Photo Cred: (1) | Updated: 2/3/2024
Sermon Prep
Similar to the previous sermon I shared, this was a season where it’s a more melancholy time compared to the mountaintop experience of the honeymoon high. Again, lots of great and good changes happened in this time too. We were apartment shopping and began getting ready to move, which was amazing! We were in the beginning stages of our marriage and that was wonderful as well. I was in a men’s morning small group with my father-in-law that I loved.
And yet the work environment was escalating. Around this time we had a meeting with a C-suite executive at my former company and that permanently muddied the waters of trust. It was one of those meetings that was supposed to reassure people they weren’t going to be let go in the New Year and yet afterwards everyone had the same thought: we’re being laid off next year.
What only added to the distrust was the mixed messaging we heard from those in higher-up meetings and what was told to us directly. Rarely was it the same thing we heard. This was a long month for me.
Now back to the sermon prep, I think all of the sermons from this series in particular feel surface-level. None of them I think were good messages and I think with hindsight I can now see why. For starters, I wasn’t invested and diligent enough to grasp these Scriptures fully. I was too invested in saving my skin in the final quarter of the year and overwhelmed by the pressures of the season to be faithful in this area.
The other reason is more forgivable and that would simply be a lack of life lived to exposit these critical passages in the Bible. How can your average 20-something American preach on the meaninglessness of life? I was barely 25 then and as I’m almost 27 now, I don’t know if I can properly express what one of the wisest men on Earth meant when he wrote these things.
Lastly, I’m a meditative teacher. I can’t pray, prep, and present a sermon within a small window of time. I’m not gifted like other preachers in that way. I have to dwell and remain with a passage of Scripture before I ever share it. Otherwise, I never get to the meat of the message. Speaking of meat, here’s the notes from this sermon:
Sermon Notes
Opening Line
- I love political ads. They’re so fun.
- We live in an unjust society with a political system poisoned by the power-hungry.
Intro
- Read Ecclesiastes 3:16-4:3, 5:8-9
Transition To Main Point
- Justice and politics is meaningless without Jesus.
Main Point
- Justice is meaningless
- Ecclesiastes 3:16-17
- Life isn’t fair, but we know it should be fair.
- We’re just like animals
- Ecclesiastes 3:18-22
- In the animal kingdom, the law of the land is reciprocity and revenge.
- We want what’s just for me, not justice.
- Politics is meaningless
- Ecclesiastes 4:1-3, 5:8-9
- We were made for the Garden of Eden, but live in the Garden of Gethsemane.
- Broken order bleeds chaos.
- Checks and balances enables oppression.
Why It Matters
- Without Jesus, chaos cannot be brought to order and wrongs cannot be made right.
- With Jesus, we can make sense of justice and politics in our world.
- Read Isaiah 55:6-9, 57:15b.
“Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the Earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts… I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the Spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.”
Isaiah 55:6-9, 57:15b (See also Psalm 103:11)
- Today, Jesus is gentle and lowly to those who suffer in our broken world.
- One day, Jesus will judge evil and the wicked as he commands chaos into order.
Final Thoughts
Given the current political climate and polarization in the world, a sermon like this just doesn’t cut it. Yes, there’s good stuff here and yet I wasn’t empathetic enough to those who have been harmed by systems that suppress them. I didn’t take the care again that these messages require.
This series isn’t my favorite that I’ve been apart of at Reunion Church, although I remember our Table Talks going great so there’s that. But even in my nitpicking, the message was shared and that’s what ultimately counts. Not my feelings but rather my faithfulness in sharing God’s word. With that, Godspeed and Jesus bless.
Footnotes
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