Watch Your Step

 

Since we are never outside of God’s House, then we need to pay attention to what the preacher is saying to us in Ecclesiastes when he says to watch your step when you are in the house of God. In other words – Watch Your Step all the time, lest you fall.
Do you remember what God told Moses to do when he stood before the burning bush in the presence of the Lord? God told him to take off his shoes because he was standing on holy ground! Why couldn’t Moses wear shoes? What significance is there in removing your shoes in God’s presence? Does God hate shoes? No – that’s foolishness, there’s more to it than that!
Those shoes represented everything in Moses’ life that stood between he and God. God wanted Moses to get rid of everything that was in the way. Get rid of your own thinking. Get rid of everything of the world that holds you back. Get rid of whatever stands in your way.
In that same fashion God wants us to get rid of anything that was part of that old man of sin that we once were. If you are Born Again, then you are a new creation in Christ, a new baby in the Lord. That old crabby, hard-headed, hard-hearted, unforgiving, grudge bearing person that you once were that had the bad attitudes and the stinking thinking must be left behind because he is dead in Christ. Those things can’t control you anymore. If they do, then maybe you haven’t allowed Jesus to truly take control of your life, and you are just playing games with God.
Your feet are the instruments that give you the ability to walk. In that fashion they are the instruments that stand for walking before the Lord uprightly. They represent in this passage, your conduct and behavior before the Lord at all times, but especially when you are coming before the Lord in worship.
Just as Moses had to remove his shoes before the Lord, then you must be careful to remove anything out of your life that stands between you and God’s presence. When you come before the Lord, you must come with an attitude of praise and heartfelt worship. You must be focused in on worshipping him and your mind must be centered on eternal things and not on what you are going to eat for lunch, or where you are going this afternoon or what you have to do this week. All those things are symbolized in those shoes that Moses had to remove and God wants us to get rid of those things too.
That’s why the preacher says to “Keep your feet”, or watch your step. Be careful how you walk before God because this is serious business and it could carry eternal consequences.
We can’t live carelessly before God, but we must offer the proper sacrifices unto him before they will be accepted. God would not accept anything less than perfection in the animals that were sacrificed in the Old Testament system of worship. God could not accept anything less than a perfect sacrifice for the sins of the world. That’s why Jesus had to come to be our perfect sacrifice.
And God won’t accept anything less than a perfect sacrifice when it comes to your offerings to him either. What sacrifice does God want from you?
 

Did you hear that? Your own words will either make you or break you. Why? Because those words reveal the condition of your heart. What you say speaks loudly of who you really are! Do your daily conversations reveal Jesus in you, or do they reveal just how much of the world is still there? You better watch your step and watch your mouth, or we’ll all know what’s really in your heart!
There’s no one worse to try to talk to than a Christian whose heart is on the things of the world. There’s no one who will curse you quicker than a worldly Christian. There’s no one who act more like the devil himself than a hypocritical Christian whose heart is not right with God. Don’t cross their path or you will find out just what they are all about very quickly. I’ve never been told off by anyone in the world, but I’ve had a few pretty good tongue lashings from people who were supposed to be Born Again and full of the Spirit. I don’t think that it was the Spirit of God though.
The truth of the matter is that we need to speak a lot less and listen a lot more. The preacher here tells us to let our words be few. We need to communicate. We need to praise God, but we need to let God do most of the talking. How often do we just pray quickly, telling God everything; asking Him for everything, and then we quickly get up without giving God a chance to speak to us? Give God a chance once in a while. It’s no surprise that many people say they never hear from God. They don’t give him a chance to say anything before they are gone again.
Ecclesiastes 5:3, “For a dream cometh through the multitude of business; and a fool’s voice is known by multitude of words.”
If there’s one type of person that bothers me sometimes it’s those who have to talk non-stop. It’s not that they talk a lot, but that I know that what they are saying isn’t really true at all. We tend to brag a whole lot about nothing. We like to try to impress others by stretching the truth and embellishing our stories. I’ve heard it called a snow job as well as some other colorful terms. But God calls it lying.
Some people must have had at least two lifetimes prior to this one because all the things that they claim to have said or done couldn’t be accomplished in the short time they have in this life. When they open their mouth you know that they aren’t telling the truth, much like a politician. Fools, Solomon says, can’t help but talk all the time because it puts up a smoke screen that hides their true ignorance.
The final point that I want to make to you today is that the preacher says in Ecclesiastes 5:4-5, “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, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay.”
I know that you have heard of jailhouse religion. In hard times we promise God a lot, and we quickly forget those promises when times are better. But understand this: God still remembers our promises and he will hold us to them.
 

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