. When they said in verse 25, “Hosanna, I beseech Thee, O LORD,” who are they saying it to? They’re saying it to God. Who are they saying it to in Matthew 21? Jesus Christ. This Psalm was addressed to God and they said “Hosanna,” there’s only one person in the Old Testament who ever delivers, that’s God Himself. And yet Jesus Christ comes down the street and these people throwing palms in front of Him, and singing to Him, “Hosanna, Hosanna, save now,” words that could only be addressed to God. And the mob in all of its emotion of the moment forgets that these words can only be addressed to God. But they have in mind a political ruler and so not really realizing the irony that it was God to whom they were saying it to, they were addressing Him as a mere man, as a mere political reformer, and they said “Hosanna, Hosanna, Jesus” and not really realizing that in prophecy, in the strange way in which the sovereignty of God works in history, that He caused the negative volition of that mob to praise Him, because as they crowd out, thinking in their conscious minds that this was a sheer man, only a human reformer, they actually fulfilled a Bible prophecy because the Bible said they would say “Hosanna, O Lord Jehovah, Hosanna to God.” So they have actually affirmed the deity of Christ by their whole act of praise and here how God causes the wrath of men to praise Him.

Then the second thing to notice in verse 26 is: “Blessed be he that comes in the name of the Lord,” is a direct reference to Messiah. And they’re calling Him, that He comes in the name of the Lord, “we have blessed you out of the house of the Lord,” and yet in that day, in Jesus’ ministry they didn’t bless Him out of the house of the Lord; He wasn’t blessed once when He went into the temple. Every time He was in that temple there was almost a riot. He was never blessed in the house of the Lord, but here you have a dumb spiritual zombie, a group of them, taking over a section of Scripture, shouting “Hosanna, Hosanna,” taking the Word of God, and revamping it inside of the human viewpoint framework to make it just sheer political deliverance and God is never going to deliver politically until first He delivers spiritually. That’s the order, that’s the way it always was and that’s the way it’s always going to be. You never will get political deliverance unless you first have spiritual deliverance.

Let’s go back to Ecclesiastes and see why, if you’re going to be a human viewpoint person, it’s better to be that that Solomon is than that of the crowds of Palm Sunday. Going back to Ecclesiastes 5:1, don’t offer “the sacrifice of fools,” don’t get involved, if you don’t know what it means, stay out of it. That goes for walking down aisles, and dedicating and surrendering to preach, etc. So we don’t have invitations to walk down the aisle. And that’s what Solomon says, listen, if you are a carnal believer or an unbeliever just don’t bother with it, just leave it alone, it doesn’t do any good to get fouled up with religious practices if you don’t mean it. If you don’t mean it, forget it.

Verse 2, “Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God,” now you’re going to notice something here, in verse 2 is this word pair that occurs again and again and explains something if you’ll connect it with certain passages in the New Testament. “Mouth” and “heart” is a word pair that is used in the Old Testament to refer to the mentality of the soul. “Heart” emphasizes the inner mentality, “mouth” emphasizes the verbal expression, and the two go together, for in the Jewish idea in the Old Testament you didn’t know anything unless you could verbalize it. Knowledge was verbalized knowledge. It wasn’t something that you couldn’t speak about; if you couldn’t speak about it you didn’t know it in their book. Verbalized knowledge, and this is why, if you turn to Romans 10:8-10, a phrase that has been misunderstood again and again by people who advocate this business of coming down the aisle. This is a verse that is used to beat people over the head with and it doesn’t mean anything like that.

Verse 8, “But what says it? “The word is near unto you,” he’s quoting out of Deuteronomy 30 where it’s obvious what he’s talking about, “The word is near you,” what word? The Word of God, “the Word of God is near you, in thy mouth, in thy heart, that is the word of faith which we preach.” Now what Paul is saying is that you have a person here and he’s got Bible doctrine on the inside, “the word of faith which we preach, [10] That if thou shall confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and shall believe in thine heart that God has raised Him from the dead, thou shall be saved.” Now this says that without the confession and without the belief it is impossible to be saved; that’s the conditions of this clause. So people say oh, what that means is that you’ve got to believe and walk down the aisle because walking down the aisle is analogous to “confess with thy mouth” and you’ve got to get out and tell everybody that you’ve accepted Christ.

Now that doesn’t happen to be what that’s talking about if you integrate it with the context. Verse 9 is saying that before you can be saved, going back to this word pair in the Old Testament, the two are synonymous, you’ve got to believe with your heart, that’s faith, and confess with thy mouth doesn’t mean confess in the English sense of the word confess, it simply means you’re able to verbalize it, that’s what it means. You can’t be saved until you know something and until you are able to explain it and verbalize it.

The application is not walking down the aisle, the application is when you have shared the gospel with someone else ask them to repeat it back to you to see if they’ve got it, and if they can explain it back to you, then they can be saved because they understand it. You cannot be saved if you believe in something you can’t explain; you’ve got to be able to explain the basic gospel in order to be saved. This business of coming down the aisle actually works against the principle of the Word of God because if you’re all emotional and wondering, I wonder if someone’s going to see me and this and that or the other thing, your mind is not on the Word of God, so how can you possibly be saved. You’ve got to be saved by taking the Word of God on the inside and digesting it, and when it gels and you trust the Lord, you don’t have to walk down an aisle, or do anything; you can walk down the aisle if you want to, get some exercise if you want, but walking down the aisle isn’t going to save you. It’s going to be believing because you have content that you understand.

Back to Ecclesiastes, “be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart by hasty to utter,” notice he’s using the word “heart” here in the place you would normally use the word mouth, the heart is the one that is speaking, the heart is doing the action of speaking here. Be not hasty, “let not thy heart be hasty to utter anything before God; for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth; therefore let thy words be few.” Now here’s where one of the false explanations come in. If we had time I would have taken you to Deuteronomy 30 and the whole point is that God, even though He is in heaven and even though we are on earth, the bridge has been met by Jesus Christ, there’s no chasm there any more, but Solomon says don’t get involved because there’s a chasm between God and you, and there’s a separation between God and you. And this is what the new theologians are doing, this is why Paul Tillich says I don’t pray, I meditate and in Paul Tillich’s theology that’s the best thing he could do is meditate because he doesn’t know anything verbally about God, that’s all he can do is meditate.

But the point about Biblical Christianity is that this bridge that Solomon speaks of, God in heaven, has been bridged, and besides the bridge is wrong anyway. The bridge between God and you is not because He’s infinite and you’re finite. That’s what Solomon is saying here, God’s in heaven, He’s so fantastic, He’s so infinite that He couldn’t even understand me, so why should I bother Him with my little claptrap. That’s what Solomon thinks. Of course a lot of Christians think that way but that’s wrong; the thing that separates you from God is sin, it’s your rebellion that separates you from God, it has nothing whatever to do with His infinity and your finiteness. And yet the whole genesis of modern theology says the same thing Solomon said in verse 2, that what separates man from God is that God is infinite, man is finite, therefore God can’t have fellowship with man. The answer to that is the incarnation of Jesus Christ, you have infinite God and finite man in one person forever. How did that happen if God can’t communicate? God obviously communicates and God does it by words.

If we draw a chart, if you put God up here, God has two aspects, He’s triune, that’s His personality, over here He’s creator, that’s His infinity. Then you take everything in the universe, you start off with angels, angels on one side, angels on the other side. You start with man on one side, man on the other side. You start with animals…animals. You start with plants, start with plants; then you’d have machines down here, machines down here, the lowest order. Now, it’s true, there’s an infinite barrier between God and all the rest of these things because He is Creator. That’s true, because He’s Creator, all these things worship Him. But, it is another barrier and it’s underneath man, and this means that God, man and angels all share something in common and that something in common is personality and that means that angels can talk to you, you can talk to an angel, God can talk to angels, you can talk to God and angels can talk to God. In other words, everything above this line can talk to each other because they all share personalities. That’s the revolutionary claim the Bible is making; if God were here He could talk to you in your own language and you’d understand perfectly, no problem. Solomon does not say that so therefore he says just don’t get involved with this religion business because God is too far away, you don’t know what He’s doing anyway so why get involved.

Verse 3, “For a dream comes through the multitude of business, and a fool’s voice is known by a multitude of words.” Now verse 3 is one of these quoted proverbs. And he’s using it to explain something, and he says, the first part of the proverb really isn’t pertinent to what he’s using but he wants that proverb because he wants the second part of it; “a dream is produced through a multitude of business,” the word “business” means hard work, and the reference has to do with after a hard day’s work the tendency is you’ve got your mind involved in different things and when you go to sleep it keeps going. I’m sure you’ve had that experience, you’ve had an upsetting day and you go to sack out and you can’t sleep because your mind is going 60 mph. That’s what he’s talking about, dreams are produced, things that bother you are produced, “and a fool’s voice,” and the word “voice” here is the word for noise, it’s a very non-complimentary word. “A fool’s noise is produced by a multitude of words.” And a “multitude of words” leads to this noise, just like you have a lot of work, and you have work, work produces dreams and the dream here is bad dreams, you don’t want to dream, you want to sleep, you don’t want to be bothered with dreams. Same here, you have a lot of words, this refers to all the rituals that went on in the temple that Solomon could care less about; he said this just makes a lot of noise. So what is he saying? Put on your ear muffs and enjoy God is basically what he’s saying.

Verse 4, “When you vow a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for He has no pleasure in fools. Pay that which thou hast vowed.” Now in verse 4 he is quoting Bible doctrine from Deut. 23:22-25 and he is saying that when you vow with God don’t play games with Him. Solomon believes in God, defined after his own principles. He believes in God for one reason and that is that he had his father David and his father David experienced something we know as discipline. And if David experienced discipline, guess who else was in the family? Solomon. And therefore guess who also experienced discipline? Solomon. So therefore Solomon knows what discipline is like and he says listen, better not to fool around with God than get involved, that’s what he’s saying here in the vows. Verse 5, “Better that you should not vow, than that you should vow and not pay.”

Verse 6, “Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin; neither say before the angel, that it was an error. Why should God be angry at thy voice, and destroy the work of thy hands.” “Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin,” you have to understand this, he’s not talking about getting out of fellowship necessarily, he’s talking flesh in the Old Testament means your body, not the old sin nature. “Flesh” usually means body in the Old Testament and when he says “allow not thy mouth to cause they body to sin,” “to sin” is a very which refers to the results of sin at this point; he’s saying don’t let your mouth get you in a position where you’re going to experience the discipline of God, that’s his point. Don’t get involved with God, He plays rough, He plays a very unjust game so just stay away. Just go there to the temple to hear but don’t get involved, and first of all don’t make some big fat promise if you can’t come up with… now a lot of Christians do this.

This is what’s wrong with this dedication business: I vow to God that I’m going to do this. You can’t vow to God anything. First of all, God doesn’t ask you to vow; you can’t pay God back anyway, what are you going to pay Him with; there’s nothing you have that could pay God back. So it’s stupid to make vows to God. Nowhere in God’s word do you ever have an imperative verb addressed to someone to say vow this or vow that. That is never found in the Word of God. What you do find in the Word of God is this: if you’re going to vow then don’t desecrate God’s name by being flippant about it; carry it through.

For an example of what happened when someone didn’t carry it through, turn to Acts 5:1-4; sin unto death. “But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira, his wife, sold a possession. [2] And kept back part of the price, his wife also being privy to it, and brought a certain part and laid it at the apostle’s feet.” Now this is the so-called sin unto death, this is physical death, and it involves desecrating the name of God in some way. It always does this; you say what’s so wrong about a vow? I don’t know, but I know one thing, that from the Word of God God doesn’t play games with it; when a person vows before God God takes you at your word. Now some people don’t like to be taken at their word but God does and God takes you very seriously at your word if you’ve made a vow to God. And what happened was that in verse 36 of the previous chapter you had a man by the name of Barnabas; Barnabas was a man who was a tremendous grace oriented believer and he gave a lot of his property to the Lord. And he gave it [4:36] “being interpreted the Son of Consolation,” verse 37, “having land he sold it and brought the money and laid it at the apostle’s feet.” Now nobody asked Barnabas to do this, but watch the Christian crowd operate here. Here we go, operation approbation lust.

We have Barnabas, God didn’t ask Barnabas to sell his land but Barnabas said listen, as I’ve prayed about this thing I want to give God this money, so quietly to himself, he didn’t go around saying hey, do you know what I’m going to do, I’m going to give a five minute bragamony on how God led me to give up all my real estate holdings, etc. Barnabas did not do that; Barnabas quietly as unto the Lord said I want to do this as unto the Lord. So he came and he gave the money and he said here, and he gave it to the apostles. He didn’t go fussing around, bragging about it, etc. but it turned out evidently there were some Christians around there that said, oh, brother Barnabas, wonderful man, tremendous, what a wonderful spiritual believer. And so these Christians started talking up Barnabas, and so this man and his wife heard about and they said look, we’re on the out, how do we get on the inside. Well, we’ll crash the party by giving up our real estate to God and we don’t have any friends in this group so we’ll make some friends and the way to make friends is to do something influential that will impress everyone. So what we’re going to do to impress everyone is that we’re going to give our property, except they were religious phonies and they weren’t interested in giving God any property; they were interested in putting on a good show before everyone else with the result that the Holy Spirit being omniscient saw it.

So in verse 1, “A certain man, named Ananias, with Sapphira, his wife, sold a possession.” So there they go, they’re going to sell a possession to make it look good. All the legal papers have been transferred in this sale of the possession. So legally if someone were to check on the property, etc. it’s all in God’s name now, there’s the title, we’ve got the document. So they actually sold the whole thing, but verse 2, “they kept back part of the price, his wife also being privy to it,” in other words, she knew what was going on, “and brought a certain part and laid it at the apostle’s feet.” He only brought part of it. Now the point isn’t to give up everything to God; the point is don’t be a phony about it, don’t say that you’re doing this thing and you have no intention of doing it and you’re just covering up.

So they did, so verse 3, “But Peter said,” Ananias,” and these are believers, evidently from what we can tell, “why has Satan filled thy heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?” That verb “fill” is the same word that’s used of the Holy Spirit to fill a person, which shows you that Satan can indwell believers and can control believers. Satan has filled thine heart, pleroo, and he has filled it to the point where you’re lying to the Holy Spirit “to keep back part of the land.” Now that’s a pretty strong statement, yet Peter, as an apostle, laid this out and said this.

Verse 4, “While it remained, was it not thine own; and after it was sold was it not in thine own power? Why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? Thou has not lied unto men, but to God.” Now here’s a where a phony was caught in the act and he was caught in the act because evidently the Holy Spirit tipped off Peter to what was going on or Peter saw something about this or something, but Peter got wind of this thing and he lowered the boom on them. And he said Ananias, you haven’t lied to us because it doesn’t make any difference if you lie to us, but you’ve lied to God; you’ve gone through a big religious façade to impress people and in the process you’re a big fat liar. And that’s what he said to Ananias.

Verse 5, “And Ananias, hearing these words,” in the Greek it says “as he was hearing these words, he fell down and breathed his last,” that’s the sin unto death of which John speaks in 1 John 5. In other words, God disciplined physically that believer and removed him from the scene, as he was threatening to do a Corinthian believer. Whenever you have a believer that’s desecrating God’s name in this way, they are setting themselves up for the sin unto death. Evidently these people have had a pattern in the past of sinning because Satan had gained such an intrusion that in verse 3 he was able to fill the heart, almost exactly what he did to Judas Iscariot who was an unbeliever.

Verse 6, “And the young men arose, and wound him up and carried him out,” that’s the stretcher team, “they buried him.” [7] “And it was about the space of three hours after and his wife, not knowing what was done, came in,” wondered why her husband was late for supper or something. So she dropped in. [8] “And Peter said unto her, ‘Tell me whether you sold the land for so much,’ and she said yes, for so much. [9] Then Peter said unto her, ‘How is it that you’ve agreed together to tempt,” or “test the Spirit of the Lord? Behold, the feet of them which have buried thy husband are at the door and shall carry thee out. [10] And she fell down straightway at his feet, and yielded up the spirit; and the young men came in and found her dead, and buried her by her husband.”

That is a strong indication in the early church of God’s attitude toward religious phonies. Now do you see why we don’t tolerate all the emotion, etc. It is just setting up a lot of people who are emotionally weak up for this problem of discipline in the life. When you have a dealing with God you do it in the calm and quiet of your own soul, not under a group pressure situation where you’re going to get maneuvered into something you’re going to later regret. And as Solomon says, if you have negative volition toward God then keep out of it, just keep out of it and don’t get involved at all.

Conclusion, let’s turn back to Ecclesiastes 5: 6-7, “Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to become disciplined [sin], “neither day thou before the angel,” you say who’s the angel here, “that it was in error.” The angel is a term, malach, it is the Hebrew word which means messenger and can be used of a spiritual messenger or a human being. Do you know one book in the Bible that’s referred to malach, Malachi; that book, Malach + i means “my messenger.” So turn to Malachi and you’ll see how Malachi himself uses this word. I want to prove to you that malach, messenger, can refer to people. Malachi 2:7, Malachi himself received his name because God said you are my messenger. “e” is the first singular suffix on the end of a noun, you connect that on the end of a noun you’ve got malache, my messenger.

Malachi 2:7, he’s talking about the priests, it’s significant because these are the people that Solomon is speaking of, “for the priest’s lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at His mouth; for he is the malach of the LORD of hosts,” he is the angel of the Lord of hosts. Who is the angel? He is a priest. What was a role of the priest in the Old Testament? The role of the priests in the Old Testament was to teach the first five books of the Bible, the Law. And he was to be an expert in those five books and be able to interpret them, etc. throughout the culture. So these men were still students of the Word and they were called malach, or “messengers” from God. This is why, and this is why in the Bible if you study the Old Testament it helps you with the new, this is why when you turn over to the book of Revelation, chapters 1 and 2 you now what the angels are in that chapter.

The book of Revelation is not a closed book; I’ve heard clergymen say I never preach out of the book of Revelation because I can’t find out the meaning, etc. It’s just because they haven’t taken time to study the Old Testament; it does take some time but it’s not a closed book. In fact it’s the most open book in Scripture, it’s a revelation, that’s what the word means. It’s very interesting, the very word means it’s clear, revealed, and so that’s the book the ministers never preach out of.

Revelation 2:1, “Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus, write,” so there you have this angel. Verse 8, “Unto the angel of the church of Smyrna, write,” and it goes on to all these seven churches. The angel here is the pastor, he is the man with a message, but in order to be the man with a message he has to have the message, and the pastors of these local churches are giving an inspect report of their church. In the military, various units, sometimes you have inspections with a notice and with a notice everyone gets everything, sweeps the dirt under the table, etc. and does all the rest of the things that you do to impress the inspector. But then on a no-notice inspection you don’t have any choice, all of a sudden, bang they’re there. Of course what usually happens in practice in the military is that the next unit, if they see them coming, they call and tell you and scratch your back so you’ll scratch theirs, if you’ll call them when the inspectors are going their direction. So usually there’s no such thing as a total no-notice inspection.

But the point is that Jesus Christ pulls a no-notice inspection on the early churches and He inspects seven of them, and after He gets through inspecting them He gives an inspection report to each one of the pastors, and that’s what you have here in the book of Revelation, chapter 2, “Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus,” unto the pastor of that church I want to write these things, these are things I found wrong with your local church, these are things I found right with your local church, etc. So these are inspection reports from Jesus Christ; “unto the angels,” the pastor-teachers. Now you may not think I’m an angel but that’s Biblically what I am. It’s the principle, not the personality.

Ecclesiastes 5:6, “…neither say thou before the angel,” that’s the priest, now what’s the priest coming to Solomon for? The priest is going to come and tap Solomon on the shoulder and say hey buddy, didn’t you make a vow in the temple about two days ago that you were going to do something, and so the priest has this job of tapping on the shoulder and saying do you remember the promise of Deuteronomy 23, if you don’t mean it then don’t bother it but brother if you vow, you’d better pay it. So this then, “neither say thou before the angel that it was an error,” oh, I’m sorry, it was a mistake. Now this is a mark of a religious phony, they say oh I’ve surrendered to preach and I walked down the aisle but I really don’t mean it because God’s led me in a different way since then, it was all a mistake; same kind of gimmick. “… that it was an error. Why should God be angry at thy voice and destroy the works of thing hands.”

And then he winds up with a tremendous verse, verse 7, “For in a multitude of dreams,” now again, this is a passage, if you just relax and let the original language take over, you don’t have to fudge it like the interpreters did, “For in a multitude of dreams,” (comma) “vanities” should be the second in the series of three, first you have “a multitude of dreams,” that’s the first term, then you have “vanities,” and then you have the third one, “and many words,” and that’s all it is. “For in a multitude of dreams, and vanities, and many words, fear indeed thou God.” That’s what he is saying. Look, he’s saying, all this religion that’s going around the temple, if you’re going to be on human viewpoint orientation, just don’t get involved and concentrate on fearing God. Now fearing God means respecting God, but here notice that because Solomon has knocked out the Word of God it’s revering a god made after his own image, in other words, he says fear God, and you say yeah, tell me a little big about God and Solomon says well sit down and I’ll give you my philosophy.

So what he’s saying therefore, essentially, in verse 7 is flush the religion, don’t get involved in all these practices, just stick to what is essential, “fear God” and yet of course Solomon himself can’t really fear God because he doesn’t have the Word of God, at this point he’s rejected it, and so what he is fearing is the image of God that he has made in his own mind. And he says just in a multitude of dreams, in spite of all these things that are going on, these are the dreams, the many words that are said in the temple, the vanities, these are religious ritual without reality, all these things, just go ahead, but you fear God, just don’t get involved in these things. Now that’s the sum and content of Solomon’s position on religion; religion is a waste of time. Your life is too precious, if you look at 6:12 you’ll see the summary principle of this section and it’s important that you see this because this controls the whole interpretation for the entire section.

Ecclesiastes 6:11, Seeing there are many things that increase vanity, what is man the better? [12] For who knows what is good for man in this life, all the days of his vain life which he spends as a shadow?” He’s saying listen, if you’re not with the plan of God personally then that’s all you’ve got, you spend your vain life as a shadow. If that’s the case with you, then don’t get involved and do all this other stuff; it’s far better for you, if you’re going to live a life apart from God not to bother, not to mess with religion, not to get involved in the practices and not waste your time because you don’t even know how short your life is going to be. So Solomon says just play it cool and keep detached, and that would be the attitude of the unbeliever or the carnal Christian. For the Christian, however, we are told in the New Testament to pray without ceasing; we are told to actively seek out the will of God moment by moment for our life. In the New Testament we are told that the role of the Christian is one in which we can have peace and power and purpose, but it comes when we’re in fellowship. With our heads bowed.