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Good afternoon. Thank you for
being back in your place. If you would stand we'll get started with
our service Romans chapter 5 verse number 19 says for is by one
man's disobedience many were made sinners So by the obedience
of one shall many be made righteous moreover the law entered that
the offense might abound But where sin abounded grace did
much more abound that as sin hath reigned unto death even
so might grace reign through righteousness Unto eternal life
by Jesus Christ our Lord good to be in the Lord's house today
brother Lala. Would you open us? I? and join me in singing page number
424, O Come, All Ye Faithful. O come, all ye faithful, joyful
and triumphant, O come, let us adore Him O come,
let us adore Him O come, let us adore Him In exultation proceed. Amen. O come, let us adore Him O come,
let us adore Him O come, let us adore Him O come, let us adore Him Amen. Journey into me. Page number
433. Away in a manger. ♪ Stars in the sky, look down where
we lay. ♪ ♪ The little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay. ♪ ♪ Lord Jesus, look down from the
sky ♪ ♪ And stay by my cradle till morning is nigh ♪ ♪ Believe
me, Lord Jesus, I ask thee to stay ♪ ♪ Close by me forever
and ever ♪ by tender care. thought on these things. Behold,
the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying,
Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy
wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.
And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name
Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins. I see why you would choose Mary. She's a virtuous girl. I understand why you'd use her
to bring your son to the world. But what I don't understand,
what doesn't make sense is me. When there are so many others
who could serve you faithfully, How can I be a father to a king? Lord, I just don't know why you've
chosen one like me. Take my hand and just show me
what to do. Help me be a father just like
you. How would you have me to raise
him? There's not much I know. What can a carpenter teach that
will help a king grow? But I will give him my best,
I will follow wherever you lead. And though I don't understand,
I will serve you faithfully. How can I be a father to a king? Lord, I just don't know why you've
chosen one like me. Take my hand and please show
me what to do. Help me be a father just like
you. Patient and kind, merciful and
righteous, I will give him my best. And when he's old, he'll
embrace the world with arms outstretched, with arms outstretched. How can I be a father to a king? Lord, I just don't know why you've
chosen one like me. Take my hand. And please show me what to do
Help me be a father just like you Help me be a father just
like you So we have the college kids home,
and since we don't let girls preach, Alyssa's not gonna preach,
but Jared is, okay? So Jared, good to have you home.
And in case you didn't hear, Jared is, how'd you do that? Show us how you did that. How'd
you do that? Go ahead. How'd you do that? Yeah, I wanna see it, I wanna
see it. Whoa, yeah, okay, yeah. You good? Awesome. All right.
Apparently this doesn't want to stay on me. Thank you, Pastor.
Love you, too. All right, if you have your Bibles,
which you should, we are in church. We're going to be in Ecclesiastes,
Ecclesiastes chapter number one. is where we're gonna be today.
It's not necessarily a Christmas sermon, but pastors wasn't this
morning, so I'm in the clear. So we're good there, but Ecclesiastes
chapter number one, if you're there, please stand for the honor
of reading God's word. We're gonna begin in verse chapter
number 12, and in this sermon, we're gonna really focus in on
the question, what is your heart given to? So if you will join
with me in reading Ecclesiastes chapter number one, beginning
in verse 12. The Bible says this, I the preacher
was king over Israel and Jerusalem, and I gave my heart to seek and
search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under
heaven. This sore travail hath God given to the sons of man
to be exercised therewith. I have seen all the works that
are done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and vexation of
spirit. That which is crooked cannot
be made straight, and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.
I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great
estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that had
been before me in Jerusalem. Yea, my heart had great experience
of wisdom and knowledge. and I gave my heart to know wisdom,
and to know madness and folly, I perceived that this also is
vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief,
and he that increases knowledge increaseth sorrow. Let's go ahead
and pray. Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, we
just want to thank you for this opportunity that we have to be
in your house, Lord, and to hear from your word. And just thank
you for the life of Solomon and his example he's given to us
and the wisdom you gave to him that you now allow us to glean
from. Lord, I just pray that you would be with me now. Give
me your words to say to help your people today, Lord. We love
you and we pray this on your name. Amen. Thank you for standing.
You may be seated. Now many of us, I'm sure when
I talk about Solomon, we know who Solomon is. He's this great
king of Israel following his father David, possibly the greatest
king that Israel ever had with David. And he was a man of war
and David wanted to build the temple for God. And we see that
God didn't allow David to do that because of his sin with
Bathsheba and because he was a man of war. So we see that
David He conquered much of the land. He put Israel in a great
place where they began to prosper. They had all this land. Israel's
becoming to be a powerhouse of a nation under King David. And
now Solomon comes on the scene and he's king over Israel and
he's got all these things going for him. He's got so much under
his power. He's got land. He's got money.
He's got it all. And we see that even all these
things Solomon was given, God came to him in 1 Kings 3, verse
5, when he was early on in being king of Israel. And he came to
him in a dream and he asked him what God should give to him.
He gave him the choice to have whatever Solomon wanted God would
give to him. And we see Solomon made a great
request to God. He requested for more wisdom.
And in that passage you'll see that God is glad that Solomon
requested this because he says, most kings, they would have wished
for power or wealth or long life. And he says, but ye have asked
for wisdom to guide my people. And because of that, I'm going
to give you power, and I'm going to give you great riches, and
I'm going to give you long life as long as you serve me. So we
see here that Solomon, he's off to a great start. And Solomon,
he's begun to, He is known as today one of the greatest kings
of all time. The greatest king in the nation
of Israel. The most powerful king of all time. And we have
seen that he's beginning off by doing what God wanted him
to do. And we see even just some interesting facts about during
his reign, 1 Kings 10.27, that tells us that during Solomon's
reign, the silver was worth as stones under him, which is crazy,
because I would like some silver thrown my way. I mean, if I could
just go collect stones and be rich, I would do it. But that's
just how rich he was. And I went to trusty Google,
and many people say that his wealth today would have been
worth $2.2 trillion. under his kingdom during all
that time, which is just insane. So we see that here that Solomon
had more wisdom and more wealth than anyone else before him or
even after him. God promised that there would
be nobody with as much wisdom after him either. But even though
he had all this wealth and he had all this power and all this
wisdom, sadly our text shows Solomon being in a place we would
never expect him to be. We find him in a place that if
you imagine this person that had all this going for him, had
God on his side, knew what it was like during that time. If
you think back even early on in Solomon's time when he built
the temple and dedicated it to the Lord, God's Shekinah glory
came down and filled that temple. I mean, imagine that scene. God
was with Solomon at this point. God was moving on the behalf
of Israel here. God was doing something great.
But how come we find in this passage that he's saying life
is vanity and vexing to his spirit and that he's at this low point
in his life. How did he go from that to this? And that's the question I'm trying
to focus in on tonight is what is your heart given to? We see
in our text that Solomon experienced vexation of spirit, grief and
sorrow because he gave his heart to gain wisdom rather than trusting
and obeying God. We see in our passage here in
verses 13 through 15, let's just read them again. He says, I have seen all the works that
are done under the sun and behold all is vanity and vexation of
spirit. That which is crooked cannot
be made straight and that which is wanting cannot be numbered. We see that Solomon says he's
given his heart to use this wisdom God has given him to understand
more things about this world, to understand all things done
under the sun, done under heaven. Then the word there in gave means
to addict or to devote oneself to. And the meaning of the word
heart there is the seed of affections and passions. I mean, we know
what it means when we attach our heart to something. Our heart
is where our passion resides. Our heart is where our life and
our desire to live is, and it controls what we want to do.
Our heart is where our passions lie, which affects our mind,
which affects what we do. So we see that Solomon's heart
was placed on the wrong thing here. Solomon's heart, he took
his wisdom God gave him, and he placed it to gaining more
wisdom. He placed his heart, he addicted
himself to, he devoted himself to understanding all these things
that are done under the heaven, done under the sun. And we see
that he claims this to be a sore travail. This exercise of gaining
wisdom, it was a tiring process for him. It would have been a
wearying thing. I mean, we aren't just born knowing everything.
It takes some work to understand some things. It takes some work
to learn some things, especially if you're going to try and learn
everything under the sun. That seems like a very taxing
task at hand here. But we see, this is what Solomon
devoted himself to at this moment. At this time in Solomon's life,
he thought he wanted to know more about this world. He thought
he wanted to understand everything that goes on under this world.
And he says he did it. He says, I have seen all the
works that are done under the sun. But he says, behold this,
all is vanity and vexation of spirit. And that which is crooked
cannot be made straight, and that which is wanting cannot
be numbered. We see that he finds that everything
done on this earth is empty. It was unsatisfying, and it troubled
his spirit. This thing he devoted his heart
to is not turning out to bring results that he thought it would
bring. He thought this would bring satisfaction to his life. He thought this is what he wanted
his life to be about, to gain all this wisdom. And as he did
this, he starts to be troubled. He starts to understand some
things. He's understanding, the more I know, the more vexing
it is to my spirit. The spirit simply means a dispensation
of mind. It is where thinking and doubting
abides. As he's contemplating what he's
understanding, the wisdom he's gaining on this earth, His thoughts
begin to become uneased. He's starting to be troubled
with some things in his life. He says, that which is crooked
cannot be made straight. If we take a look out on this
world, we're gonna see there's some problems. There's gonna
be some things that, you know, you're gonna look at and say,
hey, that needs fixed. And Solomon sees that, he says,
okay, this thing needs fixed. And he might even had, with his
wisdom, tried to solve ways that this could be fixed, but in his
finite wisdom, found that it could not be made straight. Because
this world is under a curse. This world, we are under the
fall after Adam's sin. We are under the curse of sin.
And there are things that are messed up in this world that
will not be made right until Jesus Christ comes back. and
sets up his reign, and as Jesus comes back and he renews these
things back to him and he fixes these things, right now in this
present earth, there's going to be things that cannot be made
straight. There's going to be some things
that are out of order, that are out of whack, that are causing
problems, and they're not going to be able to be fixed. Not all
of them are during this time as we are under this curse. And
Solomon is understanding this. And if you looked out on this,
if you put your heart onto trying to fix these things, trying to
understand and try and fix these problems in the earth, you're
going to get wore out. It's going to tire you down.
It's going to make you vexed to your spirit. You're going
to say, there's so much trouble and I want to fix it, but I can't.
And that's what Solomon's doing here. He's trying to understand
some things. He's trying to fix some things
or even just understand how to fix some things in his life. And he says it can't be made
straight. And he says it's all vanity and vexation of spirit. So we see that this kind of,
after this task, we see Solomon have a meeting with himself here. In verse 16, the Bible says,
He starts to look into his heart and understand some things. He
says, And I've gotten more wisdom.
I mean, look at how smart I am. I know these things. People are
recognizing my wisdom. People come to me for answers.
I have gotten more wisdom than all of them that have been before
me. Nobody has ever had this much wisdom in Jerusalem before.
And my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge. I have
experienced some things. I have gained some knowledge.
I have had some great wisdom in my life. And I gave my heart
to this, in verse 17, and I gave my heart to know wisdom, and
to know all the madness and the folly of this world, all the
crazy things that go on in this world. I've given my heart to
it. But I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For
in much wisdom is much grief, and he that increaseth in knowledge,
increaseth sorrow. He comes to a realization in
his life concerning his wisdom and knowledge he gained. His
quest, he says, was successful. I mean, he gained more wisdom
than anyone before. He has seen some things. He's
given his heart to gain wisdom and to know madness and folly.
But what he found was that it all led to grief and sorrow in
his life. The word grief there means a
pain of mind due to a misconduct. And the word sorrow means a pain
of mind due to frustrated hopes. So we see that here, Solomon
was grieved in his mind. He had sorrow in his mind. at
the state the earth was in because he could only see that which
was temporary. As a human being, he was stuck in this finite being
as a human, but though he had wisdom and he understood some
things, they didn't sit well with him because he could never
see how they were gonna be fixed. And though God gave him this
gift of wisdom, wisdom is good. And God tells us to gain wisdom. And he tells us to ask for wisdom. But the more wisdom we get, the
more responsibility we begin to have. The more responsibility
we have to live by that wisdom we know. But Solomon here is
finding that the more wisdom you gain about this earth, the
more wisdom you get about madness and folly, it's going to bring
grief and sorrow in your life. And he's seeing everything as
temporary. He's seeing all these problems that he cannot fix and
he can't handle it. And the truth is that God is
the only one who can handle all of the wisdom this world has.
All the wisdom about the things in this world. God is the only
one that exists completely out of time. Here he knows exactly
what's gonna happen in earth before it's destroyed and before
he sets up his kingdom forever and before we go to live with
him in heaven forever. God looks at the problems in
this life. Yes, it grieves his heart. Yes,
God wants them to be fixed and he knows that they're not gonna
be fixed until his son comes back and fixes them. So he sees
the problems. But it doesn't cause his spirit
to be burdened down like it was for Solomon. Because he knows
what's going to happen. He knows how to fix it and he
knows that he will one day fix it. So in our life, just as Solomon,
once the wisdom we gain, we might become burdened down with this. And this isn't to say that we
shouldn't... try to use wisdom properly in our lives, but it
is to say, with the wisdom we do get, we need to understand
that the one who has all wisdom is the one that we need to be
giving our heart to, because he's the only one that's gonna
give us the wisdom that we need to navigate in the madness and
folly of this world, to live in this wicked world, to live
in this crooked world. So we see that Solomon gave his
heart to a vain act of gaining wisdom concerning the things
of this world. and what he experienced brought grief and sorrow to his
life. But sadly the truth is that we often experience vexation
of spirit, grief and sorrow in our lives because we give our
heart to that which is in vain rather than trusting and obeying
our God. You see, just dealing with the text even here today,
someone in this room today could be, their heart could be set
on gaining wisdom of this life. Just to deal with what Solomon
was dealing with. We could, maybe some trials are coming in our
life. We could, in ourselves, want to gain wisdom about that
problem. We could, in ourselves, want
to understand why is this happening to that person? Or why is this
the path that God has set for me? Or why is this crooked thing
happening to these good people? that are just trying to walk
with the Lord. I mean, if you look on the world, you're gonna
find some things that are messed up, some things that don't make
sense to us. But we know that, just as Solomon
experienced that, if we can attach our heart to that, if we keep
our heart and we addict ourselves to knowing that, then we're gonna
be burdened down. We're gonna have some grief and
sorrow in our life, and it's gonna start affecting our mind,
and it's gonna start affecting what we do. It might continue
to, it might affect our family. It might affect the way we treat
our loved ones, because we're so burdened down by something
we've given our heart to. By the fact that we have given
our heart to trying to understand why God is doing something in
our life, or why this thing is happening to other people, or
even to ourselves. But if you attach your heart
to that, and you get so caught up and focused on that, that
it is what you go to for your source of life, it's going to
grief you. It's going to bring sorrow to
your mind. And you're going to start affecting the loved ones
around you and people you never even thought it would affect.
You're going to start affecting them, too. Because when our heart
is in the wrong place, it starts to mess up some things in our
lives. I mean, it's a simple truth. And it is something we
know for sure. And we've heard over and over
and over and over again, but it needs to be repeated because
if we don't have our heart in the right place, we're never
going to be doing the right things. We're never going to have the
right outpouring in our life because, like I said before,
what's in our heart is going to affect what we think and it's
going to affect what we do. And that's what happened here
to Solomon. What he gave himself to affected the way he thought,
affected the way he looked out on the world, and probably, definitely
affected his kingdom. Definitely affected the people
of Israel under him. And we do the same thing in our
life. And I know that maybe some of
us aren't really dealing with what Solomon dealt with here,
giving our heart to wisdom. But we also see Solomon gave
his heart to many other things. Solomon gave his heart to many
other things, and we have the tendency to do the same thing
as well. We see that Solomon gave his heart to women. He gave
his heart to riches. And he gave his heart to pleasure.
He gave his heart to other gods. I know that in the Bible, God
warned Solomon. He says, if you get wives of
these lands, they're going to turn your heart away from me.
They're going to turn your heart to other gods. And what does
Solomon do? In his great wisdom, he goes
and he gets these women and they do exactly what God told them
they would do. They turn his heart away from
him and onto these other gods. And we see Solomon, he begins
this terrible process in his life. He starts attaching his
heart to things that he thought would give him satisfaction.
He starts attaching his heart to these other gods. And maybe
they don't start satisfying things and some problems start popping
up in his life, so he says, okay, I'm gonna give my heart to pleasure.
Whatever I want, whatever pleases me, I'm gonna give my heart to
that, and that's gonna satisfy me. And when you see that he
goes down this path and he gets all these things to him, he does
all these things for himself, but same thing. If you keep reading
the book of Ecclesiastes, we'll see that he says those are vanity
as well. Those are vexation of spirit
as well. He gives himself to riches. He
says, no, I'm just gonna get all these riches to me. If I
have enough money, I'll be okay. But everything Solomon attached
his heart to besides God, The same thing happens to our life. And it happens over and over
and over again. And the times we think we're good, we're doing
a great job, we have our heart attached to God, those times
we have peace just as Solomon did. Things are prospering in
our lives. Hard times sure do come, but
we're walking with the Lord. Our heart is attached to Him.
He brings us through those things, and we see great victory. We
see great things done, but then we give our heart to something
else that next day, and we start to have some problems. We start
to affect the loved ones in our lives because we simply moved
our heart away from God, just as Solomon did here. And this
has been a very sad topic up to this point. And I'm sure Solomon
in his life experienced some very sad times because of the
things he attached his heart to. But thankfully, in Ecclesiastes
chapter number 12, if you will turn there with me, we see that
Solomon got the best wisdom he could have ever got. We see that
Solomon He figured it out. Towards the end of his life,
he understood what the greatest thing men could be about. And
it says this in verse 13, if you're there, Ecclesiastes chapter
12, verse 13, Solomon says this, fear God, and keep His commandments. For this is the whole duty of
man. So we see Solomon concludes at
the end of his life, after giving his heart to so many things,
giving his heart to God, he had that time, and then moving his
heart to other things, we see that at the end of his life he
says, listen, I have done everything there is to do, I have gained
wisdom on all the things under this earth, I have experienced
so many things that most people aren't going to be able to experience.
And do you know what I found? I found that the whole duty of
man is to fear God and to keep His commandments. It doesn't
matter what happens in this earth. It doesn't matter what you think
is going to satisfy your life. If you don't give your heart
to God, if you don't fear Him, and if you don't keep His commandments,
you're never going to be satisfied. You're always going to be living
in this bubble of vanity and vexation of spirit. He comes
to the point in his life where he says, vanity is vanity. Vanity,
oh vanity, all is vanity. Everything he saw on this earth
was vanity. Because it's all going to come
to an end. He comes to that conclusion. He says, listen, all we need
to be about, our whole duty on this earth, is to fear God. To have a holy reverence for
Him that makes us want to obey Him. If our heart is on to God
and our passion is to obey God, then we're going to fear Him.
If our heart is a given to God, we're gonna have a holy reverence
for him. We're gonna know he's holy. We're gonna know he's almighty.
We're gonna know he's all-knowing, and we're gonna love his word,
and we're gonna seek to live by it, because that's our passion.
Because remember, what's in our heart affects what we think,
and that affects what we do. So when we get our heart attached
to God, we're gonna start fearing him. We're gonna start understanding
our God is a great God, and he is holy, and he wants something
for my life, and it's better than anything I could ever give.
It is better than anything I could ever get to myself. It is better
than anything else I could attach my heart to. And I'm going to
keep His commandments. I'm going to obey Him because
He has my heart. And sadly in this world, we attach
our heart to so many things. To make a little, just a funny
jump here, I think of an illustration. I work at Sam's Club there at
college. And if you know me, I love the movie Cars. The Disney
movie Cars is the best movie ever made on this planet Earth.
I'm just telling you, it's fantastic. As a little boy, there's nothing
better. I mean, it's literally cars with faces. It's so awesome. And they're driving around. There's
so many awesome scenes in that. I loved it. And I love Lightning
McQueen. And so there at Sam's Club, they have this remote control
Lightning McQueen. It is amazing. Mom, Christmas,
if you want to write this down. There's a remote control, Lightning
McQueen, and it glows in the dark. It glows in the dark, people. I could drive that thing in the
dark. It's amazing. And my heart's on it. I'm just
telling you right now. I need it bad. If you ask Abigail,
I have told her that I've wanted that more times than she could
probably count. Every day I see it and I walk by, I say, it's
still here. So right there, $32 if anyone's wondering. 32.98, I think. As you can see, my heart's
on that. I want that thing bad. It's so
cool. I'll play for it for like five days, and then probably
be done with it. But it's really cool. But it's a silly illustration,
because even if I got that Lightning McQueen, if that was truly my
source of joy in this life, if that was truly my source of satisfaction
in this life, how long do you think that's going to last? Not
long at all. And I'm going to start experiencing
some vanity. And I'm just going to start vexing
my soul. Maybe Lightning McQueen might not start glowing as big.
And it's going to hurt. He's going to start wearing off.
His battery's going to die. Well, all these things, it's
a silly illustration. But the truth is, there's so
many things in our life that can have our heart. And in Exodus
20 verse 3, the Bible tells us thou shalt have no other gods
before me. It says God knows that we have
the tendency. God knows that we are prone to
give our heart to things that aren't supposed to have it. God
knows that. And He knows that we would begin
to even idolize these things. To begin to worship these things.
To give our lives to these things. And we might sit here in a church
service and hear a message like this and be confronted with the
Word of God and say, that's never going to be me. I mean, do you
see how silly that is? I would never put my life's joy
on a Lightning McQueen RC car. I would never do it, guys. But
the truth is, it might not be that silly. It might be you've
put your heart on your family. A good thing, a really good thing
that God has told you to put effort into and to lead. But
here's the thing, even a good thing, we have the tendency to
ruin. We have the tendency to ruin blessings God has given
in our lives because we make them our God. Or we make them
the thing we've addicted our heart to. Even a good thing like
family can cause vexation of spirit because children are gonna
disobey. Kids are gonna disobey. Kids
are gonna go astray. Things are gonna happen that
aren't gonna be very satisfactory in your life. if that is what
your heart is given to. So we can't just attach ourselves
to these good things God has done, and we know that there's
wicked things that we should not give our heart to, but people
are giving their heart to, and Christians are giving their heart
to these wicked things, but I'm not just saying here, beware
of these wicked things, like Solomon gave himself to, like
polygamy, and giving all these things, these wicked things he
should not have done, but he gave his heart to something good.
He gave his heart to getting wisdom. That's a good thing.
And we gotta be aware of both. We gotta know that, okay, good
or bad, it can't have my heart unless it's God. God is the only
one that is to have my heart. God is the only one that is gonna
bring satisfaction. Can I just help you? Can I just
help you out right now, this afternoon? There is nothing that's
gonna replace God as the sole source of satisfaction in your
life. There's nothing that is going to do it. Everything else
is a poor substitute. Everything else is going to just
bring you to a point of breaking, a vexation of spirit. It's all
vanity. We get caught up in our minds,
and we think that this thing, if we just have it, oh man, if
we just pour ourselves into it, if we addict ourselves into it,
it's going to give me everything I ever wanted. God is, Solomon
is pleading with us. He's pleading with us. He wrote
a whole book on the experiences he had. And God and the Holy
Spirit chose to preserve this for us because He says, hey listen,
Solomon was wise, but he did some foolish things. Solomon
was wise, but he did some very, very foolish things, and God,
because He loves us, is trying to point it out to us today in
His Word. He says, listen, you can give your heart, I know you're
gonna, I know you're gonna want to give your heart to these things,
but listen, here's your whole duty, fear me and keep my commandments. Have a holy reverence for me
and you keep my commandments. Because we could even be here
today serving in the ministries of the church. We could be doing
great things for God. We could be soul winning. We
could be telling people about Jesus. We could be doing all
these things. But if our heart is in the wrong
place, the Bible tells us in John 15 we're nothing. Because
if we're not abiding in Jesus Christ, we are not anything. We are nothing without Jesus
Christ. The work he has done in our life has given us life.
It has given us a source of life. It has given us something to
do. We are bought with a price, and now we gotta give our heart
to him. The Bible tells us in Romans chapter 12 that this is
our reasonable service. to do it. It makes sense. Giving your heart to something
else doesn't make sense. It does not make sense to give
your heart to all these things. It only makes sense to give your
heart to the one that saved it, to the one that created you,
to the one that loves you, to the one that cares for you and
cares enough for you to give you all this wisdom, to give
you all this direction of life, to show you what he wants from
you. This makes sense. Everything
else doesn't. Because in this world, we can
get so caught up, we can get so focused on all these things
that they tell you, oh yes, if you get this, it's going to satisfy
you. If you do this, it's going to satisfy you. Oh, that didn't
work out for you? Hey, try this. Hey, try this. Hey, try this.
Hey, try this. Do you see where this has led
our nation? Do you see where that has led our earth? Do you
see the problems in this world? Do you see all the people groaning
and vexed to their spirit? These homeless people that are
just begging and begging and just trying to get the next drug
to just get their mind off of it. It's everywhere. It's breaking
families. It's breaking homes. It is tearing
our nation apart. It is beating people against
each other that shouldn't even be put against each other. It
is causing some issues because people are giving their heart
to things that never were meant to have it. Why would Christians
do the same thing? Do you guys know what Jesus did
for you? Do you know what he has done
in your hearts? Do you know the life he has given
you? Do you know the price he paid?
Guys, it's Christmas. We know that this is the time
where we celebrate Jesus coming to this earth. What did Jesus
do for us? He lived a sinless life. He lived
in this wicked world. Do you know how much that grieved
him? Can you imagine if it grieved Solomon so much what it did to
the Holy Son of God to be down here to see what it was doing
to his creation? To see all the people demon-possessed
and in peril and just crowding to Jesus for a source of help.
Can you imagine what it did to his soul? Yet he saw all these
things, and he kept himself from sin, and he's paid the price. He humbled himself. The amount
of humility it took for him to even come is more humility than
we could ever show. And he even took it a step further. In Hebrews it says that he humbled
himself even to the death of the cross. He endured the cross,
despising the shame. He knew what it was going to
cost before he came. He knew the plan. He knew what
it was going to take. And he did it! He did it for
us, because He loves us. And not only that, He gave us
His word, because He knows we are finite people, and we forget,
and we try to do our own thing, and we try to give our heart
to things that never should have it. So He loved us enough, He
gave us His word, because He knew that He wanted something
great for our life. He said, listen, I sent my son
to pay for you, and I didn't just send him so that you could
come live with me. No, I sent him so that you could start working
for me. I sent him because there's a life that you can live down
here. Yes, it's going to be perfect in heaven, but listen, it can
be good down here too, in the midst of all the folly, in the
midst of all the crooked nations you're in. It can be good, it
can be great, and you can start building riches in heaven for
when you are there in eternity. You can start today living like
you're going to live in heaven. You can start today living for
God and doing what you're going to do for God. If you don't fear
God now, guess what you're going to do in heaven for all eternity?
You're going to fear God. You're going to say, He is holy,
He is holy, He is holy, He is holy, and you might get tired
of it because we're going to be saying it forever. We're going
to be saying it to all eternity. Listen, there is a God who is
holy. There is a God who wants us to
fear Him. So quit giving your heart to
something that was never supposed to have it. We look at Solomon
and we think, oh, that's a great story. I've heard those stories
all the time of what he's done in his life and how he experienced
all these things, but I would never do it. But we do it. If you look in your heart, if
you ask the Lord to search your heart, then he's going to start
pointing out some things that are there that should not be
there. You know what they're doing? They're affecting the
way you live. They're affecting the way you think. They're affecting
your actions. They're affecting the role you're
supposed to play in your house or in your church. It's affecting
more things than you think it is. And Solomon here, he said,
I imagine him broken. As he's writing this down, as
he's looking back at his life, and understanding all the things
he's done, I imagine him just wanting for the people of Israel,
for his children, to understand, listen, your whole duty is to
fear God and keep his commandments. Your whole duty, everything you're
to be about, is to understand that God is holy, and he's got
a path of life he wants you to live, and you just gotta obey.
And the hardest part about that is submission. The hardest part
about that is being humble enough to give up control of our heart,
to attach our heart to the only one that can keep it, to attach
it to the one that is meant to have it. Your spouse is not to
have it completely. Nobody is supposed to have it
as your source of life, as your source of satisfaction other
than God. And once you give it to God, you're going to start
experiencing some great things like Solomon did. You're gonna
start experiencing the joys of a loving relationship with your
spouse or with your family. You're gonna start experiencing
peace in hard times. Something this world knows nothing
about. Something this world cannot understand that a Christian would
be going through this unspeakable problem in their life, but with
a smile on their face. With joy, with peace, with a
song to sing, with something to tell or encourage another
person they come along with, these things don't make sense
to the world. But it makes sense when you give
your heart to God. Because once you give your heart
to God, it's going to start affecting the way you think. It's going
to start affecting, hey, I serve a holy God. This probably doesn't
fit. If I serve a holy God and He's got my heart, I'm addicted
to, and an addiction to God is not a bad thing. That is something
good. We say addiction and we have a negative connotation about
that, but no, we can addict ourselves to some good things. If we're
addicted to reading the Bible, I don't think anything bad's
gonna come from that. If you're addicted to walking
with the Lord and you have devoted yourself to living for Him, to
giving your heart to Him, there's only gonna be good that comes
from that. Yes, you're going to experience some madness and
folly in your life. You're going to experience some
hard things. But who cares? It's part of the walk with God.
I would much rather do it with Him than without Him. I would
much, much rather. And I'm sure Solomon thought
the same thing. I'm sure Solomon thought, man,
I could have done some great... I'm sure he thought he could
do way more for God if he would have just kept his heart with
Him. And I'm sure that God could have. I'm sure of it. And I'm
sure that God wants to do so many great things in each and
every one of our lives today, if we will just give our heart
to Him. He has given us a purpose. He has not left us clueless.
We don't just get saying, okay, I don't know what to do. No,
because when God moves in, There's some things that you know you
ought to be doing. There are some things that just
should naturally come out. Some love should come out of
you if you've been saved. Some joy should come out of you
if you're saved. Some forgiveness should come
out of you if you're saved. Some patience should come out
of you if you're saved. But you've got to give your heart
to God. And you've got to give it up. You've got to allow Him
to have control of it. Because this thing is deceitful
and desperately wicked. I know that if I gave it up to
whatever it wanted, it's not going to go after anything good.
It's not going to produce anything good in my life. It's going to
cause some vexing things in my life. But when it is placed in
the hands of the Creator, when it is placed within the hands
of the Almighty God, there's going to be some great works
done. There's going to be some great things happen in churches.
There's going to be some great things done in America. And what
this world needs is more Christians to get their heart out of the
world, and to get their heart up to God, and to let Him have
it, and to let Him control them. Because that's the only way this
world is going to change. And it's the only way we're going
to have peace. It is the only way we're not
going to experience vanity and vexation of spirit. Jesus came
to this earth and he taught some radical things. He taught some
things that in our culture blew people's minds. And I'm scared
today that many of us Christians, me included, want to just fit
in with the world. Want to come to church and serve
God and have a hallelujah fit in church, but then go out in
the world and just fit in. Go out in the world and just
not really cause any ripples. But no, Jesus came in and he
caused some ripples. He caused some people to be upset.
He came in, the way he lived, the things he taught, people
noticed. People notice there was something
different, and the disciples did the same thing, and the apostles,
and the early churches, they were stirring up some things.
And the churches of today need to start stirring up our communities.
We need to start getting out of there, standing up for things,
standing against abortion, standing against gay marriage, standing
against these things, because they're not coming out of a heart
given to God. They are not coming out of keeping
God's commandments. It is not coming out of a heart
that has a holy reverence for God. We need Christians to get
their heart onto God. To give their heart to God. Not
to control it and not just allow certain things to get in there
that we are comfortable with. No, to give it completely over.
When you devote yourself to something, you're not just giving part of
you to it. You're giving everything you got to it. You're letting
him have control of everything in your life. And that is the
whole duty of man. You see, the Christian life at
its core is a relationship and it's a personal walk with God.
That is what it is. And we have been given the great
privilege to walk with God. Think about that. The God that
created all things, the holy God that we've been speaking
about. He cares enough to talk to you, to walk with you, to
care about you and your problems, to go about, and he cared enough
to send his son to experience the things you've experienced,
and to care about you, to save you, and to want to walk with
you. We have a great privilege here. This is something amazing
that we get to have. Why give it up for a poor substitute? There's nothing worth it. Solomon
experienced it all. And he says, guys, it's not worth
it. Guys, it's going to trouble you. Guys, it's going to bring
some grief and sorrow in your life. I know where it takes you. Having a personal walk with God
is not going to come out of a heart that's not given to him. A heart
not given to God isn't going to want to walk with God. Because
a heart, as we said, is desperately wicked. A heart is just going
to stray away from God. We are the enemies of God when
we live abiding to our heart. Because we're sinful. And we're
fleshly. And we're carnal. But when our
heart is given to God, he starts to do a work. And then we can
start being holy as he is holy. And we can start to experience
some great things in our life. So Solomon concluded that to
give your heart to anything but God is vain. Everything in this
earth is gonna pass away. Nothing's gonna stay for eternity.
And only what we have done for God is gonna last. Only what
we do for the Lord is gonna last in this life. Jesus taught to
lay up treasures in heaven. So let's get busy about it. Let's
get busy about doing what our whole duty is to be about, if
that sentence made sense. But yeah, we need to just give
our heart to what Solomon has said and what God has put in
his word as truth. To give our heart to God, because
that is the only thing that's not going to be vain. So, this
afternoon I want to challenge us to have a heart that is given
to God, and allow that heart to be the filter for everything
else in your life. If it doesn't match up with your
heart for God, you're going to know. If you're walking with
God and your heart is given to Him, you're going to know if
this thing shouldn't be there, or if this thing is taking away
from God, or taking a spot that God is only supposed to have.
So give your heart to God and let everything else be filtered
through that. Do not waste your life like Solomon did by going
after things that are vain. Live your life for God and do
the whole duty of man. Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, just
thank you so much for your word this afternoon. Thank you for
the truth and thank you for the wisdom you gave to Solomon here
and just the conclusions he came to, Lord, that are biblically
sound and that are helping help us here today. Because Lord,
we need this. We need to know that there are
things in our life that aren't gonna satisfy us. We need to
know because we have the tendency to give our heart to things that
should not have it. So Lord, help us. Help us to give our
heart to you and to serve you. We love you, Lord, and we pray
this all in Jesus' name, amen. If you're troubled down this
afternoon, and you know your heart's given to some things
it shouldn't be given to, come down to this altar, pray where
you are, and realize that your heart's been given to some things
it shouldn't be. Make it right. Give your heart to God this afternoon
as Jay sings. So, Jay, I give my heart today Still I'm standing on my own. I can't see. Amen. Y'all can go ahead and
stand. Thank you all for being here
today. It was a great day in the Lord's house. It was good to have our college
students home. Got to hear Jared preach, praise the Lord for that.
Next time it'll be Alyssa. So that'll be exciting. That's
one of the things pastor said, he's not gonna change, right?
So just some points of interest here from the bulletin. Again,
today starts our giving for the Christmas missions offering.
You can just mark that on your envelope there. There'll be next
Saturday will be a graduation ceremony here for Jay Hyatt.
It'll be at 2 p.m. here at the church, and there'll
be some light refreshments to follow after the ceremony. Christmas
Cantata next Sunday, December 8th. It's a great time to invite
friends and family to come and be a part of that with us. There's
a sign-up sheet on the table in the foyer for the Cookie Fellowship
that's gonna follow the cantata there. Teen Christmas Party,
it's gonna be at our house on Friday, December 13th. It'll
be at 6 p.m. Ladies Christmas Party coming
up December 16th at 7 p.m. at Pastor's house there. and then patch program coming
up as well as Gilson Christmas. And I also wanna personally thank
every single one of you. A lot of you showed up and you
guys were a huge part of our teen fundraiser last Sunday.
And so we raised $1,000 for that. So it was one of the highest
we've ever raised. It was awesome. Thank you guys
so very much. Laura answered a lot of prayer through that.
And I just wanna thank every single one of you so much for
that. Again, great day being in the Lord's house today. Brother
Daniel Decker, do you mind dismissing us in a word of prayer? you
What is Your Heart Given to
Series Guest Speaker
| Sermon ID | 121241956456779 |
| Duration | 56:46 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - PM |
| Bible Text | Ecclesiastes 1:13-18 |
| Language | English |
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