Ecclesiastes 5 verses 1 through 7. These are God's words. Walk prudently when you go to the house of God and draw near to hear rather than to give the sacrifice of fools for they do not know that they do evil. Do not be rash with your mouth. Let not your heart utter anything hastily before God. For God is in heaven and you on earth. Therefore, let your words be few. For a dream comes through much activity, and a fool's voice is known by his many words. When you make a vow to God, do not delay to pay it. For he has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you have vowed. Better not to vow than to vow not pay. Do not let your mouth cause your flesh to sin, nor say before the messenger of God that it was an error. Why should God be angry at your excuse and destroy the work of your hands? For in the multitude of dreams and many words, There is also vanity, but fear God. Amen, so far the reading of God's inspired and inerrant word. The essence of worship and at the same time, one of the great benefits of worship is to fear God. The fear of the Lord is the essence of worshiping him, drawing near to him. And as we have been hearing throughout, well, throughout the whole book of Ecclesiastes, but especially in chapter four, There are many things in this life under the sun that if we are forgetful of God make it temporary, short-lived, and therefore whatever was worthwhile for a time has its value quickly eliminated because it and we are eliminated, but God's works stand forever. Therefore, everything that we do has the knowledge of God as that which makes it worthwhile and valuable participation in His decree and what He is doing, because His works are from everlasting and stand forever. And so we have been building up this need to be aware of, to live mindfully of the Lord. And that brings us to the beginning of chapter five in these seven verses, which give us instruction for worship that fears God, both that the worship might be right, first and foremost, pleasing to God, and that the worship might actually be helpful to us in the way that we've been discovering that we need in Ecclesiastes four in the previous chapter, and really chapters one through four. It is only that worship in which we encounter God Himself that enables us to actually be refreshed in remembering Him and living before Him and in remembrance of Him. Now, this worship has three components in order to be worship that fears God. One, it has the right actions. These have that in verse 1. Second, it has the right attitude. You have that in verses 2 and 3. And third, it provokes response, application, right? Application. And that's verses 4 through 7. First then, the right actions. You see this especially in the word walk. in the first part of verse one, and then the word do in the last part of verse one. So this particular verse is talking about the actions of worship and which actions are we going to do in worship, those that we come up with or those that God comes up with. Now, if you put the question that way, hopefully any rational two-year-old can answer, which should we do in worship, what man says or what God says? And yet many who consider themselves to be mature believers design worship by what man has decided to put in worship. And so he says, walk prudently when you go to the house of God. And he uses two different verbs. One is the verb for offering, which we have pointed out many times when we were in the book of Leviticus, is the verb for drawing near. draw near to hear. God has constructed his worship largely of our hearing and that's because our God is a God who actually does speaking. One of the things that he says about the false gods, the idols, is they have mouths but cannot speak. If you have a God who cannot speak, someone's got to speak in the worship and it's you. That is not desirable. But when you actually draw near to God, you draw near to here. That's why worship is full of his word. That's why it's so troubling that many define now worship as the singing time and sermons, if they have them, becomes shorter and shorter and shorter. And even the songs that they have are not the songs of God, are not the words of God. but we want to hear. We want to hear as the word of God is sung and read and preached. And we even want to hear as we pray by lifting up prayers that are according to his word. that are informed by and shaped by His Word. Well, there's worship that draws near because it consists largely of hearing, like God has designed for worship, and then there's worship that doesn't draw near so much as to try to give God things. This word for sacrifice is the word for the animal that is slaughtered and offered to the deity, but it's not here the sacrifices that God asks for, those things that he has commanded that look forward to and participate by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as the one through whom we come near to God. Now in this case, it's men bringing to God things that they think Might benefit him things that they think he might like it's like in Micah 6 from last week where having been convicted by the Word of God by this Prosecution that was made before the mountains the people of God on trial are Pictured as saying with what shall we come near to God? and they say bulls and goats and actually, I think it's calves and lambs and Rivers of oil? That's getting a little out of hand, right? God says a certain amount of oil. They say, well, if a certain amount is good, a lot will be better. They come up with their own, and then they go abridged way too far. What about the blood of our children, the lives of our children? That's super valuable. Surely he must. Be pleased with that and you see where you end up when man is coming up with what to give God. What God wants is his own righteousness and his own holiness and us to be holy. And the way for that is he gives us his son through whom to come and we come to him with his son and we ourselves come in union with his son, redeemed, righteous, adopted, holy ones. our hearts and our lives being offered to Him. You can't increase upon that by making rivers of oil or trying to find the most valuable thing on earth to slaughter in order to bring it. So when man comes up with his own thing, it's what verse one calls the sacrifice of fools. And they don't even know that they do evil. The problem isn't that they're not sincere, it's that they are. They sincerely bring what God hates, not realizing that they are bringing that which is evil. So worship that fears God has the right actions. Worship that fears God has the right attitude. You see that with the word rash in verse two, the word hastily in verse two. It's this mouth and this heart that are hasty, frenetic in their activity. If you've ever been to one of what we have euphemistically called the happy-clappy churches in the past, you'll notice there's lots of activity. When mom and I were at the Christian college in the chapel services, there was this four-foot-nothing little girl who was the worship leader, and she was like a video game character that had just taken a power-up. She would bounce around and run around and it was frenetic activity. And she was trying to froth everyone else up into activity, which early on a Tuesday or Thursday morning for college kids, it's not always. that viable. I mean, some would. But much activity and much words on behalf of man makes worship that is vain, as the conclusion will be in verse 7. Multitude of dreams and many words. There is also vanity. So don't be rash with your mouth. Let not your heart utter anything hastily before God, even in worship that isn't you know, super active with lots of words of men, we can do this even just in our heart, can't we? As we're listening and receiving what God is saying, we may, even in sincerity, want to be quickly responding to God with a flood of words. especially if we have not been accustomed to what we're going to hear in the third part of this passage, the making of vows unto God. We may overwhelm ourselves by, you know, wanting to make a vow about everything we hear. So you come away from an hour and a half worship service and you've vowed 18 things to God and Part of the problem that led you to such a predicament is that you forgot, we forgot that God is in heaven and we are on earth. And even in our hearts, we should do more listening than speaking. You hear something in one part of the service and you receive that, and you hear something in the other part of the service and you receive that. And as you are listening to God and humbly sitting under His word and letting Him especially be the one who is acting, it's not that you're not acting at all, it's that you're acting in humility, the right attitude. You have a reservedness, a quietness, receptiveness, humility before Him. And perhaps as the fullness of what God is communicating to you in the worship starts to form and starts to build, you come up by the Spirit applying that word to you with a vow or two or three unto God, things that you are expressing holy resolve unto Him. and committing yourself in his name before his face as an act of worship that you will be doing. But let your words be few, he says, even in your heart, let your words be few. Much activity, that's not reality, that's a dream. That's manufactured spirituality, not actual engagement with the living God. So a dream comes from much activity. Many words, that's not the voice of wisdom in worship. That's the voice of a fool. We want many words from God. We don't want to be speaking many words of our own. So the right actions in verse 1, the right attitudes, verses 2 to 3, and the right applications, verses 4 through 7. Note, it's assumed that you are going to make application. It's assumed that you're going to vow unto God when you make a vow unto God. But what the jury is still out on, so to speak, is are you going to keep it? Do not delay to pay it. Don't come away from your worship saying, wasn't that wonderful? We came in the actions that God commanded by the grace of his spirit. We came and did those actions with the attitude that he instructs us that is appropriate to creatures coming before their creator. We made these vows. not too many of them, not being too verbose, too talkative, making too many words of our own before God, but we made some vows. What a wonderful worship service that is. And then you go and you forget what you vowed to God. You maybe remember when you get to the next week and the passages are picking up where we left off, and you're like, oh, that's right, the previous passage said this, and I had vowed that to God, and I haven't thought about that in 166 hours, which is two hours less than the number of hours in a week. No, he says, when you make a vow to God, do not delay to pay it, for he has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you have vowed. Fools play at worship and then don't apply it to life. Worship that fears God has not only the right actions and the right attitude, but right application. It makes a difference in what they do when they leave worship between then and when they come back to worship. Oh, one thing I forgot to mention is this is very specifically public worship. It is especially public worship that fears God, because the true and living God has willed to gather to himself a church. Someone who does not gather with the church in the public worship of God is not genuinely engaging God in the fear of God. You can't say, well, I'm offering actions and attitude. I'm offering actions that he has commanded with the right attitude and I'm going to apply it to my life as I, you know, on the Lord's days, always go for a walk in the hills, just me and God. Well, you're actually not doing the actions that he's commanded because the actions that he's commanded are in the assembly. and you're not going with the attitude that he's commanded because you're not humbling yourself to his design for us and our redemption and our worship to be gathered in the church. Here in verse one, you have something similar to at the beginning of Psalm 87, where it says, God loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwelling places of Jacob. he prefers, he prioritizes, this is probably a better way to say it, public worship over private, and so we are to prefer public worship over private. Secret worship is important. Family worship is even more important. We had someone here about a week ago who asked me a question because he was having difficulty maintaining secret worship and family worship. And I forgot the most important first part of the answer. I need to get back with him and tell him that. And that is that family worship is actually more important than secret worship. Because during family worship, every one of us is to be worshiping in the secret place. And during public worship, every one of us is to be worshiping in the secret place as well. Our Father, which art in heaven, where we learn that we should pray with and for others, is given as an example of properly applied secret prayer in Matthew 6. And so yes, it's good and right and expected that you should have private personal worship, not just family worship and public worship. But family worship is more regulative, more normative, sorry, more normative than private worship. And public worship is prioritized in scripture even over family worship. That's why we'll be singing Psalm 22C at the beginning of the public worship on the coming Word's Day in response to Ecclesiastes 5, 1-7. I'll praise you in the gathering. And we know from Hebrews chapter 2 that that's actually Jesus who especially praises his Father in the public worship of his people. But if you want to fear God properly in worship, and if you want worship helpfully to keep you in the fear of the Lord for your life so that your life isn't vain, Walk prudently when you go to the house of God. It's public worship in particular. So the actions of public worship, the attitude of public worship, the application of public worship. And he says better not to vow than to vow and not pay. He's not saying you shouldn't make vows. That's what people will do. They'll say, well, you know, I have such a difficult time following through. I just won't vow at all. No, vowing is an act of public worship. It's expected that you will make application in your life. of how God engages you in the worship? The answer is to vow and pay. It's like the person who says, well, you know, I'm not really doing well spiritually, so I don't want to go to church, because when I come to church, I want to be sincere. You wouldn't want me to come to church and be insincere. No, you should come to church, and you should be sincere, because both are commanded by God. And don't say, well, I intend on breaking the second part of that, so I'm going to break the first part, too. What he's saying is you'd better follow through because it would actually have been better for you to do this other wickedness if you do this wickedness of vowing and not following through. That's how a fool vows and God has no pleasure in it. And in fact, God destroys whatever it is that you do instead. Do not let your mouth cause your flesh to sin. Okay, so if you vow one thing and you do another, your mouth says that you're going to do something and then your failure to do it becomes a worse sin. That's one of the things that vowing does. It makes the, we are supposed to vow to things that we're already supposed to do. But when you vow and you break your vow, that makes it doubly bad because now you're committing the sin of breaking the vow as well. Not only of failing to do what you were supposed to do. So he says, do not let your mouth cause your flesh to sin, nor say before the messenger of God that it was an error. Now messenger here is a word that's often used of preachers, maybe before Christ, probably here, however, before his spirit. As the spirit reminds you, brings to mind of what you had vowed and you say, well, you know, I really shouldn't have vowed that because I had no intentions of following through on it. Why should God be angry at your voice? New King James says excuse, it's just the word for voice. Why should God be angry at your voice and destroy the work of your hands? That he would respond to what you did instead of what you were supposed to do by destroying it. And so worship that genuinely fears God has the right application. the effect of it has brought into the life. So may the Lord give us to treasure and attend upon his public worship with the right actions and the right attitude and the right application. Amen, let's pray. Father, thank you for portions of your Word that are so clear and so relevant. Lord, it's an overused word, but thank you that this part of your Word touches something that is the most important thing that we do and that we actually do every week and that we need to be reminded of. And these things help us by your Spirit. Grant that even as we resolve before you to worship with right actions and attitude and application, that your spirit would make us to keep our vow quickly. For we ask it through Christ. Amen.