Ecclesiastes 5:1–7
The sermon text. Guard your steps when you go to the house of God, and let your words be few. This is the Teacher on worship, and it is more unsettling than comforting.
The Teacher walks into the house of God. What is he assuming about how you usually behave there?
Take off your sandals, because the ground is holy. That is what guarding your steps looks like when someone actually does it.
List every command in 5:1–7. How many are about speaking, and how many about listening?
Come, let us worship and bow down. Then the psalm turns and warns the singers not to harden their hearts. Both halves belong together.
What is the difference between a vow and a good intention, and why does God treat them differently?
Do not babble like those who think they will be heard for their many words. Jesus says almost exactly what Ecclesiastes 5:2 says.
What is one thing you have said to God that you have not done?
Better not to vow than to vow and not fulfill it. Jesus goes further and asks why your ordinary yes was not enough to begin with.
Come to God with fewer words than usual. Sit in silence for two minutes before you say anything.
What are the Marks and the 3 Circles?
The Marks of a Disciple
Each week names one of these — the practices we are cultivating in each other.
- Daily Devotion
- Time with God every day, in the Bible and in prayer.
- Prayer
- Not only a set appointment, but a life of prayer at any hour, for anything.
- Generosity
- Giving your effort and your resources to this church and to God’s kingdom.
- Service
- Giving your time and talent to the church and its mission in the community.
- Witness
- Seeking people far from God and telling them about Jesus and about your own finding of him.
- Worship
- Weekly praise together, and a life presented daily to God’s service.
- Spiritual Disciplines
- Fasting, solitude, study, sabbath — the old practices of the faith.
The 3 Circles
How we tell someone about Jesus — simple enough to draw on a napkin. Each week names the part of it that week’s reading sits in.
- God’s Design
- The world and your life as God made them to be.
- Sin
- The arrow out. We each go our own way instead.
- Brokenness
- Where that leaves us. Ecclesiastes spends most of twelve chapters here.
- Repent & Believe
- Turning from our own way and trusting what Jesus did.
- Gospel
- Jesus lived the life we could not and died the death we deserved.
- Recover & Pursue
- The way back toward the life God designed.