The Road to the Kingdom is Not Always A Straight Line

[Darris McNeely] Well, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you to the choir for your special music this afternoon, very appropriate piece, very nice, and very nice sound. They just kept coming and coming out of the back room there, and I thought, "Is the stage going to be big enough?" Barely it was, but either we need to maybe think about a bigger stage or something or if the choir's going to remain that size. But it was nice to hear that, nice to see it. I'm sitting right here in this corner chair, and I didn't realize how dangerous that could be. Mr. Pacleb comes right and then puts his stand right in front of me, and as he's waving and going back and forth, I keep leaning closer to my wife to keep from being hit by his arms. And I had never seen Mr. Ray Clore from that perspective, right? You know, Mr. Clore is a tall drink of water, as we all know. But when you're sitting on the front row, you've got to kind of look even further up to engage his eyes. So that was a new experience as well. So I'll vacate that chair to anyone else in the coming weeks to sit there and try out with...just to see how that perspective is in the congregation. That's pretty good.

Well, we had some really high winds yesterday, didn't we? And the rains, not quite as bad as it has been in other parts of the country, the southeast, where the hurricane has gone and some of the pictures have been rather dramatic. We had one tree fall over on our deck about right at 4:00 yesterday afternoon. I was supposed to be on a call with somebody, and I had canceled that call. And I'm glad I did because I could go out and look at the tree across my deck. And I'm thinking, I can look at it, and I don't think there's a bit of damage to my deck. The way the tree fell, it just laid right down there. So I've got to clean that up, and I think we escaped. But other parts of the country, not quite the same way with this storm that has come through. Let's hope that our feast sites, especially, will be back in shape for that in just a few weeks.

I have spent a number of years in the ministry working with people, watching people, teaching people, dealing with the many people that have come and gone through my service and others within the Church. In recent months, I've come to one conclusion. The road to the Kingdom is not always a straight line. The road to the Kingdom of God is not always a straight line. As I have worked with people, watched and prayed with and prayed for and seen people come and go in the church, I have concluded that that is a true statement. The road to the Kingdom of God is not always a straight line. Now, anyone who has walked out the door of the church for whatever reason, I don't think ever intended to. I've baptized a lot of people, and not all of those have stayed in the faith. But I know when I counseled them, they intended to stay in the faith. I read the scriptures of counting the cause, Luke 14. I read to them… 

Matthew 6:33 "Seek you first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you." 

And I know, at least as we counsel and the intent and the heart, the sincere heart of everyone that at least I had personal contact with and so many others that I've worked with as well, I know they didn't start out to fail, that they were going to stay out and seek first the Kingdom of God. And they stated that, and they wanted to, they read that, and they knew, and that was their goal. And I know also that as you would turn to Matthew 7 as we think about this statement, that there's some truth here. 

Matthew 7:13-14 Jesus makes this comment. He says, "Enter by the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it." Broad to the gate of destruction. Verse 14, "Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it."

Now, this is not a statement by Jesus that excludes people and says that only a few will find the Kingdom. He's talking more to the straightness and the narrowness of this. I was reading a commentary off my shelf about this verse preparing this this week, and the commentator actually couldn't explain this verse and what it means. He was just kind of focused on heaven and hell, and I thought, "Well, you don't understand the eighth day. You don't understand the rest of the dead that will be resurrected after the 1,000-year reign of Christ. Then you understand that those who went through the broad way will have the opportunity to know the truth." But right now, God's dealing with a few, first fruits, and He says narrow is the way that leads to life.

Now, if we look at that road, as I said, to the Kingdom, and we think about a narrow road, really another way to say it is the way Johnny Cash put it, walk the line, "I walk the line." When we start out on the road to the Kingdom, we have a line to walk. It is a narrow way, and it is along a road that is going to take us to God's Kingdom as we use that analogy there. But as we all know, as we start off, life happens. Life happens. Marriage, it works, and when it works, it's great, and when it doesn't work, it's not great. Children, we raise them. They're cute and rosy and pudgy, and we love them, and then they become teenagers. And they're still the joy of our life. We raise them in the faith, we baptize them, and then they don't stay around. Life happens, doesn't it? Sometimes we as adults stray off of that narrow way, go off into a ditch to one side or the other or maybe even take a detour on another path for a period of time.

And sometimes, you know, life happens, but also what we can say is church happens. Ah, church. Church happens. Problems in the church. Splits in the church. Divisions. People in the church. Church happens. And in the whole story of it all, it creates an interesting mix of reactions, situations that we all know about and has touched almost everyone here in your life and multiple touch points of people, children, friends, family who started out seeking first the Kingdom of God but have taken a detour, maybe taken a different path, maybe still believing to some degree or another. So many have done that through the years. And so I say that the road to the Kingdom is not always a straight line.

There's an example of an individual in Scripture that I think fits this idea. I think that the example of King Solomon, the son of David who was the third king of Israel, who during his 40-year reign took the united nation of Israel to the heights of its prosperity, land, and power, and wealth, and everything, a golden age when you read the story in Kings and Chronicles of Solomon. He builds the temple that David wanted to build. God actually appears to Solomon twice, and, essentially, He says, you know, "What do you want?" And he asks...you know what he asks for? He asks for wisdom. Well, God says, you know, "Normally, you would have asked for money. And because you didn't, I'm going to give you the wisdom you asked for, and I'm going to give you what you didn't ask for, wealth." So he gets those two things, wisdom and wealth, and he starts off doing big things. But we also know how his story ends. It ends with a period of decadence.

His story, when you look at 1 Kings 11, just to take that one episode there, it's a mess. It's a mess. Seven hundred wives? I'm going to resist any other comment right there. I'm not going to say anything more. Seven hundred, all right? And concubines. You have to stop and think, "What were you thinking?" And I mean in a real deep psychological point of view, "What were you looking for with 700 relationships to whatever degree you can have that many in that particular situation?" But the story of Solomon is rather grand, and I always enjoy looking at it. He funded scholarships, the study of scholarship. He gathered here in the wisdom of his day. But the best of it together probably in the book of Proverbs. It says that he built many public works and facilities. You can actually see the remnants of some of that in parts of Israel today. He had peace on the borders which allowed the economy to prosper. Yet even that probably got out of hand because we know from the aftermath of his story that he overtaxed the people to do what he did, demand a lot of money. And that did create a discontent among people and was part of the seed that sowed the division within the nation afterwards.

Probably there was corruption in the midst of his administration. That much money, that much wealth inevitably breeds that, but we're not told all the details in Scripture. And then with those multiple wives from all the different nations, he permitted the presence and the influence of pagan religion. Now, you know, I said that God appeared to Solomon twice. And one of them was when he built the temple. And it was a magnificent structure by the accounts there and well put together on the plans that his father David had done. He started off well on the road to the Kingdom. But he allowed his wives' religion to bring pagan idols and other practices into the nation. Now, we're not told again all of the thought processes but because of what we have lived through and through the years and idolatry in our own midst of our own modern world with different modern forms of idolatry and still a problem and knowing how people rationalize and think about religion and God in our own midst and how people...how we all have from time to time have rationalized and compromised, syncretized and watched that come and impact the church, you can pretty well imagine that in Solomon's day and at least in his mind and thinking, he must have very cleverly explained and rationalized some of these pagan practices and other ideas that he had been studying or was introduced to and allowed them to come in.

I can well imagine that he did so in the name of tolerance, diversity, equity, and you know the last one, inclusion. I would have well imagined that Solomon had his own DEI operation going in his day. How do you work that in? How do you start to go down that path? But you begin to develop a view of the world based on the idea that while all paths are equal, not one, just no one people can be holy. "Other people can be holy too. We're not exceptional," they must have thought and some advised. They must have adopted the thought that life's sole purpose is just to be happy and feel good, feel good about yourself, self-improvement, God's demands are unreasonable, do what's right in your own eyes. I well imagine that the wisdom of other nations that began to flow into the nation more than likely degraded the Word of God in many different subtle ways. And the idea that truth is relative was no doubt found in so many different places. And that led to internal decay and the seeds of division that sprouted after his death.

Watchers of our own current scene of religion in the world today call that...there's a term. I was reading a book by Barna on...as he has surveyed religious attitudes in America, in the current world. There's a term that has been used called moralistic theistic deism. Now, that is a big word, moralistic theistic deism. It's basically that, again, nobody, no one group is holy. There's more than one way to heaven or one way to access God. We can all get along. DEI. And yet that's practiced in a lot of churches in our world today, evangelical forms of Christianity and is recognized as a real problem. I think, in the church, we should recognize that our version of that probably is summed up by the words rich and increased in goods and in need of nothing. When that begins to filter into us, along with the idea that Jesus or the practice that Jesus Christ is really not the center of our life and we only pay lip service to Him... At least that's what Jesus said to the church at Laodicea when you read that message there in Revelation 3. When you look at that in the church, the result is we have had people stray from the path in many different ways over the recent decades.

I think that today what we need to do, as I quoted Solomon's example here, is heed the lesson of Solomon. And the lesson that I think is written at the end of his life. You ever play the game, what happened to Solomon? Will he be in the Kingdom? Which resurrection will Solomon be in? I had those conversations years and years ago. The Bible doesn't really tell us. Like I said, his life kind of ended, and just it's cut off. He had all these problems. He died. Here's what I think happened, and this is my opinion, and I will lay it out there for such. But I base it on a number of years of just thinking about it and studying and looking at Scriptures, but I base it also on one thing that I see in Scripture. I think that at the end of his life, at some point, and unrecorded in the Scriptures for reasons only God knows, but perhaps recorded in this one area, I think that Solomon wrote a book that comes down to us as a reflection of his final thoughts in his life that could reflect his return to the straight and narrow path.

And after all the curves, detours, ditches that he took that are recorded plainly in Scripture, I think that he ended with one conclusion, and I think we have that in the book of Ecclesiastes. That's my take on it. It's not solely mine. I've sensed that in other commentators that I've studied. I've looked at a lot of different commentaries and commentators, old, new, and diverse, about the book of Ecclesiastes because, over the years, it just has been one of my favorite books of the Bible to read. The book of Ecclesiastes, I believe, was authored by Solomon. Modern critical scholars reject that idea. I've studied the reasons why they reject that, and I don't find them to be valid. I think there's a reason that it's in the Bible, and I think that Solomon did write it. Many others through the ages have felt the same thing, including modern commentators. The Jews included the book of Ecclesiastes in what is called the Festival Scroll. And pious Jews, as they observe Sukkot today, they read the book of Ecclesiastes, and I think that's a good book to read at the Feast of Tabernacles. I've always tried to read the book of Ecclesiastes every year during the Feast of Tabernacles because the lessons there pertain to many of the themes that we do go to the Feast of Tabernacles to read.

I think the book is a journal of his life at the very end, reflecting on what he's learned, a story of a life journey that can speak to us today and, quite frankly, teach us something about this story that we have fallen into. I'm not into all the fantasy works that are out there. I have watched a few of the...I did watch all the Ring trilogy, "The Lord of the Rings," and out of that, the one line that stuck with me in my mind and my thinking that I remember...a well-done movie, by the way, but there's a scene in "The Lord of the Rings" where the two characters, Sam Gee and Mr. Frodo, come crawling up out of some mess that they've had in one of their adventures, then Sam Gee turns to Mr. Frodo and says, "What kind of a story have we fallen into, Mr. Frodo?" I used that a few years ago to open up another sermon, so I'm repeating myself, but that's what happens, we repeat ourselves.

I think the book is written by Solomon, and it tells the story of a life that started off well but got sidetracked and got disrupted by too much money, too much success, too much glamour, too much glory, and even too much of the wisdom that God actually gave to him as a gift. That might seem strange, but I do think that the wisdom that God gave to him went to his head. You know, we're all real smart people today. We're modern, and there's a lot of intelligence in this room alone, intelligent people and smart people. Sometimes when it comes to the things of God, we can be too smart. I think with Solomon, the idols of money, intellect, power, and status led him away, off of the straight and narrow, down the detours. And while he did good things, I think that he forgot the source of it all, and that was God. And he strayed. Maybe not intending to, I don't think he intended to. I think he intended to do what was right and to hew to that narrow road.

But as the years went by, as the wealth grew, as the adulation came in, as the people came to consult him, he began to compromise, syncretize, and begin to absorb things that got his attention away from God, which can happen to any of us. And I have seen it happen any number of times in this story of people and how things happen. Let's turn over to the book of Ecclesiastes. We're not going to read the whole book, so don't worry about that. We will get you out on time today. But let's note just a few verses. Let's note a few things. One of the things about Ecclesiastes that I've learned is to turn to the back of the book and read the end first, all right? Read the end of it first at verse 13 of Chapter 12. Let's do that. Before we read anything else, and before you read anything else.

Ecclesiastes 12:13 "Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear God, keep His commandments, for this is man's all. For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil." 

Fear God, keep His commandments. It's one of our memory verses, isn't it? We can quote that one. I learned that one very early and have quoted it many times. Fear God, keep His commandments. This is everything. That's where we start. That's where we go. And then we go back to the beginning of the book. Because there are things that are said and the way it's put in the book of Ecclesiastes that seems to be contradictory. And that's why at the time, I think, it's good to read this book and other translations and to get a comparison to really understand some of the nuance.

I think, frankly, some of the Jewish translations, whether it's the Soncino Commentary or the Jewish translation of the Old Testament, are very good, particularly, on the book of Ecclesiastes. But the NLT is good as well, and others that you might find, to sort it all out. Because it seems self-contradictory, and there's a lot of statements that are made that you have to really stop and ponder and think about. Simply put, you can divide the book into two parts. And the first part, almost half of the verses, the way at least it's cut up or sorted out in verses, is Solomon investigating how to best live this life. He investigates it. He examines. He looks at how to live this life, to best live this life.

And you get in that a lot of his reflections, things that he's observed. The reports, the stories, the incidents that came into him from all the parts of his Kingdom, and the people, the magistrates, the governors, the officials of the small towns, and the way things were going, perhaps a crop failure or a problem here or there, or disputes that would come up to him. The famous one we read about are the two mothers who claim the one child, an illustration of his wisdom there. And I think that you see a synthesis of his knowledge of not just the land of Israel but as he has interacted with all the other kings and queens and leaders of all the nations that came to observe and consult with him, such as the Queen of Sheba or the queen of the South, as Christ called her, and his accumulation of reports and knowledge of that time. So he investigates how to live a best life. That's perhaps the first half.

And then the second half of the book that begins in Chapter 6 is a lot of teaching, teaching about how to live a good life. So the first half he spends investigating, accumulating that, kind of reporting and laying it out. And then the second half he gives some teaching as to what to do and how to do it. And in doing so, he gives us a lot to chew on and to think about. And it is almost a meandering journey as he writes this out. If I imagine it correctly, I could be wrong on that, but I think that it was written at the end of his life. And I think that as God put these scriptures together, I look at the book of Ecclesiastes as his final summation and that he came back onto the straight and narrow.

If you turn to Chapter 1 and you look at it here, it opens up with a very famous phrase that, again, is one of those...that are easy to remember. 

Ecclesiastes 1:1 "The words of the preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem." 

And this is found in several places that the telltale signs of who wrote the book are there. And it's fascinating to read critical commentary as to how they describe this away. I mean, you read that, who was the preacher or teacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem? And you read everything that's down here, there's only one match to the history of Israel that we have that this could possibly be applied to, and that's Solomon. And yet critical scholarship, "Oh, it can't be."

I read one...I pulled one book off the shelf, and they tried to make out that it was King Ptolemy in Egypt, who gave rise to the dynasty that ended with Cleopatra and the king of the South of Daniel's story. Ptolemy, a Greek king. Critical scholars just love to dump everything in the second century B.C. and say, "All of this was done by Jews during the time of the Greek occupation of Jerusalem," which is another story in itself. But just reading the scripture, the straightforward, it matches up to the biblical account, he was king in Jerusalem. He was the son of David. And then he says in verse 2.

Ecclesiastes 1:2 "'Vanity of vanities,' says the preacher, 'vanity of vanities, all is vanity.'"

Now, the meaning there is far more than just being vain, all right? Carly Simon sang this song back in the '70s, "You're So Vain," all right? Some of us know that song. Yeah, that's not what is really being said here, even though, you know, there's a lot of vanity that does go around, and we've all had our share of that. But that's not what is really being said. The Hebrew bears out the meaning, and it, essentially, is saying, "Breath of breath. All is breath." Breath of breath. All is breath. Think about that. We don't see our breath, do we? We breathe in, we breathe out. Except maybe on a really cold winter night. We go outside and we breathe out and what do we see? Moisture going out. And we get a little sense of what's coming out at that time.

Solomon is saying, "Your life is nothing more than that breath." In that, it's God-given. God breathed into Adam the breath of life. You know, in reading and studying about the term Yahweh a few years ago, Y-H-V-H, the Tetragrammaton, which we don't really know how it was pronounced, but we say, "Yahweh." Jehovah, it could be. But say Yahweh. Yahweh. When you say Yahweh, you breathe out, and you have to breathe in. The author was making the point that when it comes to God, we are dependent upon Him with every breath we take. Yahweh. I don't think about that every breath I take, but maybe I should think about it a little bit more, maybe we all should. We are dependent upon God, and He gives us the breath of life.

We know all the ramifications of that from what Scripture means in terms of the sukkah and the life. And when we receive...you know, we have the spirit of man, then God's Spirit comes to us. But Solomon is saying, "Breath of breaths. All is breath." And it's like that steamy breath we expel on a cold night, that's what we are, and that's what we have, a moment, then evaporation. We are a wisp of air, molecules of moisture, and a few other things thrown in to make us human. And in spite of what we do and accomplish, what we accumulate, what we use, what we learn and experience, in the end, it disappears. And that's an underlying fact of what he brings out in Ecclesiastes.

Why is it so valuable to read it during the Feast of Tabernacles when, you know, the feast pictures God's Kingdom but it also is a harvest feast, it is a time of abundance, and it pictures the abundance of God, God's way of life, the Kingdom to come? We all rejoice at the pictures, and we build our cornucopias on our stages at our feast sites and picture the harvest and plenty. We have second festival tithe to use as we desire for whatever our hearts desire, which is found here in the book of Ecclesiastes 2 as well. And we live a little bit higher for that period of time, as we should, as God intends, but we never want to forget everything that we have. The ability to come before God and worship Him, the ability to do it in a nicer way with festival tithe, is because of God's blessing and God's way. We cannot forget that. It's not ours. He gives to us what we have, and that's what this is. When you begin to read through these first few verses of Chapter 1, he talks about verse 9.

Ecclesiastes 1:9 "That which is done is what will be done. And there is nothing new under the sun." 

It doesn't take a lot of the study of history to understand that that is exactly true. People change, nations change, events come and go, but there's really not much new in terms of the nature of man and the progress and what happens. 

"Is there anything of which may be said,” 'This is new?' It's already been in ancient times before us. “There's no remembrance of former things, nor will there be remembrance of things that are to come by those who will come after." 

That's not a negative when you really just sit and ponder it and think about it. It's just the reality, which one lesson to learn is that, you know, live today. Make the most of our relationships and of our time and our opportunities and our experiences today. It isn't going to be remembered. It just isn't.

I have pictures in my home of my family. I've inherited all my family pictures on my mom and dad's side. And I've given them to my sister, what she wanted. I gave some to my niece and nephew. My brother took what he wanted. And one time a few months ago, I was kind of looking at the box, and I said, "You know what? These pictures end with me. My children don't know these people. They'll end with me." There is no remembrance. And those memories are there. They're good. And I look at those people, many of them were the aunts and uncles and people of my youth. I loved them, but I didn't know them. I loved them, but I didn't really know them. I wish I'd known them better. I will get that opportunity.

When you look at the book of the sayings here in Ecclesiastes, recognize that they are coming from God-inspired scriptures that are there to teach us and to help us to put a value on this life and this time that we have. Look at Chapter 2 and verse 10.

Ecclesiastes 2:10 "Whatever my eyes desired," he says, "I did not keep from them." This is in a section where he's talking about what he did. He gratified his desires, the flesh with wine, with food, with whatever he wanted, he had it. "Whatever my eyes desired, I did not keep from them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart rejoiced in all my labor, and this was my reward from all my labor." 

What is it that we do with our festival tithe according to the teaching in the book of Deuteronomy? We go to the place where God has placed His name, and we use that money to buy whatever we desire within the parameters of keeping the feast. That's why the book is good to read during this period of time, during the Feast of Tabernacles. Solomon makes a lot of other observations. Chapter 3 opens in the first eight verses.

Ecclesiastes 3:1 "To everything, there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven."

Well, that brings up another song, doesn't it? Pete Seeger's song made famous by The Byrds, I think, about 1965. It went to number one on the charts in 1965. Great song, taken essentially right out of the book of Ecclesiastes. I remember listening to it as a kid and thinking, "Wow, that's pretty cool. A time to weep, a time to laugh. A time to..." You know it. You can almost sing it, couldn't you? Some of us could. "A time of war, and a time of peace." This brings us down to, look at verse 16. 

Ecclesiastes 3:16 He said, "Moreover, I saw under the sun, in the place of judgment, wickedness was there, and in the place of righteousness, iniquity was there." 

We can read this and we can see a lot of observations about life, politics, nations. We can also read this and we can understand a lot about people, church. I said at the beginning, as we start off down the road to the Kingdom, life happens and sometimes church happens. You read verse 16 and, you know, sometimes for some people, they see in the place of judgment, wickedness and in the place where righteousness should be, they see iniquity. And how many people have allowed that to turn them from the straight and narrow, on a detour on their way to the Kingdom of God? How many? It doesn't justify anything. It just explains. There's a lot that is said in this book. There is a lot to contemplate. I encourage you to read it during the feast.

What does it teach us in 2024? Let me leave you with a few points. It should teach us to walk the line. Because as we read in Matthew 7:14, narrow is the way that leads to life. It's a broad way to destruction. There's a lot of room to stray on the road to the Kingdom from truth, from God, from the church. Any of us can, and we've seen plenty in our past, in our history, of people who have. And we see yet people return from decades past. You know, it's never over. I actually mentioned the title of the sermon in my blog that I put out yesterday. Somebody wrote back, a member from another location, "That fits me. Left in '95, wandered around, and then came back."

A lot of people through the years have followed the wrong God's home for some bad reasons, but God's not done. God isn't done. Any of us could yet stray, take a detour. When we read the book of Ecclesiastes, look at it from the point of view of a life that is centered on God, a life that is full, an open life of joy and opportunity. That gives us enough instruction of what ditches to avoid, what potholes to not get into, and how to stay on the straight and narrow. You know, one of the earliest things I learned in the church that used to be just very frequently mentioned was that a Christian lives a balanced life. Christianity is really about being balanced. And we used to talk about that, "Well, are you living a balanced life this week?"

We had cynicism at Ambassador College in my time. I know that that might strike students today as odd, but we did. And we would talk a little bit about, "Are you living a balanced life?" We get our stentorian, deep, resonant voices working about that. But through the years, I've learned that that's really true. Christianity is about balance because it takes balance to walk the line, to stay on the narrow, to avoid the ditches. Did you watch the Olympics here a few weeks back? Did you watch the gymnasts? I did with my wife. You watch those on the balance bar, watch those gymnasts go up and down the balance bar, and you're thinking, "How do they do that?" And then they flip over. And they land, and if they do it right, boom, they nail it. And they stay upright. And then they walk, and they pirouette, and they do all these kinds of things. And then they turn, and they jump again.

To walk the narrow balance bar, takes perfect balance. To walk the narrow line, the life takes balance. And it's when we strive as Christians to be balanced, instead of a legalistic Pharisee straining at the gnat in somebody else's eye, tithing on mint and cummin, and omitting the weightier matters of the law, such as judgment, mercy, and faith, that we stay out of the ditch. That's one ditch. We don't want to fall into that ditch. Jesus had a lot to say about it, took a whole chapter in Matthew 23 to tell the Pharisees what He thought of their narrow-minded focus and adherence to the law without the Spirit, and to a point where it created burdens upon people, and a yoke, as He said there. Too often that happens, and that creates disruption. It puts people off.

Frankly, it causes some people to just get a wrong view about God, Christ, and our way of life, and they too, in their narrow, legalistic, Phariseic way, eventually go off the path to the Kingdom of God. But also on the other ditch, a disciple will not look for loopholes and compromise with sin. Compromise with sin is still sin. We can't kid ourselves. We have to examine ourselves on that. We will continue to see people come and go. One of my friends used to call it kind of the great migration that takes place in the church of God. People crossing over fellowships, this and that, and it happens, and then they come back, and then others go, and there's this osmosis that's going on within the fabric of the church, it seems. But we will continue to see that, while at the same time, we will find people checking us out from the world, as they are called and God brings them to the church. We have to be holding to that line, not straying from truth.

Another point to remember is, frankly, people will be people. People will cause offense. We will get upset with one another. That too causes people to lose heart, lose faith, take a detour, get off on another part of the path or whatever, and stop their journey toward the Kingdom of God. To the church of Philadelphia, Jesus makes a statement, "Don't let a man take your crown." There's a lot there to apply to us. Offenses will come. We will offend each other. Something will be said. Emotions will get high. Upsets will happen. It will just come as in any size group of people. Offenses will come, choose not to be offended. Choose not to be offended, taking offense is a choice.

I know, I've been offended. And then sometimes I realize, "You know what? I'm not going to on this one. I don't have time to be offended." That doesn't mean I have to sit down at the same table all the time and be offended, but you just move on. And certainly don't seek to offend people. But the relationships within ourselves do that. And I know that that causes some people to fade away and not come back. Oh, they believe still in God, they will still pray, but any time we remove ourselves from that fellowship one with another, other things happen. There's a reason that we are not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together. There's a reason for that. We are to be knit together. That's what Christ's vision of the church is all about, being knit together not loosely affiliated. That's the way the scripture reads, and we have to make sure that we don't let those relationships break down.

Another lesson, stuff does not satisfy. Stuff is fun, and stuff can be a valuable part of life. That's what Solomon is saying. Whatever he wanted, he got. But stuff does not satisfy, even if we have the ability to buy, do, or see whatever we want. In the end, and this is what Solomon says, only a relationship with God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ satisfies. And we have to make sure that we let nothing disrupt that in our own life, nor that we do anything that can be an example that may cause someone else to not stay on the straight and narrow. Let me leave you with one last thing. Don't think yourself wiser than God. I mentioned that we're an intelligent group of people. I'm amazed at what diversity of knowledge and skills and abilities that we have in the church, and I'm glad for that because it makes for successful lives, happy lives. And I'd like to see people growing in the wisdom of God's Word.

But as you grow in the wisdom of the world as well, through studies, through academia, through school, through experience, through jobs, don't think that you're wiser than God, Solomon did. God gave him the wisdom, and that gift then, somehow, he didn't let it keep him on the straight and narrow for a long period of time. For all of our intellect, for all of our wisdom, knowledge, and gifts, don't let your wisdom turn you to where you think you're smarter than God. You're sharper, more glib, more in tune with the world and whatever it might be that is glamorous, that is the current, your field of interest, your field of expertise that you can be very, very good in, don't think that you're wiser than God. Don't let your gifts and talents make you think that you are wiser than God, because that wisdom then can turn you to foolishness and cause you to stray from the narrow path to the Kingdom.

And I'm convinced that sooner or later God will give all of us who have been baptized and our children who have been baptized, our friends, our family who have once been a part of the church, and if God's Spirit was given, and regardless of what has happened through the years and perhaps, yes, even the decades, I am convinced in my life and in what I see in scripture, and especially as I look at this example of Solomon, and seeing what does happen in real time today in the church, that God doesn't give up on anyone. He doesn't pull the plug of His Spirit, even though it might...

If we use it by analogy, and this is not even perfect, kind of taper down to kind of a low ember or a low glow, I'm not sure that that adequately explains how it does work. I think when God gives His Spirit, it's there. And for us to get to the point that Jesus warns us of the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, takes an inner corruption and bitterness and anger that in itself prevents God from working with us, and I don't always see that with people who come back after years or others that I might talk with and know, there's something there. And so if it's your child, if it's your friend, if it's your father, mother, aunt, uncle, who started off on the road to the Kingdom and aren't there with you today and are not still on the straight and narrow, pray for them. Keep the relationship there. Ask God to put a hedge about them. He will do that. Because it's never too late. You can find your way back to God. We can get back on the road to the Kingdom. The scripture in 2 Chronicles 7:14 that comes out in that very beautiful song that we've had many times through the years says this.

2 Chronicles 7:14 "Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray, and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven," God says, "and will forgive their sins and restore their land." 

I think God has a lot of stories of restoration yet in mind for those who did start out on the road to the Kingdom of God, and for whatever reason has taken them down a detour, to fall into a ditch, to turn aside after something, and to let the cares of the world and the cares of this life snatch away that fruit, and in a sense, just cause it to not be working and driving and developing them, that that scripture is a promise.

And just as we can see from what, I think, is here in the book of Ecclesiastes, of a man who looked at life, who saw it all, experienced it all, made many mistakes, and then came to the conclusion that this is the whole duty of man is to fear God and to keep the commandments. When we focus on that, no matter our temperament, no matter our life, we can have and make that connection and restore that connection to life and to the relationship with God. And so the road to the Kingdom may not always be a straight road, but the road to the Kingdom and the road to life is one that we're on. Let's make sure we stay there, and let's work to help any and all come back into that narrow way that leads to life.