Ecclesiastes 5

Ecclesiastes 5:1-20

WORSHIP IN THE HOUSE OF GODEcc_5:1-20.THE word Ecclesiastes is so much akin to “ecclesia”, the Greek for “Church”, that one naturally associates this Book with “Christ’s Body,” and in fact, there is a kinship of words, for Ecclesiastes means a convenor of assemblies.It was evidently to the sessions of the Church that Paul referred when he pled with the Hebrews to not forsake the assembling of themselves together, as the manner of some was (Hebrews 10:25).We should not be surprised, therefore, to find this fifth chapter dealing with the worship in the “House of God”; nor yet that it should contain some definite directions for the worshipers. The careful reader and the good listener will feel a degree of astonishment to discover that these directions are adequate to this day, illustrating what Solomon said in the previous chapter, “I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it: and God doeth it, that men should fear before Him”.In other words, His work is perfect. Modernists would have us believe that we need to change both our method and message and keep them abreast of the times; but how can the Divine plan for redemption be changed? If it were ever adequate, it must for ever so remain. Man’s sin, man’s soul, and man’s salvation change not. I have been wont to say that I had an unchangeable message, but that I kept my methods up to date.

I am beginning to doubt the justification of my own remark, and to believe, more and more, that God not only gives us an unchangeable message in this Book, but that by the pen of inspiration, He plainly suggested also methods that would meet the conditions of every century, the demands of every millennium.I shall therefore attempt the interpretation of this chapter in the light of that conviction, and under the suggestions (1) The Sacredness of the Sanctuary, (2) The Sense of God in the Same, and (3) The Source of all Good.THE OF THE It is to be entered in reverent spirit.“Keep thy foot when thou goest to the House of God, and be more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools: for they consider not that they do evil” (Ecclesiastes 5:1).It is neither forcing nor straining an interpretation of this Scripture to say that it suggests a quiet entrance to the House of God. “Keep thy foot”. Don’t stomp in or about!

Enter quietly! Don’t enter talking, but rather “be more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools”—speech!Mere ceremonialism finds little practice in the New Testament, and apart from the Divinely appointed ceremonies of the Lord’s Supper and baptism, no defense. But that Catholic and Episcopalian custom of entering the house of God reverently, quietly, and of kneeling in silent prayer the moment one has found his seat in the sacred place, is certainly in conformity with this Scripture, “Keep thy foot when thou goest to the House of God, and be more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools”.The Old Testament “holy place” was called God’s “Sanctuary”, and there are specific instructions against the possible profanation of the same. “Only he shall not go in unto the veil, nor come nigh unto the altar, because he hath a blemish; that h# profane not My Sanctuaries: for I the Lord do sanctify them” (Leviticus 21:23). The New Testament house cannot be less precious to Him, for it is alike the place of His special presence and by reason of that fact, a place that is holy.I am not pleading this morning for one of those cold, dead churches in which a few people enter in silence, read the Scriptures in concert, give audience to a classical number, to a brief essay, and to the repetition of a printed prayer, and silently pass out to their respective dwellings. If silence were the sole characteristic of a Divinely approved assembly of individuals, then our cemeteries would be our ideal church. But I am expressing my personal conviction that one of our young women members, who has been absent from us for some months and who recently returned for a Sabbath’s worship, was justified when she said, “The congregation seems irreverent to me!” Certainly there must be a sane and sanctified middle ground somewhere between the death that silences the cemetery and the jostle and conversation of the theater foyer.The sanctuary is not the place for loud or idle speech.“Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in Heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few.“For a dream cometh through the multitude of business; and a fool’s voice is known by mulitude of words” (Ecclesiastes 5:2-3).The truth is clearly suggested here that wise men are not commonly wordy men, and that fools are rash with their mouths.Theodore Roosevelt sold the description of his trip through Africa for $1.00 a word.

Lloyd George has a contract for his autobiography at $5.00 a word. Elihu Root wrote a hundred word opinion of the late Marshall Field’s will and the court allowed him $100,000 or $1000 a word.

A Chicago life insurance man listened to a prospective client, while he told him of the careful provision he had made for the members of his family in the event of his death. At the end of the conversation, the insurance man said, “You have forgotten your daughter!” Five words! Instantly the client bought $100,000 worth of insurance, or $20,000 a word. Berlin wrote, “My Wife Has Gone to the Country,” and couldn’t sell it to any publisher. He added two words, “Hooray! Hooray!” and immediately was offered $100,000 for the song, or $50,000 a word.Words like money have their denominations.

Some people employ them like mills; it takes ten of them to be worth a cent. Other people use them like coppers; it takes one hundred of them to be worth a dollar, and yet others deal in higher denominations, and a single word is worth its hundreds or thousands, and such people commonly employ them sparingly.If you would have an illustration of this fact, study Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, an Emerson essay, or a Christ parable, or ex-President Coolidge’s answer to a news reporter’s questions.I have long pled for cordiality in this church, and I crave it, for a kindly greeting of the stranger when he comes in, and my pleadings have met with only partial success.

But I have long been convinced also, that our eternal, free visiting and long continued conversation with old-time friends at the close of the service, contributed nothing to it, but rather detracted from it, dissipating sacred impressions made. The text of the morning only the more confirms me in that judgment. Loudness of any sort does not become the sanctuary. Whenever I pass a place, dedicated to God, and listen to screeches emanating from the windows, I shudder with regret. You can’t combine a house of worship and a house of mirth; a prayer house and a playhouse. I know of no instance on the face of the earth in which they have been successfully conducted together.I was walking through a Baptist church in the city of Philadelphia where they were putting down a hard-wood floor, and the deacon apologetically explained that I might not approve, as they were arranging this for a dance room, and he added, “The Doctor thinks we must get hold of the young people,” to which I responded, “My church house is crowded with young people and I would lose nine out of ten of them if I introduced such a feature, and the tenth that remained would have no respect for me.”Not many months since a church in the city of Minneapolis, professedly belonging to an evangelical denomination, put on what was called a Congo circus, and advertised in the newspapers with a two column cut of two young women dressed only in shorts, posing with hands clasped and uplifted knee to knee!.

If Jesus Christ was angered when He found in the Temple “those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting”, and with a scourge of small cords, “drove them all out of the Temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables”, in His righteous wrath, saying, “Take these things hence; make not My Father’s House an house of merchandise”, what would He say if He came back to the modern church and found it sitting before a Sunday night picture show, or decorated with primeval forests and Indian garb and Indian life dramatized, or if you please, sitting through the maizes of a semi-nude Congo circus? There are people, who when they learn of audiences attending such performances, think that services of song and prayer and sermon are tame and that something ought to be done to attract the crowds.

To all such suggestions we commonly make one answer—an illustration. When Dr. P. S. Henson was pastor in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, some sixty years ago, a preacher across the street instituted a series of lectures on geology, filled the house with geological samples, and night after night held the various forms of rock before the eyes of his audiences to illustrate his “nature series,” and the crowds packed the place. A deacon of Dr. Henson’s went to him and said, “We must do something to get the crowds! That fellow over there is pulling our young people away!” Whereupon Dr.

Henson said, “All right, deacon; we will do it. You perform your part, and I will perform mine, and we will lick that fellow to a finish. When I was a boy in Virginia I have stood on my head, many times, for fifteen minutes by the watch. I can do it again. You announce in the newspapers that I will preach a sermon of fifteen minutes in length, standing on my head, Sunday night, and you will see the crowds quit him and this place will overflow,” to which the deacon replied, “Pastor, pardon me! I am a fool. Preach the Gospel. Do as God has bidden you.

Do nothing else, and if men will not come, if women will not hear, the responsibility is theirs, not yours!”The speech of the sanctuary should be seasoned with sacrifice.“When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for He hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast Vowed.“Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, them that thou shouldest vow and not pay.“Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin; neither say thou before the angel, that it was an error: wherefore should God be angry at thy voice, and destroy the work of thine hands?“For in the multitude of dreams and many words there are also divers vanities: but fear thou God” (Ecclesiastes 5:4-7).Evidently, then, even in Old Testament times attendants upon the Sanctuary were expected to make sacrifice for the Sanctuary, to make vows and to pay their vows. Here again, methods have not changed. The support of the Sanctuary is with the people who worship in there. That support is problematical, perhaps impossible, apart from a pledge or “a vow”. This comes in consequence of failure to walk absolutely in keeping with the Word. If the tenth were retained as “wholly unto the Lord,” or if every New Testament saint followed literally and conscientiously Paul’s injunction, and laid “by him in store” On “the first day of the week” “as God hath prospered him”, collections might not be a necessity.

But even then great exigencies would arise. The scourge of famine, the wreck of pestilence, the destruction of fire, the oppression of poverty, would create special appeals and men and women would find themselves responsive to these agonizing demands and would rise in the sanctuary to make their vows, their promises of aid.There are two motives that incite to vows.

The first is the Christ-like, sacrificial motive of help, the same that obtained in the New Testament model church where they “sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need” (Acts 2:45). The second is illustrated in that same Book of the Acts where Ananias and Sapphira in order to create a reputation for themselves for generosity, professed to have given more than they paid (Acts 1:5). According to this text, there are few sins more offensive to God than the sin of a man who by loud vows makes a show of liberality, but who, when the show time is past, refuses to keep even so sacred a thing as a pledge to the cause of God; or as the text hints, declares that the amount named was misunderstood, “an error,” or that conditions have arisen that justify him in cancelling the same. We had a book a while ago on “GOD AND THE ” Somebody needs to write one on the payment of vows to God and the groceryman. The fact is that what God needs is not so much our silver and gold as our spirit of sacrifice, our willingness to fill up of the sufferings of Christ, to endure hardship if need be for His Name’s sake.It is related that Francis Xavier set out on his mission to the far East. Weary with his journey, he laid down at night and fell fast asleep, dreaming a dream.

He saw clearly the hunger and thirst and cold and heat, the opposition, the persecution, the danger to life through which he must pass. He saw the mountains he must cross, the rivers he must swim, the deserts that he must tread.

He beheld the enemies that were lying in wait for him in the form of beasts and men, and at the end of the dream, he saw plainly the violent death he was to die. Then he awoke, and reviewing it all, he said, “Yet, I will go on; yet more, much more, Lord, would I endure for Thee!”Once in a while I meet a man who seems to regret what he has done for God, to grieve what he has invested in the church. Then don’t invest! “Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay”. Better thou shouldest not pay than pay unwillingly.“But fear thou God”.THE AND THE SENSE OF GODSolomon continues his writing by emphasizing that sense. “Fear thou God”!He presents Him as the final judge in matters of justice.“If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter: for He that is higher than the highest regardeth; and there be higher than they” (Ecclesiastes 5:8).In other words, the King of kings, the Creator of all creation, the God of all gods, the only God, “regardeth”.There are a good many of us that fret ourselves over the oppressions of earth. We think of the prisons of America. Many of them are filthy and unfit for dogs, much less for men.

We think of the criminal associations into which children are thrust when detected in a first offense. We think of the jails, reformatories and penitentiaries as schools of crime in which men are not corrected but cursed rather.

We think of the injustice of the courts that will let the vilest murderer go free and send to the workhouse the poor old butter and egg man who has ignorantly parked his cheap car in the wrong place. We turn our eyes toward Russia and writhe with indignation at the slaughter carried on by Soviet rulers, and we often forget that for all of this men will be brought to judgment, and that for every instance of injustice God will pass final sentence, and the wicked shall not go unpunished.Some of us are in revolt over the conditions existing in the city of Minneapolis. Certainly the pastor of the First Baptist Church is of that company. It is my candid conviction that unless something is done with the present police force of Minneapolis, our city will become the Mecca for murderers. When such infamous instances of murder as that of Dorothy Aune, the tailor in Northeast Minneapolis, and the Fort Snelling soldier are occurring, all of them within a few weeks, and not one man brought to trial even, it is little wonder that highwaymen back up trucks to down-town stores and loot them at pleasure; nor yet that other highwaymen who have some modicum of conscience left, should feel so sorry for the poor, weak Minneapolis police force as to go to headquarters and voluntarily pass up their pistols and surrender, as one man did this week.But while one cannot condone such official dumbness and incapacity, nor do other than condemn such daily newspaper cowardice as brings no criticism of this police conduct, he can comfort himself in the fact that Dorothy Aune’s murderer, the men or man who beat the poor old tailor in Northeast Minneapolis into a pulp in the hope of securing his hoarded riches, and the man who smote a young soldier and left him dying at his own room door, will each and everyone of them come to judgment and God Himself will sit as Judge and pass a just sentence.I tell you, we have had so much of the unscriptural soft-soap teaching about “the goodness of God” with no reference to His justice, so much philosophizing about a self-created universe and the bestial law of evolution, that men have either lost altogether the thought of God or come to believe that there is no judgment that He will ever exercise, that oppressions result and violent perverting of judgment is the custom, and godlessness is the order of daily conduct. But Solomon says it, and more important still, with the pen of inspiration he wrote it down, “He that is higher than the highest regardeth”.Again, Solomon reminds us that He is the Author and Arbiter of all wealth.“Moreover the profit of the earth is for all: the king himself is served the field.“He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this is also vanity.“When goods increase, they are increased that eat them: and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes?“The sleep of a labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much: but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep” (Ecclesiastes 5:9-12).Now here is a doctrine which the Church needs to understand.

In this materialistic age, in this period of unprecedented wealth, in this hour when the passion for pleasure pulls men to all possible extremes, it is well to sound out afresh the fact that we are not the owners of the earth, but rather stewards of God’s wealth instead.I know, and every man who is in any touch whatever with people of wealth, knows that they have to run the gauntlet successfully between the Scylla of pleasure seeking on the one side and the Carybdus of multiplied appeals on the other side. On the first side it is true, “He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this is also vanity”!

The heart of man can never be filled with material prosperity. The rich fool had no room where to bestow his goods, but he craved more. Wealth is a maw like the black giaour of Beckford and it growls eternally for “more” and “more.” On the other side, solicitors multiply, and my heart’s sympathies go out to the people who have been blessed with considerable means, for they are the objects of attack by the hundreds. Every fellow who has any pet enterprise or notion that he thinks ought to be put forward follows the beaten path to their doors, and it is true that “when goods increase, they are increased that eat them”, and it often raises the question, “What good is there to the owners thereof”?It is only the occasional man, the rare woman, that can pass through that straight and narrow way and miss greed on the one side and unwise giving on the other. That man, that woman is guided of God.It might be well, however, to say in passing that many of us might have whereof to give if only we had rightly related ourselves to God. I have read somewhere the story of a little village in an eastern state that has not added a one to its population in a hundred years.

It is beautiful for situation. Through the village runs a small river and within the village limits is a fall that carries in it the finest water power in the state.

Yet for a century it has stood stock still. The reason is found in the fact that when a railroad was projected through that section of the state, it wanted the right to pass through this town, and the residents refused it. They were proud of their pretty shaded village and didn’t propose to have its sightliness marred. The railroad, therefore, was compelled to take another route and they were left to arrested development. The man who refuses God right of way in his life who will not have Him come in, lest he should disturb some of his pleasures or plans, will wake up to discover that because God has passed around, he himself is left to poverty of spirit, a dwarfed soul indeed!Mark further, God administers the world’s goods in equity.“There is a sore evil which I have seen under the sun, namely, riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt.“But those riches perish by evil travail: and he begetteth a son, and there is nothing in his hand. As he came forth of his mother’s womb, naked shall he return to go as he came, and shall take nothing of his labour, which he may carry away in his hand.“And this also is a sore evil, that in all points as he came, so shall he go: and what profit hath he that hath laboured for the wind?“All his days also he eateth in darkness, and he hath much sorrow and wrath with his sickness” (Ecclesiastes 5:13-17).How foolish of us to be envious of the wicked when he “spreadeth himself like a green bay tree”.

His pride period is short, for the wicked live out not half their days.“And from the wicked their light is withholden, and the high arm shall be broken” (Job 38:15).“Thou hast rebuked the heathen, thou hast destroyed the wicked, thou hast put out their name for ever and ever” (Psalms 9:5).“That the wicked is reserved to the day of destruction? they shall be brought forth to the day of wrath” (Job 21:30).There is nothing more unchristian than to hate the wicked. We should pity them instead.

For in all the universe of God, there is nothing more pathetic than is the fate of the wicked. Instead, therefore, of being jealous and envious, we should join God Himself in compassion and be able to say of their judgment as He declares of their death, “We have no pleasure in it.”FinallyTHE SOURCE OF ALL GOOD“Behold that which I have seen: it is good and comely for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labour that he taketh under the sun all the days of his life, which God giveth him: for it is his portion.“Every man also to whom God hath given riches and wealth, and hath given him power to eat thereof, and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his labour; this is the gift of God.“For he shall not much remember the days of his life; because God answereth him in the joy of his heart” (Ecclesiastes 5:18; Ecclesiastes 5:20).God is the Grantor of all good. Our eating, our drinking, our joy—these God gives. “It is his portion”. How strange that men supposed to be wise should often forget that fact!Dr. Chapman tells of a certain man in Chicago who was supposed to be foolish. He stood on the streets day after day and begged alms and one bitter cold day he slipped into the rescue mission, and there heard of Jesus and was marvelously saved.

He wore out three Bibles in three years. A newspaper editor, hearing of him, went to see him and found him in a garret, his Bible open on his knees; and the newspaper man said, “Would you mind to read the Bible to me?” The newly converted man read so eloquently that the newspaper man said, “I had not heard the Bible read before.

He read it with tears flowing from his eyes, and with a trembling in his voice. He stirred my soul till I could not restrain my own tears, and when he stopped, I said, ‘Tell me if you will, what is the secret of your power?’ Shutting up his Bible, he looked me straight in the face and said, ‘I will tell you. I have seen Jesus.’ ”Oh, to see Him, to know Him; that is to appreciate all is from Him. Every good and every perfect gift, every joy and rejoicing, yea, every breath one breathes, “God giveth.”God is also the Giver of all gold.“Every man also to whom God hath given riches and wealth, and hath given him power to eat thereof, and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his labour; this is the gift of God” (5:19).There are a great many people who, when they get into financial trouble, look to their fellows for financial help. These same often look in vain. It is not always so that our friends want to help.

Even when they do it is not always possible for them to help.When the submarine S-4 was rammed and went down to the bottom in 102 feet of sea water, it carried down forty men; thirty-four of them were supposed to have been instantly killed, but six of them survived for hours. One of the lads tapped out with a hammer in the international code, “Can you do anything for us?” The answer was not reassuring.

Later the hammer, by a weakened hand, tapped out again, “Is there any hope?” Thirty-five broadcasting stations stood by for one minute and one hundred million people were asked to pray for those doomed boys. But men could do nothing for them and they perished.But there are hundreds of thousands of our fellows imprisoned in greater depths, namely, the depths of iniquity; held in greater horrors, namely, the horror of hell, and we can do something for them if we will. We can carry to them the knowledge of the liberty that is in Christ. We can convey to them that Divine alchemy, the Word of Life, which can change death to life. The question then for us today is, What will we do for them?Finally, God is the Author of all joy.“For he shall not much remember the days of his life; because God answereth him in the joy of his heart”.Why then should we shut Him out of life and so cheat ourselves of “joy” temporal, and “rejoicing” eternal?Let me conclude with the story of the little girl who came home from a Gospel meeting where they had sung, “Knocking, knocking, who is there?Waiting, waiting, oh how fair.”She said to her mother, “Mother, I don’t think that that hymn ends right.”“Why not, dear?”“Well, it leaves the Saviour outside.” And so she repeated the last verse: “Oh, the pierced hand still knocketh, And beneath the locks of hair Beam the patient eyes so tender Of thy Saviour waiting there.”“I don’t think it ought to end like that,” and off she went to her room. Two hours later she returned, and said, “There, mother, it ought to end like that.” Her mother took the paper and in astonishment read, “Enter in, Heavenly Guest;Welcome, welcome to my breast.I have long withstood Thy knocking,For my heart was full of sin.But Thy love hath overcome me,Blessed Jesus, Oh come in!”