Ecclesiastes

So my name's Heath Arthur.

My family and I have called his hands our home church for about two years now.

If you were here back in April, I gave a message then, and Justin called and he asked me if I wanted to do another one.

Now, my my history, like Justin, I used to be a youth minister.

So that was kind of where I got my start working in churches and things like that.

I was in uh Louisiana, which is where me and my family are from.

And I uh so when he called me about this one, he was like, What do you think you want to speak on?

I said, Well, summer of wisdom, right?

I said, Have you done Ecclesiastes?

Are you gonna do Ecclesiastes?

He said, Well, I'll I'll reference it some, but I'm not necessarily doing the whole book of Ecclesiastes.

I said, perfect.

I said, This is one of my favorite books of the Bible.

And he said, I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that before.

I was like, no, no, no, like really, I find it very encouraging.

And he's like, I definitely haven't heard someone say that before.

Now, if you've read Ecclesiastes, you know where Justin's coming from.

Okay?

And I'm gonna tell you, it's a journey.

It's definitely a journey going through Ecclesiastes.

If you haven't read Ecclesiastes, I'm just gonna give you a taste of what it looks like.

Here's how Ecclesiastes starts.

Ecclesiastes 1-1.

There are these are the words of the teacher, King David's son, who ruled in Jerusalem.

Everything is meaningless, says the teacher, completely meaningless.

That's how he starts.

What do people get for all their hard work under the sun?

Generations come and generations go.

But the earth never changes.

The sun rises and the sun sets, then hurries around to rise again.

The wind blows south and then turns north, around and around it goes, blowing in circles.

Rivers run into the sea, but the sea's never full.

Then the water turns again to the rivers and flows out again to the sea.

Everything's worrisome beyond description.

No matter how much we see, we're never satisfied.

No matter how much we hear, we are not content.

History merely repeats itself.

It's all been done before.

Nothing under the sun is truly new.

Sometimes people say, here's something new, but actually it's old.

Nothing's ever truly new.

We don't remember what happened in the past and the future generations, and in future generations, no one will remember what we are doing.

You guys feel encouraged?

Here's the thing about Ecclesiastes.

I agree, that doesn't sound very encouraging.

And I will say that about 95% of Ecclesiastes is that.

It's a whole lot of meaningless.

That word is probably used more in Ecclesiastes than in any other book in the Bible.

But the journey it takes you on and the conclusion, that's where I find the encouragement.

And that's what we're going to talk about today.

Because it brings us to a place that is very simple.

It's a simple truth for us.

And look, for me personally, I can overcomplicate things.

I have a gift, okay?

So I like to try to keep as much stuff, uh as many things as possible simple in my life.

And I did that in my youth ministry.

When I was a youth minister, we we just tried to just, hey, let's let's just do the basics, let's do those things, and let's not be too complicated.

Like our motto was do something.

That was it.

It was do something.

And that's biblical.

It's based on James 2.26, as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.

So we had t-shirts that said do something on the front, and on the back it said faith without deeds is dead.

We painted it on our wall in our youth room, just said do something.

And we could always look at that and just be like, oh, yeah.

So, okay, yeah, we're gonna reach out to a friend.

We're gonna sponsor a child.

We're going to uh go on a mission trip, we're going to do service work, we're gonna get together with believers and encourage one another, we're gonna hang out, we're gonna do something.

It's pretty simple.

Kids liked it.

I could get behind it, I could remember that.

One of the reasons why I like to keep it simple is because I want to be honest, I didn't always feel qualified to be a youth minister.

I didn't.

Like, I I didn't I hadn't gone to seminary and didn't have a degree.

You know, I didn't have any special certificates or anything like that.

I hadn't actually read the Bible.

That was a joke.

That part was a joke.

You guys got a little nervous, like, well, I don't know if he should be up here right now.

I read the Bible.

But hey, sometimes I would misquote it, I'll be honest with that.

You and we've all done that.

We've all been like, trust me, it's in there.

And then you go looking for it, and it's like, that's not in here.

Yeah.

One of my favorite misquotes of mine, I have a few, um, came from Ecclesiastes.

I was doing a sermon on seasons.

So the thing about seasons, that's Ecclesiastes chapter 3.

Ecclesiastes 3 · chapter mention

And I remember I'm giving the sermon to my youth kids, and I'm being emphatic about it.

You know, I'm reading it big.

There's a time to be born, a time to die, a time for war, a time for peace, time to know when to hold them and know when to fold them.

Just in case you're wondering, that last part is from the pastor Kenny Rogers.

Okay?

That was not in Ecclesiastes.

But Ecclesiastes comes back to a very simple point.

Now, first I want to just give you a little bit of background on Ecclesiastes.

Ecclesiastes was written by Solomon.

Now, Solomon is the wisest person to ever live.

The crazy thing about the irony is he didn't always make wise decisions.

Like Ecclesiastes is an example of that.

In many parts of Ecclesiastes, he just said, you know what, I'm gonna try this thing and see if it makes me happy.

I'm gonna try this thing and see if it gives me fulfillment.

I'm gonna try this thing and see if it gives me meaning.

So he was wise to know that even some of the things he's partaking in are not wise things, but he still did them.

One of the things about Solomon that he did, he had 700 wives and 300 concubines.

It's not a wise call, okay?

I have spent my entire adult life trying to figure out one wife.

Yeah.

She's a mystery, a scary chaos mystery is what she is.

I don't know what's gonna happen next, but I know it's gonna be exciting.

I couldn't imagine trying that 699 more times.

And then the 300 concubines thing?

Come on, man.

Like I remember setting that that series or that lesson up about seasons.

I talked about Ecclesiastes in front of my youth group, told them who Solomon was.

When I said 300 concubines, kids raise his hand.

I got a question.

What are concubines?

I said, they're girlfriends.

Okay?

He raised his hand again.

I said, if you have any further questions, ask your parents.

Okay?

It's not the point of the story.

So Solomon did unwise things for most of Ecclesiastes.

In the last chapter of Ecclesiastes, chapter 13, he starts it again with meaningless.

Everything is meaningless.

And here, here's how he ends it.

Here's where I get the encouragement.

Ecclesiastes, I'm sorry, Ecclesiastes 12, not 13.

Ecclesiastes 12, verse 13.

Ecclesiastes 12:13

After he goes through all the things, he says, that's the whole story.

Here's my final conclusion.

Fear God and obey his commandments, for this is everyone's duty.

Fear God and keep his commandments.

Solomon tried everything.

He tried everything.

There are a number of things in Ecclesiastes that Solomon tried that I would like to try to see if it would give me meaning and fullness and contentment.

Vast wealth.

You know, it is uh so Justin and I were talking about this, and he said that it is estimated that at the time of Solomon's ruling, he had the most amount of gold ever assembled in the history of the world.

So he wasn't just the richest guy around, he was the richest guy, period.

I've always thought more money might make me happy.

And they say money won't make you happy.

And I'm like, I would like to try and see if it does.

And maybe I'll prove you're right.

Solomon said, meaningless.

I mean, uh relationships, uh, alcohol, um, all the different things that a man could pursue.

Solomon tried those things.

And he came back to the end and he said, I almost it almost feels like he said it in kind of like a frustrated way, like, okay, the best I can come up with is fear God and obey his commandments.

That's encouraging to me.

For somebody who tried everything, I don't have to do that.

I don't have to go try to fill myself with these things that are never gonna fulfill me.

Because it's all been tried.

It's nothing new under the sun.

That's what he said at the beginning.

You think it's something, it's not, it's been done before.

Fear God and obey his commandments.

Now, before we move too far, I do want to talk about that word fear God.

Uh, because the idea today is, you know, Solomon gave us two very simple principles there.

And and I don't want us to overcomplicate with a word like fear.

So when I think of fear God, the first thought that came to my mind when I was looking at it, I was like, oh, okay, God is not a shark.

God's not a shark.

See, when we hear fear, we think afraid.

And when you ask people what they're afraid of, there's a common list that people will go through.

You know, I'm afraid of sharks, I'm afraid of snakes, I'm afraid of spiders, I'm afraid of bears, I'm afraid of chihuahuas.

They belong on the list, okay?

They're nuclear little hate machines, is what they are.

I mean, look, and here's the thing: if you said heath, you have the option to either fight a grizzly bear or a chihuahua.

I'm gonna fight the chihuahua, okay?

But if you said heath, you're gonna either fight a grizzly bear or a chihuahua the size of a grizzly bear.

I'm going with the grizzly bear all day.

Grizzly bear's just hungry.

Chihuahua has got hate in his heart.

God's not a shark.

And what I mean by that is if you've ever been in the ocean and had something touch your leg, like you know that dropping feeling you get in your stomach.

Like, no, and I can tell you right now, there are a number of things that it could be that just touch my leg.

It's probably my son because he thinks it's funny, but I immediately think great white shark on all occasions.

I had a manatee swim by me in uh Florida one time, and uh you'd probably think, oh, I bet that was an amazing experience.

Almost fifths fought a manatee is what happened, because I thought it was a shark, because it's just a dark thing.

Sharks are scary, is what I'm saying.

They'll make you feel like I'm out of control, they're predators, I'm gonna die.

God's not a shark.

God doesn't want us to be afraid of him.

When we look at that word fear right there, that's me recognizing his holiness.

That's me understanding that he is so much bigger than anything that I can imagine.

That I can never actually truly understand him, this side of heaven.

That he is the creator of the universe.

I'm not afraid of God, I'm in awe of God.

That's what we're talking about right here.

If he wanted us to be afraid of him, he I don't think he would have called him our father.

He would not have called himself our father.

That's a specific word, that's a specific terminology.

I don't think it was by accident because it's something that we should be able to relate to.

And look, I know sometimes we have complicated relationships with our fathers.

But man, when I think about God and what God is, I I think about my dad.

My dad, Robert Arthur.

Um, he was not perfect, uh he was not infallible, but man.

Man, my dad.

He was amazing.

My dad uh grew up and he was the athlete.

Okay?

He he was the the star on the football team, he uh he was the star on the basketball team, he was the man.

Now, my dad, when he was in high school, he was tall and skinny, and people called him slim.

All right, and he could not stand that.

He didn't like to be called slim.

So after high school, he joins the Navy and he figured out hey, the way to not be called slim is to start moving around some weights.

My dad, when I met him, was six foot four, two hundred and fifty pounds.

He was not slim.

When he was in the Navy, I mean, like he's the man, my gat, my dad, when he was in the Navy, he was actually a part of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I don't know if you remember that, where Russians are sending missiles over, and then they changed their mind.

I believe, and no one can prove me wrong, what happened is the Russians found out that Robert Arthur was stationed there, and they decided they didn't want this heat, so they went home.

After the Navy, my dad went and worked in the oil field.

So he was a pipe fitter, he was a welder, he was what we'd call a roughneck.

Like my dad, he would go to work and he would cut, he would build weights at work to bring home for us to work out.

Like, son, I brought us home some more weights.

And I'm like, by us, you mean you I can't lift these.

But he would do that.

My dad, so if we were in one of those childish arguments when we're kids where we say, you know, my dad could beat up your dad, when I said that, you and I both knew that I was right.

Okay?

Because other adult men referred to my dad as big, bad Bob.

He had a belt buckle that said Bob.

My dad was larger than life.

Just an imposing figure, deep voice.

I remember there was a time where uh I was riding my bike.

I had a bike and we had a kind of a sloped uh driveway, and I wanted to pick up some speed, you know, get going.

My dad's truck was parked right over here on the road.

Now, I take off.

What I can't see is the car that's coming down next on the other side of the truck.

I can't see it.

I just blast out in the road, the car fortunately sees me.

They stop, I wreck my bike, my dad comes over, grabs me up, takes me inside, and he is not happy.

And he, I'm I'm crying, I'm freaking out.

He takes me in the room, and look, I grew up in the 80s, so I was about to get a whipping.

All right?

I mean, he took off his belt.

This is about to happen, and I am inconsolable.

You know what he did?

He knelt down, he picked me up, and he held me.

He told me how much he loved me, and how he never would want to lose me.

The man that other men were intimidated by was gentle and kind.

I was never afraid of my dad.

I could crawl up in his lap anytime.

Talk to him, take off his hat, make fun of his bald spot.

If I ever called him slim, he'd look at me with a smile just like, you know, you're the only person that can get away with this.

This is how our father wants us to be.

Draw up near him.

I never felt like my dad was unapproachable.

I never was afraid of him.

Matter of fact, what I learned with my dad is that I can do nothing more, nothing to make myself any more or less his son.

I couldn't do anything to change that.

The most common thing that my dad said to me growing up, and I can still hear it because it said it so much, was, I'm proud of you, bud.

I'm proud of you.

I wasn't afraid of my dad, I was in awe of him.

This is the relationship that God wants with us.

He desires to be with us, he desires to be close to us.

So we go back to Solomon, and he says, What do you do?

Well, fear God and obey his commandments.

That's pretty simple.

Pretty simple.

So why does it seem difficult sometimes?

Because it does.

It does for me.

Not just the difficulties of life, but just in knowing who God is and this relationship with him.

And I think one of the reasons is, well, as human beings, we just make things complicated.

We do.

Like, not just me, not just you.

Like this goes back from the beginning of time.

We make things complicated.

We over like sometimes I do feel like I have a gift.

I really do.

Like I in some situations, not every situation, but in some situations, I can sit there and look at it and be like, you know what?

If we really put our mind to this, we can make this more difficult.

Like we we can add in some more steps, we can we can make it, you know, unfathomably hard.

We we will probably need to abandon this project and not even do it.

One time uh we lived in Colorado, and in Colorado a lot of houses are made of stucco.

If you've ever experienced stucco.

Now, I'm I am a guy who doesn't mind getting his hands dirty.

You know, Justin talked last week, I think, about having tools and not knowing how they work and stuff like that.

I've got tools and I know how they work.

You know, I can I can do some electric, I can do some plumbing, I can work on my car, those kind of things.

Stucco's next level.

There's some specialty to that.

Like you need somebody with machines and stuff.

So we're living in Colorado, and we are in this house, and and it just has this quirk where if it's in the spring and it rains sideways, this one window facing the mountains is gonna leak.

All right?

Now it's not gonna leak so much that it's damaging the carpet and everything, but it is gonna leak enough to where you have to address the issue.

So when we first found it, it was like, okay, we'll put some towels out and we'll kind of get to that later.

We did that for five years.

So every time we left the house in the spring, I'd have to check the weather to see if it's gonna rain so I could put the towels down.

I know.

One lady thinks I'm insane, and that's fine.

That's good.

But I did that for five years.

Then we had to sell the house.

Well, guess what?

You can't sell a house with a weird, leaky window.

People have questions.

So I called.

I was like, well, I'm gonna finally make the phone calls I've been putting off, and I've been putting them off because I know this is gonna be overly complicated, and it's gonna be, you know, something that maybe can't be fixed.

So I get a quote on it.

Guy comes in and he's like, Well, uh, I'll give you a ballpark.

All right.

So, first off, we'll need to get in and assess the damage, which is never something you want to hear when someone's giving you a quote.

And he said, I said, well, give me worst case scenario, because that's where my brain likes to go.

He said, worst case scenario, we have to restucco the entire side of the house.

I was like, Oh, I said, that sounds expensive.

He said, It's not too bad.

He said it's uh somewhere around$20,000.

Yeah, yes.

Well, I don't I don't want to do that.

I was right to be worried about it.

I got a second quote.

A guy comes in and he looks at it and he says, Well, I think the problem is right up there.

Uh we should be able to match what you want.

Uh I think we can get this fixed for, I don't know, about 800 bucks.

Five years of putting a towel down.

And 800 bucks?

Well, why?

Because I overcomplicated the whole thing.

I didn't talk to an expert sooner.

I'm I made up this whole problem in my mind.

So it makes sense that maybe, maybe, we can apply some of this open overcomplication to who God is.

Like, like really, like I said earlier, I grew up in the 80s and I grew up in church, okay?

If you grew up in church, that there was, I mean, especially as a young person, I want to be careful how I say this.

I mean, there was there was good and there was bad.

Like, I grew up in the 80s with the King James Version of the Bible.

That is a hard version to understand.

Like, we don't really speak that way, we didn't, we didn't then, but it it was what we had to go on.

Not only did I grew up that way, I grew up in and around four different denominations.

So we attended a church of Christ, my entire family, my mom's entire family growing up was Catholic.

I went to an assembly of God school, and my best friend and his family were all Baptist.

Now I'm not ragging on any denomination at all.

That's not where we're going here.

The thing is, when you start going through different religious things, places, you sometimes hear information about God that's confusing and even conflicting.

Like they're saying this, but then they're saying this.

Well, who is this being?

Like, I'm not sure.

For me, instead of God being a mystery, he was a riddle.

He was a riddle that I could not figure out.

Like, in my mind, he was distant.

He was unapproachable.

His goal was to catch me doing something wrong.

He wanted to judge me.

He wanted to separate himself from me.

He needed to prove his authority and how worthless I was.

Those were the things that I surmised by growing up and trying to figure out who God was.

That sounds complicated.

That sounds very complicated.

When we look at Jesus and his ministry, he really tried to simplify things for us.

He did.

He tried to make it easier for us to understand because we've been complicating it forever.

One of my favorite verses about Jesus is the greatest commandment.

I love it when the Pharisees and Sadducees tried to trap Jesus.

They tried to put him in a position where they're like, we got you.

Because it didn't work.

Matthew 22.

But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees with his reply, they met together to question him again.

One of them, an expert in religious law, which, side note, you needed to be an expert in religious law because of the Jewish religion, very complicated.

You look at the Old Testament and how complicated it became.

One of them, an expert in religious law, tried to trap him with this question.

Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?

Jesus replied, You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

This is the first and greatest commandment.

A second is equally important.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

The entire law and all the demands of the prophet are based on these two commandments.

Two things.

Again.

It's like that's our limit.

I'm gonna give you two simple things.

Not only did he just give two simple things, he said, by the way, the entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.

Love God and love others.

Pretty simple.

But I still make it complicated.

Oh, you make it complicated today, too.

We all do.

One of the ways that I make it complicated with God and my relationship with Him or my salvation is well, number one, I need to earn this.

I gotta earn it.

I grew up, I was Generation X.

You work for what you need, son.

You go out and you earn.

If you want it, you just need to work harder than the next man.

But my dad, his thing to me always, especially after working Roughneck for so long, go to college and get a good job.

I worked with my dad out of high school for one week.

He got me a job at the port where he worked one week.

And I went back to him and I said, Dad, I want to go to college.

Well played, sir.

But I learned the value of hard work.

I learned the value of not accepting anything from anybody that you didn't earn.

Unfortunately, I also put a burden on myself of not being able to accept help from anyone.

So that when you look at God, you say, Well, what are you talking about?

Salvation is free.

One of the first verses that I memorized as an adult, when I went from my childhood faith, and then I went crazy for a little while, and then I went into my adult faith.

One of the first verses that I memorized was this, Ephesians 2, 8 and 9.

God saved you by his grace when you believed.

And you can't take credit for this.

It is a gift from God.

Salvation's not a reward for the good things we have done.

So none of us can boast about it.

Man, man, man.

Tell you what, if you think you need to earn salvation, you can't.

You can't.

It's not possible.

It's not on the table.

God said, I give this gift to you freely.

You just have to accept it.

And for some reason that's tough for us.

I think one of the reasons that it's tough for us just to accept the gift is, well, I don't deserve it.

I don't deserve it.

Look, spoiler alert, you don't.

Get over yourself.

I can tell you how many times, I can't tell you how many times, that I or someone else has just lamented as to how bad I am.

But you don't, you don't understand my sin.

You don't understand how worthless I am, how undeserving that I am.

See, what that is, is that is a lie.

It's one of Satan's favorite tools.

Because what Satan wants to do is he would love to isolate you.

He would love to put you in a corner and say, you better never tell anyone about this.

Do you know what will happen if they find out that you?

I mean, he is described as prowling around like a roaring lion, which is a great analogy because if you think about what lions do, who do they go for in the herd?

The ones on the outside.

The easy pickings.

Satan wants you to believe.

I can tell you this, and I can't express how important it is to be surrounded with other believers.

We have a men's group on Tuesday night that I mean, I can't even describe how great it is for my walk with God.

And one of the things that you can do when you sit with other believers is you could come in and you can say, guys or gals, this thing.

This thing's got a hold of me.

This thing is controlling me.

I can't walk away from it.

And I can tell you with 100% accuracy, every men's group that I've ever been in, and I've shared the thing that's bothering me.

I have never heard.

Well, how dare you?

Really?

That's what you struggle with?

I can't believe you said it.

You should never show your face at this church or in this town again.

Never happen.

You know what happens?

Oh man.

Brother, I've been there.

Oh, I know what you're talking about.

I'm here with you.

I'm here for you.

Let me help you with this burden.

Let me tell you some things that I've done to overcome this burden, to not struggle with this thing, to not let this thing have such a grip on my life.

And that's anything.

Whatever your thing is that you struggle with.

Satan hates it when you do that.

When you bring it to light.

Because when you bring it to light, it loses its power.

It doesn't have a hold on you anymore.

Get set free.

The last thing that I feel like we do to overcomplicate things is if if we can get past the fact that I can't earn it, if we can get past the fact that, okay, I I'm given something that I don't deserve, but I'm worthy of it, is we overcomplicate it.

We do.

We actually, I have found in in my adult life, well, in my most, like a lot of times I talk to my dad, I would assign uh parental uh things to God.

Like, oh, this is my dad.

God must be like that.

Well, my dad, even though he was my hero, he was fallible.

He wasn't perfect, he did things wrong.

And so there are times where I'll take a parent or an adult, you know, a mentor, even as an adult, another mentor, and assign some of those traits of that person to God.

And then when that person fails me, now I'm having a hard time reconciling this.

But we've got all these things that we're supposed to do.

What ends up happening is often we confuse religion with relationship.

Religion was not what God was looking for.

He was not looking for religion, he was looking for relationship the whole time.

That's what he desires.

And if you and if you look at it, so I had to look up the definition of religion.

And um religion is a particular system of faith and worship.

Or it's also a pursuit of interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance.

Most of us here would think religion as a spiritual thing, but your religion could be a lot of things.

Your religion could be politics, your religion could be sports, your religion could be patriotism, your religion could be your job, your religion could be your kids, your family.

What do you ascribe with supreme importance?

When I was a youth minister, I was always real careful.

We had a lot of traditions at our church.

We did.

And um, sometimes those were heavy, you know?

Like we do this this way because.

And when I was a youth minister, I was very careful not to do that.

Like if there was ever something that came up and I was like, well, we do this because that's the way we've always done it, I would be like, well, let's go back to the Bible and see what Jesus says.

And again, keeping it simple, I would go back to the greatest commandment.

Jesus says, love God and love others.

Let's do that.

Let's do that.

And the rest of this should kind of shake out for us.

See, what happens if we start making it so complicated and about religion?

What I found that would happen with my kids and with adults is I would do a really good job of teaching them how to play church.

Which is not what God looks for.

Again, he didn't come looking for religion, it's relationship.

And so I never wanted to do that.

I wanted to keep us in a simple place.

Like because playing church and binding all these extra things puts barriers between us and God.

I know God didn't want to put a barrier between us because he said things like in 1 Thessalonians 5.17, he said, this verse says, never stop praying.

Does that sound like a barrier to you?

A barrier would be, hey, you got five minutes a day, make the most of it, and I'll see you tomorrow.

No, instead, he invites us to be in his presence constantly.

To be in that part of the relationship.

It makes me think about how I am with my daughter.

My daughter is, I love to know what's going on with her.

I love our relationship.

I want her to always be able to come to me.

Now, my daughter, she's the like if you ask her how her days went, like you drop her off for school and you ask her how her day went, here's how it starts.

Well, first you drop me off at school, and then she starts going from there.

Like she's gonna fill you in on every detail of everything that's going on.

And sometimes I need cliff notes to follow along.

I'm like, okay, tell me again who's Sophia and why are we mad about what she said?

Okay, I'm tracking with you.

It's a long story, but man, I love it.

I love to hear from her.

I would much rather that than her say, I'm doing okay.

Day was fine, and then going to a room.

You know?

For her to feel like she can't come to me, be her near me, be near me.

Like I don't want her passing notes under the under the door and checking in.

I want relationship.

She just got back from a vacation.

And the first thing she said to me was, I missed you.

I know.

That's what God wants.

That moment.

That's what he's looking for for us.

Worship team, you can make your way out.

Here's the thing.

This is what God's wanted from the beginning.

This is what he's wanted from the beginning.

Solomon had two things.

Obey God.

Fear God, obey his commandments.

Jesus said, Love God, love others.

I'm going to take you back to the Garden of Eden, to the beginning.

Genesis chapter 2.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it.

But the Lord God warned him, You may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden, except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

If you eat its fruit, you will surely die.

God was looking for a relationship right there.

And guess what?

It was two things.

Again, take care of the garden and don't separate yourself from me.

He wanted relationship.

He never wanted it to be difficult.

He never wanted it to be distant.

He never wanted it to be complicated.

He never wanted it to feel like something we need to earn.

How do I know this?

Well, because he proves it with action.

He took action.

God proved this by coming to us.

You think about that.

He sent his son here to not only be with us, to become one of us, because that's relationship.

Okay?

He didn't do salvation from a distance.

He didn't say, hey, here's the Bible.

Check it out.

I'll check in with you in about 80 years or so.

He came and he walked next to us.

There's meaning to that.

It means that God desires a closeness with us.

Fear God and keep his commandments.

Love God, love others.

Man, I hope you can see the simplicity and how an unexplainable creator wants to just be with us.

He just wants to be near us.

When I overcomplicate things, there's a prayer that I have that I like to say.

And I'm going to lead you guys in this prayer right now.

Lord God, I love you.

Father, I pray that today I experience your blessings and that I will bless others.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

God wants to bless us, and we have great opportunities to bless others.

It's not that hard.

It's actually pretty easy.

Well, guys, now we're going to take a minute and do the Lord's Supper.

We're going to share in the Lord's Supper this morning.

If you didn't get one of these, they're in the back of the room.

They're on the tables as you come in.

If you didn't grab one, you can grab one now.

If you don't want to do that, you don't want to wait.

That's fine.

You get one next time.

So this is a time where we just, you know, we recognize what God has done for us, the sacrifice that He made for us, and we celebrate that together.

So open up and I'm going to pray over the bread.

Mighty God in heaven.

Mighty God in heaven.

Father, thank you for loving us in ways that we don't understand, Father.

Lord, I just pray that we can remove these barriers and making things so complicated.

Father, thank you for this gift that Jesus gave for us, giving his body and dying for us on the cross, Lord.

Thank you so much.

Take the bread.

Now the Jews, God in heaven, thank you for the blood that Jesus spilled for us to make the salvation possible, Father, to cover our sins.

For doing the thing that we couldn't do, Father.

Thank you so much just for coming and being here with us, Father, for making this a personal walk, for desiring to be close to us.

Lord, thank you so much for loving us.

In Jesus' name.

Take the juice.