"The End of the Matter" Ecclesiastes 12:9-14 Sunday Evening Worship Service

Well, let me invite you to take your Bibles and open to the book of Ecclesiastes.

Ecclesiastes and chapter 12, because we will look at the very last paragraph, the conclusion of the book of Ecclesiastes tonight.

So I'm looking out, I see a couple high school students, so I have to apologize to you.

We've been studying the book of Ecclesiastes with students for all of last semester, in the beginning of this semester, and you're gonna hear almost exactly the same thing you heard this morning, minus a couple cheesy jokes that I just say for students.

But I trust that the end of this book, this really incredible book that we'll look at together as a congregation, will be an encouragement to you.

And some of it is going to sound a little similar to what we heard this morning, as Jesse opened Ephesians chapter 3, and we looked at a Christian's posture towards the Word of God.

Ephesians 3 · chapter mention

Because Solomon has a lot to teach us about the Word of God.

So this is going to sound very much like a Bible Sunday, but we are manual Bible church, so I trust that that's gonna be okay with all of us.

So let's begin by reading the Bible.

Look down at your Bibles, and we'll read our text for this evening.

It's Ecclesiastes chapter 12, verses 9 to the end of the book.

Ecclesiastes 12:9

So we'll begin with verse 9.

Look down and let's read God's word together.

God's word says this.

Besides being wise, the preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care.

The preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth.

The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings.

They are given by one shepherd.

My son, beware of anything beyond these.

Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

The end of the matter.

All has been heard.

Fear God and keep his commandments.

For this is the whole duty of man.

For God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil.

This is God's word.

On a Wednesday morning in 1974, pedestrians in Lower Manhattan looked up to an unexpected sight.

Hundreds of feet above their heads stood a man suspended on a tightrope between the Twin Towers and the Old World Trade Center.

The man, Philippe Petit, and the story of this daredevil stunt that he pulled off, traversing back and forth for 45 minutes, eight times, he went back and forth on a tightrope, suspended between the two twin towers, has become something of a legend.

And the story behind it, how did this guy get loads, thousands of dollars of equipment, sneak it up the Twin Towers in the middle of the night, set it up, and then find himself walking back and forth across a tightrope over New York City?

It's a legendary story.

It's inspired movies that many of you have seen, and uh copycats across the world.

But to me, one of the most incredible things about this is the backstory: how this man lived like a man on a mission, relentlessly pursuing this goal to achieve this incredible legendary stunt.

The time that he devoted, the years of relentless training to develop the skills to be able to pull this off.

In the course of preparation for this culminating stunt, he traversed the towers of Notre Dame, he tightroped the pylons of the Sydney Harbor Bridge.

I mean, the time and the effort to develop the skills to be able to do this successfully are mind-boggling.

Not only that, but just to do this one stunt took months of scouting the Twin Towers to develop a plan to know what equipment would be needed, how they would get it up the tower to successfully achieve the goal.

For months, he disguised himself as an architect and a journalist and a tourist and a doctor and a journalist and on and on and on and on, scouting every corner of the building and everything that could go right and go wrong.

I mean, this was, you could say, a man on a mission.

In one of the documentaries about him, he reveals where the inspiration for this incredible mission came from.

It came years prior to the execution of the task when he was a teenager who'd had an emergency need for a dental surgery, and in the dentist's office, he recounts, sitting in the chair, in this dull dentist's office, suddenly I freeze because I've opened a newspaper and at a page I see something magnificent, something that inspires me.

I see two towers.

And the article says, one day those towers will be built.

They're not there yet, but when they are, they'll be the highest towers in the world.

And now I need to have this little tangible start of my dream.

I need this newspaper clipping.

But everybody's watching, and I need that page, so what I do is under the cover of a sneeze, I tear the page, put it in my jacket, and go out.

And of course, I lived with a toothache for weeks, but what's that pain in comparison to now having acquired my dream?

And from that dream, for years on in, he looked about everything in his life and dedicated towards the achievement of this goal.

He was a man compelled by this purpose, this mission in his life.

The book of Ecclesiastes is a book about purpose, about meaning.

It teaches us that we need to have a meaning for life, which is something that we know inherently.

We see it everywhere around us.

If I asked you to go meet me in the back of the church after this service, you would probably say, Why?

But you need a meaning not just for the little things that you do in your life, you need a meaning for your whole life.

You need something to get out of bed in the morning for.

Man wasn't made to just watch Netflix endlessly.

You need something to live for.

You need something that compels you.

It's inherent, it's part of being a human being in the image of God.

And the book of Ecclesiastes tells us that you were made to know the living God.

You were made for something bigger than anything that you could achieve in this world.

You were made for God.

Now, you could say that this man, Philippe, was a man with a mission, but Ecclesiastes wants to raise our heights even higher and teach us how to live for a mission even higher than a daredevil stunt.

But I want to ask another question about Philippe before we move on, and that is, would you say that he is a wise man?

The man who pulled this daredevil stunt, would you say that he is wise?

Which of course begs the question: what is wisdom?

And there is a common kind of street-level definition of wisdom that we use often.

I ask this teenagers all the time, they can all give me this definition of wisdom, and I think it just stays with us through our lives.

This basic distinction that knowledge is acquisition of facts, and wisdom is the application of those facts.

So if I take an economics class and I can pass a class and I can do all the charts, I have knowledge of economics.

But actually being able to apply those to my business or my personal finances, that's wisdom, the application of that knowledge.

And so we come to the Bible with this kind of street-level definition that we have acquired from our culture, and we read that there are wisdom books in the Bible.

And in fact, Ecclesiastes is one of these wisdom books.

It's here in the Bible to teach us God's wisdom for living in the world, and we assume, okay, so this is just application of facts.

Learn some knowledge about God, now I've got to apply it.

That's true to a point, but I think it misses the bigger picture about what wisdom is.

Ecclesiastes helps us to understand that mission and wisdom go together in the Bible.

Wisdom is bigger than just being able to apply some knowledge to some particular areas in our life.

Big picture in the Bible, wisdom is the fear of the Lord.

The book of Proverbs, the famous book of wisdom in the Bible, begins in Proverbs chapter 1, verse 7 by saying this is wisdom, the fear of the Lord.

Proverbs 1:7

That's the beginning of knowledge.

And the fear of the Lord is knowing who your God is, knowing that He is your reason for living, and directing everything in your life, your time, energy, skills, gifts, and abilities, towards the fulfillment of your purpose, towards knowing and worshiping and glorifying and enjoying God forever.

The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

Wisdom is knowing that chief end and knowing how to direct everything in your life towards the fulfillment of that chief end.

So that includes all of these subsidiary applications of wisdom, knowing how to act in my workplace in a way that glorifies God and leads to eternal enjoyment of him, knowing how to raise my kids in a way that glorifies God and leads to eternal enjoyment of him.

Wisdom is knowing your grand purpose and knowing how to direct every facet of your life towards the fulfillment of that purpose, the knowledge of God and the internal enjoyment of him.

And all of the little things that flow through that, all of the details.

That's wisdom.

The book of Ecclesiastes teaches us a higher purpose for our life.

It teaches us we all have to be men and women on mission, and our mission is to know God and enjoy him forever.

The conclusion of the book of Ecclesiastes, which we're looking at tonight, teaches us two summary themes.

Having gone through the entire scope of man's life under the sun in this book, Solomon concludes by teaching us there are two grand themes, two grand truths that you have to know and apply to live a life of eternal significance, knowing your Creator.

These two truths are you need a high view of God's Word and a high view of God.

A high view of God's word and a high view of God.

That's what we're gonna look at in this text together.

So let's begin.

First few verses teach us to live a life of eternal significance, you need a high view of God's word.

That's in verses 9 through 11.

So look down at your Bibles, verse 9.

In fact, what we're gonna do as we go through these verses, we'll see there are six truths about God's word that should compel us to have a high view of his word.

The first is this that God's word, excuse me, there we go.

God's word is relevant.

His word is relevant.

Look at verse nine.

It says, Besides being wise, the preacher also taught the people knowledge.

Now, notice what it says here.

The preacher himself is wise, but he's not wise in and of himself.

He's not wise just to gain praise.

He's wise in order to teach the people knowledge.

That's what he's doing.

With all of the collected wisdom that this inspired wise man has, he is teaching the people knowledge.

That is, he wants these words to be accessible.

He wants knowledge to be accessible to the people.

Now you might be wondering at this point, okay, so we're looking at the knowledge of this particular wise man and his knowledge, he's making it accessible.

That's all well and good, but how do I know that this is about God's word?

And that this is applicable not just to Solomon and his individual wisdom, but broadly speaking to God's word.

Well, we'll continue down the rest of this section, and you get to verse 11 that says, the words of the wise are like goads and like nails firmly fixed, are the collected sayings.

They are given by one shepherd.

And you'll notice that that's capitalized.

That's an interpretive mood by the translators of our English Bibles, but it's a good one.

The words of the wise, that is, the words of the wise men and of the prophets of Israel, the collected sayings that are put into canonical scripture, are given by one shepherd, capital S, the shepherd of Israel.

God is the shepherd of Israel who cares over his flock, and through his prophets and his wise men, he speaks divine wisdom into their lives, by which he guides them, by which he reveals himself, by which he directs them into their purpose of knowing and enjoying him forever.

So the entirety of this section that we're reading is about the words of God, that is, the scripture, the words of God given to us in the scripture.

In other words, this is about the doctrine of inspiration, that God's word is God's word.

This is everywhere in the Bible.

The famous verse is 2 Timothy 3.16 that says, all scripture is breathed out by God, from God Himself.

And I think another very helpful text for this is I skipped this earlier, but we'll go back to it.

2 Peter chapter 1 and verse 20 says, No prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation.

2 Peter 1 · chapter mention

For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

You'll notice dual action in this verse.

No prophecy is an individual interpretation.

No prophecy merely arises from the bottom up from man's own creative abilities.

Rather, it comes top down.

It comes from God Himself.

And it's men who speak, they're actively participating and really writing and really speaking, but as they're doing that, God sovereignly is coming and carrying them along.

The Greek word for carry is this very, very simple word, very common word, it's used for all sorts of uses.

It's the word Pharaoh.

And it has absolutely nothing to do with the king of Egypt.

Just like the word Joe, or the name, the English name Joe, has nothing to do with the Spanish version of I.

Jo tengo hambre.

Nothing to do with each other.

But in this instance, I think it just makes a fun opportunity for a word picture.

As Pharaoh gets around by being lifted up by his servants and placed on his litter, as they carry bars on their shoulders and they carry Pharaoh around.

Pharaoh is active in the process.

He gets in, he tells him where to go.

He's active in the process, and yet he's being carried to and fro.

So the writers of Scripture, as they pick up their pens and they begin to speak and to write, are active, using their intelligence and their experiences and their abilities to write, to speak.

And as they are doing, God's Spirit sovereignly scoops them up and directs them where he wants them to go, so that the end result that we hold in our lap is the very word of God.

What we have is a divine revelation in the Bible.

The very words of God breathed out by God through the instruments of human beings, writing as they are able.

What we have, the final result is the word of God.

And so these words we need to treasure them.

And the text that we're looking at today is showing us six things that we need.

So all of that was just to get back to justify why we're saying that this text has six truths about God's word for us, and the first being that it's relevant.

And I think that's a wonderful place to start.

If you think of it like this the scripture is not contrary to the way most religions function, the scripture is not a book only for the elite.

The scripture is a book for the people.

Besides being wise, the preacher taught the people knowledge.

The scripture is intended for all God's people, for all people everywhere.

The scripture is intended for you.

God's word is not only accessible, only understandable by an elite caste of individuals who act as mediators of God's word.

God's word is directly relevant to you.

And notice that I was a little bit choosy about this word because the word relevant is such a popular commodity in the 21st century church scene in America.

Every preacher wants to describe himself as a relevant communicator of God's word.

Now listen, there is a way in which people can speak clearly and help you to understand the Bible.

Ephesians chapter 4 says that God gave the church teachers.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

That's part of the work of the ministry, as God equips some individuals in the church as teachers who help others to understand the scriptures more clearly.

But you don't need a mediator to understand God's word.

God's word is for all people, God's word is for you.

God's word is relevant for you because through God's word, God's Spirit speaks directly to you.

God's word is relevant because God wrote his word for his people.

But secondly, Solomon goes on and says, not only that, but his word is transcendent.

You look at the end of verse 9.

He says that the preacher was teaching people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care.

Now, why is he weighing and studying and arranging these proverbs?

Well, he wants them to be written down and to be collected orderly so that they can be passed down generation to generation and generation to generation, and then translated and then dispersed so that vertically they go through the generations and horizontally they go across the cultures, across the continents.

God's word is transcendent.

It transcends cultural differences, it transcends peculiarities, it transcends all human differences.

God's word is a transcendent book.

This is one of the great evidences of the truthfulness of God's word, is that it finds no home in any human culture.

If the Bible arose from below, from the imaginations of humans, you would be able to find a culture where it found a home.

There would be some culture where this book reflected the cultural values that it arose in.

But the Bible is not like that.

It was foolishness to the original audience.

It was foolishness to the next audience, and it's been foolishness to every audience and every tribe and tongue and people.

The Bible doesn't come from the imagination of man reflecting his cultural values.

It comes above, from above, from the God that made the world.

And it speaks into every human culture and it speaks into every human heart confronting sin.

The Bible is a transcendent book.

That means it transcends everything, including us.

You know, this morning Jesse reminded us that Paul was arrested for being the person who spoke truths that turned the world upside down.

That's what the Bible does.

It comes into a culture and it speaks truths to turn those worlds upside down.

But this isn't just a book for culture, it's a book for individuals, relevant for you.

The Bible is meant to come into your life and turn your world upside down.

A transcendent book for you.

That's what God's word is.

But with that, you need to know something further, and that is that God's word is good.

That's what Solomon tells us in verse 10.

Look down your Bibles at verse 10.

And there he tells us the preacher sought to find words of delight, words of delight, words of pleasure, words that are aesthetically pleasing, words that are good and enjoyable.

He's used this word over and over, this word delight, through the course of this book.

And he said that that is the kind of life God wants us to have.

He wants us to enjoy our lives.

And now he tells us the way that that happens is through his word.

God's word is delightful, it is good, it is pleasant.

And if you are going to have a life that is transformed by God's word, you have to believe this truth.

You have to believe that God's word is good.

So if you're dealing with a book that is relevant for you, it speaks straight into your life.

And it's transcended.

It comes from above and it comes into your life and it confronts areas of your life.

There are areas in your life that the Bible comes like a blunt instrument, like a hammer.

It comes like a scalpel, but not a hammer just to destroy, more like a scalpel to heal, of course.

But when that by when this book with its truths comes into your life to confront you, you have to believe that this word is good.

That even the truths that this Bible speaks that seem painful, hard to believe, hard to understand, frustrating, confounding.

You have to believe that because this book comes from above, comes from the God who is good, that this word is good, and if you believe it and obey it, it will be delightful to your soul in the end.

So when this book comes and tells you that when you experience something in life or you see something or you hear something that makes you so incredibly angry and want to rage.

And God's word says, be slow to speak, quick to listen.

Because the anger of man does not accomplish the righteousness of God.

But it feels so good to rage.

And God's word confronts you.

You have to believe that God is wiser than you, and that God is better than you, and that his word is true, and that his word is good, and that by believing and obeying his word, you will experience God's blessing and his delight in the end.

When you are wronged and you experience the desire for vengeance or bitterness, harboring resentment in your heart, and God's word comes and says, To forgive as God has forgiven you.

Do not take vengeance, leave it to the Lord, for it is mine, says the Lord, I will avenge.

Then you have to believe, though it feels so good to harbor a grudge, or revenge can be sweet, you have to believe that God's word is true and God's word is good, and when you obey God's word, you will experience blessing in the end.

In fact, this is the exact same truth that Jesus is eager to teach us and remind us of in the New Testament.

He tells his disciples to abide in his love.

How, how, Lord, will we abide in your love and experience the delights of knowing your infinite and divine love?

The same love that Jesus forever has enjoyed with the Father, eternally in eternity past.

How will we enjoy that love?

Jesus says, if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.

When you know God's word and you obey God's word, you experience the goodness and the joy and the blessing of walking with God.

That is, you are experiencing taking all the things in your life and directing them towards this purpose of knowing God and enjoying Him forever.

You're living a wise life.

But we could go further.

Solomon wants us to go further.

He says, not only is it relevant and transcendent and good, but it's true.

We've been saying that over and over, but he says it explicitly at the end of verse 10.

Look down at your Bibles, where Solomon says that the preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth.

It's almost a repetition here to say uprightly, that is, righteously or truly or honestly, he wrote words of truth.

That is, the Bible is a book of truth.

All of its propositions are true.

They correspond to reality.

That is, the Bible teaches us about a real God who is really there, and teaches us the reality about your soul, and teaches the reality about how to live in God's world that is before you.

Now, we could say much about the truth, the veracity of the scriptures, but I just want to make one note before we move on, and that is you'll notice that as we're going through this list and we're seeing these attributes of Scripture, these attributes of God's word, that sometimes when you put them together, you see new facets of God's word or new ways that this word applies to you.

For example, God's word is both true and it's relevant.

Another way to say that God's word is relevant is to say that it's accessible to you.

God's word is true and it is accessible.

You we live in a world in which media travels so fast, news travels so fast, there's a deluge of information around you, and it is so hard to know what is true.

Sometimes it's not possible to know what is true, and that will be frustrating if you are constantly dwelling on things that you cannot attain.

But God's word is not like that.

Not only is God's word perfectly trustworthy because it is true, it's also accessible to you.

You can know God's word.

You can plant your roots deep in God's word, like the man in Psalm 1 that we read of at the beginning of our worship service.

You can plant your roots deeply in God's word and grow them deeper and deeper, season by season, and you will find as you do that that your fruit will abide, that you'll experience joy, that you'll experience pleasure living in relationship with God.

God's word is true.

But further, Solomon gives us a fifth attribute of God's word.

It's transformative.

Transformative.

Look down at verse 11.

And there he says in verse 11, the words of the wise are like goads.

And like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings, and they are given by one shepherd.

The words of the wise, they're like goads, that is like cattle prods, like nails firmly fixed, which are nails attached to the cattle prod.

It's a double pokey prod.

And this prod is used to get animals to go where you want them to go.

And the point is that the scripture is intended to change you, to transform you.

When God's word comes into your life, it changes you.

That is a wonderful and delightful and good thing about God's word, is that there is no part of your life where you have to say or are allowed to say, that's just the way I am.

There is no part of your life where you can say, that's just who I am.

You are who God says you are, and you will become who God wants you to become, and God tells you who you are in his word, and God teaches you how to transform in his word, and he gives you the power of his very spirit to change you into the image of Jesus Christ through the Word.

God's Word is powerful, it's active, it's a two-edged sword, able to cut to the division of soul and spirit and joint and marrow.

There's no part of your life that is too far gone.

There's no part of your life that's just been too rusty, that just hasn't changed.

There's no part of your life that escapes the cutting edge of God's word.

God's word is transformative.

God's word can pierce to your soul, to the hardness of your heart, and God can change you.

And he does it through his word.

A relevant, transcendent, good, true, transformative, and finally a sufficient book.

That is, everything that you need for this work is in this book.

You see that in verse 12.

So look at verse 12.

Verse 12 My son, beware of anything beyond these.

Of making many books, there is no end, and of much study, weariness of the flesh.

I said that to high school students, and I got a cheer.

First time ever.

No, I didn't actually get a cheer because half of them were asleep.

I promised that if they could get their teachers to let them off homework, uh, that uh I would pay them much money.

But this this verse is not about the pointlessness of reading books, it's about the sufficiency of God's word.

What he says is beware of going beyond this.

What are the these?

Well, the antecedent of that pronoun is the collected sayings.

Beware of going beyond them.

Beware of going beyond the canonical scripture.

Yes, there are many books, but beware of going beyond them, because everything that is necessary for life and godliness is contained in the revelation on your lap.

Everything that you need is given to you in the Word of God.

We began by looking at these six attributes of God's Word, by being reminded of 2 Timothy 3, verse 16, that says, All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, correction, reproof, and training in righteousness.

2 Timothy 3:16

But the next verse says, so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

Every good work without exception, everything that you need to live a life pleasing to God, everything that you need in order to harness everything at your life and live a life of purpose directed towards knowing and worshiping and glorifying the God who created you, everything necessary to live a wise life directed towards his purpose of enjoying and glorifying God forever is in this book.

Everything that you need for life and godliness is in the Bible.

That is a wonderful, comforting truth.

There are many things that you cannot know, there are many things that you will not know, there are many things that will puzzle you, there are many people who will outsmart you.

Much of life is an endless maze, but God's word is a green pasture.

And if you feast in the word, you will grow deep roots and your fruit will grow large and your life will be blessed.

God's word, relevant, transcendent, good, true, transformative, sufficient, everything that you need for a life of wisdom, that is a life of purpose, a life of knowing God and enjoying God, is in God's word.

Solomon, I think it's really crucial for us to remember that Solomon himself was the wisest man in history.

Save Jesus Christ, of course.

But Solomon, this ultimately wise person who is writing this book of wisdom, gets to the end of the book and he has just exited.

And he sat down in the congregation with us, and he is at the end, the culmination, the grand finale of this incredible performance, is not directing our attention towards him.

He sat down with us in the congregation and is directing our attention towards the Word of God.

And alongside us, shoulder to shoulder, pointing us towards the Word of God and saying, if we want to live a life of purpose, this is where we look.

You want to live a life of wisdom, you want to live a life that matters, you want meaning and significance, you want something to get up for in the morning, it's in this book.

It's to know the God of this book, it's to be transformed by this book, to be satisfied by this book, for this book to come in and change your heart, your heart and your thoughts and your desires and your attitudes.

It's to have this book in you, living inside of you, growing into the image of Jesus Christ, because this book is alive and powerful.

This is the center of attention.

It's the word of God.

A high view of God's word.

That's how you live a life of wisdom and a life of purpose.

But if you have a high view of God's word, inevitably, inescapably, you will also have a high view of the God of the Word.

And that's where Solomon wants to leave us.

So we'll look at this for a moment at the end.

This very, very famous ending, these last two verses, verses 13 and 14.

Look at them with me together.

Look down at your Bibles.

Ecclesiastes 12, verse 13.

Ecclesiastes 12:13

Solomon ends the book this way: The end of the matter, all has been heard.

Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.

Whole duty of man.

Koha'adam.

That is the wholeness of man, the totality of your existence, the reason for your being, why you were on this planet, is to fear God and keep his commandments.

That's it.

That's how you live a life of wisdom.

He began in this book in verse, chapter 1, verse 2, by telling us that life under the sun, if this is all there is, is vanity, is a fleeting vapor and pointless.

And he recounts his personal quest of trying to find meaning and satisfaction in the world with all that was at his disposal, and what was at his disposal was more than is at ours.

He tells us that pleasure is fleeting like a bar of soap and will leave you empty.

He tells us that knowledge will always be incomplete and life will always be full of mystery.

He tells that work will all be rendered meaningless because you will die, your legacy will fade, and like you'd never done anything at all.

Power, money, wine and pleasure, he's tried it all, been left empty.

He's taken inventory of the whole world and all the best things in it.

He's drawn up the account and found that the sum total is vanity.

Life is a bubble, and in the in the final analysis, if the bubble is all there is, what is the point?

But he brings these observations to our attention for the purpose of driving us to this conclusion.

That in fact there is a God who will bring every deed into judgment.

That's what verse 14 says.

Not that God is considering maybe he'll bring things into judgment, but that he will with certainty and finality bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil.

And that means everything in life matters.

Every thought, every desire, every word, every decision, everything in your life matters.

Every moment has eternal significance because you're in the image of God and you will be judged by this God.

No action in your life will hit the ground and fall into the dirt.

Everything will matter.

That gives weight to all of life.

And it ought to either be terrifying or wonderful.

And if we want it to be wonderful, then he tells us the only way it can be in verse 13, that is to live your life towards this purpose of fearing God and keeping his commandments.

And it's when you fear God and keep his commandments that you can live a life of comfort, knowing that one day I will hear, well done, good and faithful servant, enter the joy of your master.

So we should ask, what does it mean to fear God?

And I I have told a little illustration to explain what it means to fear God at least a hundred times, and probably many of you have heard it, so forgive me.

But to fear God, we have to remember what it is to fear something.

So you need to think back to the time in your life that you were most afraid.

When were you most afraid?

And so obviously, I illustrate this by telling you when I was most afraid, and it hasn't changed in a long time.

I hope it won't until I actually die.

The time I was most afraid was when I very nearly fell into the Grand Canyon.

Jesse was telling me about a trip that he took with his kids in the past couple weeks.

Uh, when I was a teenager, my family took a road trip.

We were at the Grand Canyon.

I was 16, 17 years old.

I was hiking on a little trail on the edge, the rim of the of the canyon with my dad and my brother.

We were on a narrow trail, a little narrower than this rug is.

So it was perfectly safe if you would exercise some sound judgment and common sense.

But I was a teenager.

At the edge of the little walking trail that we were on was uh 50, 100 foot sheer cliff face.

I mean, if you fall off that, you're a goner.

So just don't be dumb.

Just stay on the path, you'll be fine.

Be dumb, you die.

And I decided to be dumb.

So to the to my left was a hill that went about as high as the ceiling is in this church.

Not super steep so that I had to climb, but steep enough that I had to kind of clamor on my hands and legs.

And I decided I was gonna climb up this hill because my sisters were up on the top of it, and I wanted to talk to them for I don't know what reason.

And as I came down this little hill back towards the path where my dad and brother were, I slipped, hit my butt on the hill, and began to slide towards my death.

And as I'm trying to dig my heels into the ground and grab at roots and branches to stop myself, I'm terribly afraid.

And there's nothing in the world that matters in that moment except the object of my fear.

Nothing else matters.

Thoughts of anything else, any other concerns, anxieties, worries, fears, hopes, dreams, everything is driven out, and I'm consumed by this one object.

That's what fear does.

I didn't die.

I was able to stop.

The reason that God repeatedly tells us that to live a life of meaning and purpose starts with fearing him, is to convey this great reality that he made you in his image to know him and enjoy him forever.

And what that looks like is to have a view of God that is so transcendent, powerful, glorious, clear, and overwhelming that it drives out sin, that it drives out anxiety, it drives out selfishness, it drives out pride.

And in view of this consuming, awe-inspiring God who consumes you with awe and wonder, you live a life of worship and joy.

That happens when you see God as he really is.

Think of the prophet Isaiah.

As he sees God, the first thing he sees is, I am a sinner.

And he cries out, Woe is me! I'm condemned, I'm undone, because in the light of God's blazing holiness, I see my shortcomings, I see my sin.

As God sends an angel to tell him that his sin is atoned for and washed away.

All he can do is stand before God and say, I'm still in awe.

I don't want to now say, Oh, great, I've got a get out of jail free card so that I can go do my sin again and know I won't get in trouble for it.

He's still standing before this God who's now not only blazingly holy, but infinitely merciful.

And he's even more compelled to love this God and follow this God.

So when God says, I need a man to go speak to Israel, he says, Send me.

This is Paul, when he sees God's holiness, he's blinded.

And when he sees his mercy, his eyes are open, and all he can say is, I'm compelled by the love of Christ.

It constrains me, it controls me.

He's walking in the fear of the Lord.

The fear of the Lord is to see God as he really is, to see his holiness and your sin in light of it, and to see the greatness of Christ's death on the cross in your place, to see the greatness of what Jesus endured for you, to see how high and deep and broad is his love for you, and to be consumed by that, compelled by that, to love this God who has so loved you, to want to worship and serve and take everything in your life and put it at his disposal and say, I'll serve you.

This is the fear of the Lord.

It drives out sin and compels you to keep his commandments.

And when you do that, you're living a life of wisdom, a wise life that is directed towards the reason God made you, to know him and enjoy him forever.

That's the conclusion of the book of Ecclesiastes.

And we said actually at the beginning of this evening that the book of Proverbs, another wisdom book, starts with this: that the beginning of wisdom is to fear the Lord.

So Proverbs begins with it, Ecclesiastes ends with it, and the other major wisdom book in the Bible, the book of Job, it's actually right smack dab in the middle.

In the middle of Job, in Job 27, Job says, Where is wisdom?

And the answer to that culminating poem is, Here is wisdom, the fear of the Lord.

Job learned the wisdom of fearing the Lord by losing everything.

Solomon learned the wisdom of fearing the Lord by gaining the whole world and seeing its vanity without God.

How will you learn this lesson?

To fear the Lord, for that is wisdom.

Well, what Solomon wants to tell us in this text is this is how we learn that wisdom.

This is how we learn to fear the Lord, is by knowing this book.

As this book gets inside of us, our view of God becomes clearer, and our hearts are compelled to know Him, to serve Him.

It drives out fear and compels glad obedience.

As we keep His commandments, we abide in His love.

Father, thank you that you have given us this great revelation by which we can know you and worship you.

Father, we pray that you would seal these things to our hearts so that we would serve you with gladness, not with drudgery, but with gladness, knowing that even the hard words that you speak into our life are for our good, out of your good character, your merciful, loving character.

So, Lord, please give us hearts that gladly submit to you, gladly surrender to your word, gladly want to know you and to please you and enjoy you forever.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to meet you personally at Emmanuel Bible Church.

Our service times and other church information is on our website at ibc.church.

If you want information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been an encouragement to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.