Element Christian Church

Ecclesiastes is a book that covers the topic of what gives life meaning and purpose and where that meaning and purpose is found. Some people see the book as being a very grim outlook on life, but it is simply giving us a look at reality of life outside of the understanding of God. The author of this book experienced more success, accumulated more wealth, experienced more pleasure, and essentially was better at just about anything (in his own mind), but he found that all of his pursuits were meaningless and ended with death…he seems to be the only one honest enough to admit it. DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE

Many philosophers from Aristotle to Kant have believed that in order to be happy people must be living virtuous lives. Aristotle believed that a virtue was simply the means (the middle) between two extreme vices, whereas Kant believed to enjoy something lessens its inherent virtue. Kant believed that it was more virtuous to do something out of duty rather than enjoyment. This belief of Kant has snuck its way into Christianity, which leads many Christians to not find enjoyment in God, but instead love Him or believe in Him because it is duty. DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE

Ecclesiastes 3 takes a hiatus from all the talk about meaninglessness and provides more reflection on time. Aaron started his sermon with God’s name, Yahweh, which literally means “to be.” He has been and always will be who He is; God doesn’t change. This “being-ness” means a few things: (1) God is self-existent and therefore He is not dependent on anything else for His own existence. (2) God is the creator and sustainer of all that exists, including time. (3) God is unchanging in His being and character. He is not in the process of becoming something different from what or who He is. (4) God is eternal in His existence. From God’s name we gather that He exists and will continue to exist. DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE

Today we will finish chapter 2 in the book of Ecclesiastes and begin to move further into slightly less depressing chapters. Up till this point we see that Solomon hates life under the sun because all he sees is death. Death will be the end to all his wisdom, all his strivings, all of his pursuits. It is why Ecclesiastes pushes us to seek answers to Solomon’s questions in the rest of the Scriptures. Seeking answers leads us to Jesus who offers something else “under the sun.” He brings the Gospel, which is the good news that in Jesus our wisdom isn’t the only or best wisdom. He has come to rescue us from our self-focused and self-centered way of life so our perspective sees beyond the sun to truly see the son and be made new again. DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE

This week Solomon is trying to wrestle with the idea of “if I am so smart then why am I not happy?” He lived his life with a wisdom that believed he would be able to figure out life and find satisfaction. DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE

As we keep saying, a big push in the book of Ecclesiastes is the question, “What is the meaning of life?” Do we live our lives as if they are expressions of gifts we have ALREADY received or do we live like we are always searching for something? If you are having a hard time figuring that out, Ecclesiastes is a great starting point to have an awareness that all we have and have been through is from the hand of God. When that truth begins to click we enter into the realm of the eternal. Joy doesn’t have a beginning and end just like peace doesn’t have a beginning and end. When the temporary takes over our life we become lost, it becomes vapor. DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE

We are doing a series in the book of Ecclesiastes that we are calling the “Existential Hangover”. Existential refers to “relating to existence” or the question, “What is the meaning of life?” We run after many things in life (stuff, relationships, a new identity) thinking that those things are the point, and yet in the end they are all meaningless. Solomon calls them a vapor, something that is briefly here then dissipates. Ecclesiastes is about the day after you get all the things you thought you ever wanted and yet you are still you. The book raises questions and contrasts “life under the sun” meaning our experience, what we create without God, and what God actually does. DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE

In Ecclesiastes Solomon will relate much of our life to metaphorically driving around a cul-de-sac (or round-about) trying to find meaning. He tries to get us to ask questions that are bigger, “than what you are doing this weekend or next year;” the questions he asks center around our entire life and ultimately eternity. This is why he uses the phrase “under the sun” to get us to see that there is more beyond what we experience “under the sun,” there is beauty in how God invades our space to bring life again. DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE

This week we start a new short 33 week sermon series on the book Ecclesiastes. This book is widely popular and often misunderstood. Ecclesiastes asks one of the most important and most frequently asked questions in all of human history: what is the meaning or purpose of life? Ecclesiastes sounds like it could be a thoroughly depressing book as it starts out with words, “meaningless, meaningless, all is meaningless.” The book however must be seen in light of all the rest of the Scriptures, because the rest of the Scriptures actually answer Solomon’s most perplexing question of meaning in life. This book is narrated by the “teacher,” his job is to disrupt us and our thought processes because he doesn’t want to just affirm truths that we already know, but provide a space for honest dialogue and reflection. The teacher forces us to wrestle with what we believe to be true instead of spoon feeding truth to us. DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE

Jesus has not only secured the future for those of us who have trusted Him as our savior, he has given us a new identity and new abilities to be able to serve Him in exciting ways. God gives us the superhuman ability to love others in at least 3 ways: 1. Superhuman Love Forgives Freely. 2. Superhuman Love Welcomes Warmly. 3. Superhuman Love Serves Selflessly. Action Steps: 1. Write down the name of someone you need to love by showing forgiveness: _______________ 2. Write down the name of someone you could invite into your life this week: _______________ 3. Write down one way you could use your gifts to serve others in the church or the people around you: _______________ DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE

Jesus knew who He was, where He was going, and that His time here on earth was short. If you were secure in those same truths about yourself, what are some differences it could make: In your willingness to serve others? In your attitude in serving others? In your level of effort in serving others? DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE

Christmas Eve 2018, merry Christmas Element. Tonight I am going to finish a series we started 4 weeks ago called We 3 kings. We started talking about the wise men who came to Jesus’ birth, then we talked about Israel’s first king Saul, their greatest king David, and their wisest king Solomon. Tonight we will bring this whole thing together in talking about the ultimate King, Jesus…the one who rules and reigns over everything, but yet He came poor, humble and was born in a feeding trough for animals.

Solomon was the son of King David and considered to be the wisest man who has ever lived (other than Jesus). What we see in Solomon’s story is that his wisdom didn’t save him from himself or his his spiral into sin. The Bible speaks of how Solomon’s downfall occurs because he clung to many foreign women “in love,” but not to God Himself. Our heart is the innermost, unseen core of who we are, the place of secret thoughts, desires, and perceptions. Our hearts need to change, and that is what God wants to do. If we live for desire, we will end up being a slave to that desire. Solomon is like us, we are people who are saved by the grace of God and yet we throw aside all the favor that God has bestowed upon us and run after whatever idol it is that we think we need at the time to make us feel fulfilled. We, like Solomon, cast aside the true joy that fellowship with God brings. Yet, when we truly love Jesus we begin to arrange our lives around God’s great grace and calling over us. Jesus is called the wisdom of Go

Saul was the first king in Israel and his downfall came because of his own self-deception. Saul shows how easy it is to become self-deceived. We first begin to shift blame with words like, “It’s not my fault!” Next, we seek to justify our actions as being okay when they aren’t. Elisabeth Elliot said her father would tell her and her brother growing up, “There’s no use singing Jesus praises when you’re being disobedient.” The human heart has an incredible capacity for self-deception, and that was King Saul’s story... as well as our own. What went wrong with Saul is what goes wrong in us: we forget that God is the one who gives us our worth and value, we forget that God delights in us as His children, and we forget that He has given us His favor in Jesus. DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE

The cross and resurrection are the center of the Gospel message; they are what God determined to do to save us. Romans 5:9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. God’s anger burns towards sin because it destroys the life He made His creation to live within. One Bible dictionary says, “It is rather a personal quality, without which God would cease to be fully righteous and his love would degenerate into sentimentality. His wrath, however, even though like his love it has to be described in human language, is not wayward, fitful or spasmodic, as human anger always is. It is as permanent and as consistent an element in his nature as is his love.” DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE

The cross and resurrection are the center of the Gospel message; they are what God determined to do to save us. Romans 5:9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. God’s anger burns towards sin because it destroys the life He made His creation to live within. One Bible dictionary says, “It is rather a personal quality, without which God would cease to be fully righteous and his love would degenerate into sentimentality. His wrath, however, even though like his love it has to be described in human language, is not wayward, fitful or spasmodic, as human anger always is. It is as permanent and as consistent an element in his nature as is his love.” DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE

Since God, by definition, is infinite, and human beings are finite, God would have to reveal Himself to man in such a way that we could know Him and relate to Him. He has done this through “general revelation” where God communicates about Himself to all people at all times and in all places. He also does this through “special revelation” where God communicates particular things about Himself to particular people at particular times. General clues and knowledge about God’s existence and power are seen in the existence of the physical universe as well as in human beings. It’s only the Biblical view of creation that adequately explains the mysteries of our world. By it, we know where the Big Bang came from, why the universe is fine-tuned for organic life and why the laws of nature are so predictable. It explains why our intuitions about the meaningfulness of beauty, love and human dignity are to be expected...because they come from a God of beauty, love, peace and justice in whose image we have been created. By

We have spent the past 9 weeks talking about certain objections to Christianity and faith in Jesus. This week in the book, Keller transitions from questions and arguments against faith into reasons FOR faith. Christians haven’t always been the best at separating culture vs Gospel and there have been some large theological rifts in the history of the church. Sometimes rifts are useful in hammering out what we truly believe, but sometimes rifts elevate a tradition above the truth of Jesus. DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE

People today like to say, “You can’t take the Bible literally” meaning you can’t really trust what it says. Many people have heard the claim that the Bible was/is a collection of myths and stories that “the church” itself manipulated in order to bring about their desired theology. The idea is that it wasn’t Jesus changing our view of God (and then His disciples writing about it); it was THE CHURCH changing Jesus to fit with their power structure. The truth is the Bible is filled with narrative, concrete details, historical figures, political activity, and details about social and religious life that can be verified and trusted. DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE

Today we will talk about Science and Christianity because many people say things like, “I can’t have faith in something I can’t see.” The word we translate in the Bible as “faith” is the Greek word “pistis” and it means TRUST. Christianity is a truth claim about historical events that can be investigated just like any other event of history. SCIENCE is man’s interpretation of nature and THEOLOGY is man’s interpretation of the Bible. There’s no contradictions between NATURE and the BIBLE, the problems come between science and theology. DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE