Smoke & Mirror Series | Up In Smoke — Forrest Coleman

Smoke & Mirror Series | Food with Friends — Forrest Coleman | Ecclesiastes 12:12-14

Transcript

Forrest 0:06

Hey, I'm Pastor Forrest, and welcome to the Multiply Church Podcast. Each week we open God's word together to help you meet God and multiply good in your everyday life. We're so glad that you've taken time to join us for this week's sermon. And if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe and follow us on social media so you never miss a message. Now, let's dive into this week's sermon. We all have different pressure points in this life that exposes what our life is really built on. We go through tests, we get prodded and poked in different areas and pressure points of life, and ultimately we're finding out is our life truly built on something that will last? Or has it gone up in smoke? We're ending this series that we've gone through the last few weeks. Smoking mirrors, and that's the title of my message today is Up in Smoke. Thinking about building this life that lasts. And not having a life that's built on smoke or vapor, something that's gonna go up in smoke. Maybe you've experienced that before with a loss of a job or of a relationship, maybe a marriage, maybe a friendship. And you wonder, could this happen again? I uh I got to know this really great guy a few years ago who was the aerospace engineer for Boeing. And we would get together and hang out and have lunch and talk about the Lord. And I really was trying to understand what he did for his job in aerospace, and he told me that for Boeing, his job was to test aerodynamics and air pressure on the plane body. So wind resistance, different portions of the plane, and at lunch, as you explained it to me, he said he grabbed the water ball that was in front of, and said, So it's it's kind of like this. So you put pressure on the bottle in one part of the bottle, then the pressure then moves to another part of the bottle. So, in the same way with a plane, my whole job is that as there's wind resistance on the plane, that it doesn't explode in mid-air. I said, Well, I really appreciate your work as somebody who's ridden on a Boeing plane before. I never thought of that. See, what we've learned from Ecclesiastes over the last few weeks is that everything under the sun ultimately goes up in smoke unless it is built on this key conclusion that we're gonna talk about today. That we build our life on fearing, obeying, and loving God. See, Ecclesiastes, it ends and concludes with this hardcore conclusion that feels very Old Testament. Fear God and keep his commands. And it kind of sounds like that sounds like something Moses would say, reading from some stone tablets up on top of a mountain. Fear God and keep his commands. And I think that in a lot of ways that's why people reject it. That's why people hate God or try to be their own God, that ultimately will destroy them. Instead of having a holy fear, a reverence, a awe, a respect for God and keeping his commands, if we don't do that, what we'll end up doing is keeping our own compulsions into sin, keeping our own corruption of a sinful heart, and keeping our own compromises of the truth of God's word. And what we see is that in the confirmation of a long time Christian life, or maybe in a mind-bending reframe for somebody who doesn't really know the real life and ministry of Jesus, what we're gonna see is that to fear God and keep his commands, that Jesus actually doubles down on this sentiment and affirms it and actually dictates it in the Gospels. Going as far to say that we would fear God who holds eternity in his hands, heaven and hell. And that if we would love Jesus, then that we would be the ones to keep his commands. See, the majority of people that I meet that are there in the South, you know, here in Kentucky, they say they love God. But what God are they talking about? What Jesus do they actually love? Is it like the fake, like hippie Jesus that don't never judge anybody, even though Jesus is the righteous judge and is gonna reign and rule in return? Is it the mascot Jesus that's the Jesus that's in your bio but it's not in your heart? Or maybe the uh classic movie that Talladega Nights Jesus, the tuxedo t-shirt Jesus that's formal but also here to party? Or maybe people they treat Jesus like their political party, they're affiliated with it, maybe because of the home that they grew up in, but it really only affects their life decisions a couple of times a year. Here's the thing Jesus is not an elephant or a donkey, he's the lion of Judah, and he's the perfect lamb of God. And Jesus is the one who said, They will know us by our love. Our love for him and our love for one another. But listen to me, a lot of people want a God who comforts them, but not a God who commands them. I heard recently, and I haven't been able to get it out of my mind and out of my heart, somebody say recently that God is only God if He can tell you no. If not, then He's just your consultant. He's just your manager, He's just your agent. And so are we building a life that can actually carry the life and the weight of the world that we are walking through? And do we have our life built on the good gifts that we've talked about all the last few weeks? In a heaven world, this Hebrew world of heaven that's all through the book of Ecclesiastes, is basically just means vapor and mist. Are we building a life on something that actually is strong? Are you building your marriage on something and actually carry the weight of it? Are you building a faith that's on more than just your own performance? Or maybe you're avoiding God altogether? The first and the last paragraph of Ecclesiastes is written by the author. And the 12 chapters between it, it introduces this teacher who speaks through most of the book, and basically what he's doing is doing just pressure testing of life and different hypotheses about what's meaningful and what's meaningless. And at times it's really bleak, at times, sometimes it's depressing. Basically, the teacher's kind of like this moody professor with a pipe in his mouth, pontificating about life. And at the end, this last this last portion, this last paragraph, the author gives the final conclusion, the final conclusion to this whole teaching in this whole book, and he speaks of it, the author speaks of it to his child, to his son, and giving him this wisdom, this final conclusion. This is what it says, Ecclesiastes 12, verse 12. But my child, let me give you some further advice. Be careful. For writing books is endless, much study wears you out. That's the whole story. Here now is my final conclusion. Fear God and obey his commands. For this is everyone's duty. This is the final verdict. All of the conversation that's happened, all the different pressure testing through the book, and the author says, Here's the final word. Fear God and keep his commands. And then Jesus doubles down on this. In Luke chapter 12, we see Jesus speak about eternity, and this is a passage that we looked at last year in our Racing Hell series. And I encourage you to go to the website, take a look at it, because it gives you a lot more context around what Jesus says. But Jesus says in this passage in Luke 12, verse 4, he says, Dear friends, don't be afraid of those who can kill your body. They can't do any more to you after that. But I tell you whom to fear, fear God, who has the power to kill you and throw you into hell. He is the one to fear. Now, this is unfiltered, explicit Jesus right here. And Jesus is calling us and saying to us, hey, what are you building your life on? Eternity is at stake. Are we gonna build our life on something that is as meaningless as vapor or mist or heavel? Or are we gonna prove to have a life that's built on a firm foundation? I don't know about you, but definitely at times for me, I care, end up caring a lot more about what people think about me than I really should. I try to manage people's impressions of me and try to perform, and instead of just simply fearing God and serving him. And maybe you're one of these people who say, Well, I don't I don't care what anybody thinks of me. But you probably care of at least what somebody thinks about you, your wife, your parents, your best friend. And you may even care about those people's opinions more than you do of God's. Or maybe you let the pressures of this life, the desire for approval or of money or comfort matter to you more than God. And if we're gonna build a life that has this firm foundation and we're gonna prove this, well, you have to prove that you take God seriously. That's my first point. When we talk about fearing God, what does that actually even mean? That means that we take God seriously. What that means is yes, we have this all, we have this honor, we have a reverence, we have a respect for God, but ultimately what that means is we have a loyalty to God. And so, how in the world do you know if you take God seriously or not? Well, first, do you take him at his word? Do you even know what Jesus said? Have you read the scriptures? Have you read, have you read the gospels and know what Jesus said, or are you just kind of following this cartoon version of Jesus that you may have heard of from somebody else or saw on a TV show? Or are you negotiating with God in the in the truths that you don't like in the scripture, you're trying to negotiate them away? Or are you letting God letting His word be what you follow? Like forest. Okay, this is not that big of a deal. Like, chill out, okay? Chill out some. But ultimately, what we're talking about is that if we don't have this holy fear, reverence, honor, loyalty to God, what we'll end up doing is we'll we'll trade the eternal honor that God has for us for temporary praise and pleasure here on this earth and this life. This is what it means. Fearing God means that God gets the final word. You know, I uh have been preaching a long time and I get nervous preaching. I get a lot less nervous preaching after a couple years or ago, I heard a pastor who I really respect say that if you get nervous before you preach, that means that you're worried about your performance not serving people. And so what I've the last couple of years, I've whenever I start to feel nervous, I just think to myself, am I am I worried about the performance right now? Am I worried about what people are gonna think? Am I worried about the delivery? Or God, am I worried about, am I worried about serving up the word of God, to feed God's sheep and what he's called me to to serve up a dish that people can actually digest and grow? What I want to do when I'm up here is I want to glorify God. I want to glorify God. I want to fear him more than man and man's opinions.

unknown 13:06

St.

Forrest 13:06

Francis de Sales has a famous quote about the fear and the love of God. He said, we must fear God out of love, not love him out of fear. That's our response to God and our loyalty and our love for him and our reverence for God, that it's a love that overflows, and Jesus speaks specifically about what it truly means to love him and how we will act accordingly in John chapter 14. Verse 20, Jesus says, When I am raised to life again, you will know that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I in you. Those who accept my commands and obey them are the ones who love me. And because they love me, my father will love them. And I will love them and reveal myself to each of them. Judas, not Judas Iscariot, but the other disciple with that name, said to him, Lord, why are you going to reveal yourself only to us and not the world at large? And Jesus replied, All who love me will do what I say. My father will love them, and we will come and make our home with each of them. Anyone who doesn't love me will not obey me. And remember, my words are not my own. What I'm telling you is from the Father who sent me. I find myself a lot of the times wanting the comfort of Jesus without wanting the correction of Jesus. Here he is telling us, Jesus, who loves us so much, he's telling us, hey, if you actually love me, what's going to be a sign of that is that you're going to keep my commands. Now, can any of us be sinless? No, Jesus is the only one who is sinless, but as we walk closely with Jesus, we can begin to sin less because we're walking out the love of God. And he's working through us, and he's changing us and he's molding us and he's changing us. And it's so easy for us just to dismiss Christianity and for the world to dismiss Christianity as just this list of rules. A bunch of do's and don'ts. But listen to me, rules without relationships lead to rebellion. So rules just without the relationship with Christ, if it's just a bunch of rules to you, well, that's going to lead to rebellion because what that ultimately leads to is not love but legalism. Just being all about the rules. And this was what was wrong with the religious leaders at the time of Jesus, that he was constantly roasting them because of this. Because all they cared about were just the rules and not having the love for people. That's why around here we say that we embrace grace and truth. We embrace the limitless grace that God has for us and also not compromising God's truth in his final word for our lives. Because Jesus is the one who can forgive us and make us clean, and he tells us that if we truly love him, then we then are going to then follow his commands. So oftentimes people either want all the rules with no love, or just to negotiate away every truth from Jesus. Well, did God really say that? Is that really what the Bible says? You know that's the same question that the serpent asked Eve in the Garden of Eden. Well, did God really say that? Did God really say that you would die if you disobeyed? If you ate of the fruit? He just doesn't want you to be like him. And the same lie is happening day in and day out in 2026. Well, you know, Forrest, I know what the Bible says, but you know, my situation's different. No, it's not. It's not. A real love for Jesus obeys him. And as we're obeying Jesus, again, we're we're we're walking out this obedience to Jesus. And it's easy for us to think about our obedience to Jesus. It's like this ladder that we're climbing up to get closer. It's like, okay, I'm being good, I'm being obedient, I've got this sin down, I'm going up to the next run. But we we don't go up to God. Jesus came down to us 2,000 years ago and put on flesh and died on the cross on our place. And so our obedience is not a ladder to climb to God, it is a foundation that we lay. It's this firm foundation that we lay. And listen to me, a fake Jesus will never confront you. But the real Jesus, he's gonna comfort you and command you and correct you all while you grow closer to Him. This firm foundation. The Apostle Paul tells us how we're to build on this firm foundation and who it is. In 1 Corinthians chapter 3, verse 10. Because of God's grace to me, I have laid the foundation like an expert builder. Now others have built on it. But whoever is building on this foundation must be very careful. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one we already have, Jesus Christ. Anyone who builds on this foundation may use a variety of materials, gold, silver, jewels, wood, hay, or straw. But on the judgment day, fire will reveal what kind of work each builder has done. The fire will show if a person's work has any value. If the work survives, that builder will receive a reward. But if the work is burned up, the builder will suffer great loss. The builder will be saved, but like someone barely escaping through a wall of flames. It is so easy for us to build our life off of what feels good right now. Versus what's gonna last forever and not go up in smoke. And so, as we're we're building this foundational Christ and we're proving a life that has a firm foundation, we have to prove, and you have to prove that your life will last. Well, force, what I'm doing right now, it's working right now. Well, just because it's working right now doesn't mean it's gonna last to tomorrow. The fire is going to reveal what the foundation is. The pressure, the pressures in life is going to reveal what the foundation is. And you don't just by chance have a build a life that actually lasts, you build it on Christ Jesus. And we're so tempted to build a life based on our preferences and our pleasure, and then when the pressures come, it doesn't stand. But Jesus is a firm foundation, and we respond with a holy reverence and fear, and we follow his commands out of love for him. Listen to me. It seems easier to try to be your own God than to actually love God, to truly love him. And what we want to do is we want to build in life and build on things that actually last. And that's what we've been talking about this whole series, going through Ecclesiastes. What are these good gifts that actually have meaning in a meaningless world? And we've walked over the last few weeks of how we have purpose and good work, and that we we have our relationships with a good wife, that we enjoy our wife and our spouse, and we have a good family, and we enjoy, and we we want to build a great family, to have good good meals with good friends, and then this good gift of having a holy fear of God and keeping his commands. We want to build a life that's good based on the good gifts that God's given to us that actually have meaning and actually are worse than the actually last things that we won't regret. My dad and I have this running joke as my brother and his family they live in Hawaii, and my parents they end up going there a couple of times a year to go and spend time with. Them, but obviously, that's a lot of expensive travel and a lot of time, and we were talking about that. And I told my dad, you know, dad, at your funeral, you're not gonna raise up out of the casket and say, I wish I hadn't gone to Hawaii so much to see my family. And he thought that was hilarious. And he's told so many of his friends that I told him that. And so they're going back to Hawaii in a few weeks. Over the last 18 years of local church ministry, I've been to hundreds of funerals. And um what really gets talked about about that person who's past boils down to a few things in my experience. One, they talk about the person's faith. Who was God to them? What did they do with God or for God? Were they part of a church? Were they part of a class or a small group? Do they serve? Other people in the community. They get baptized, when they get baptized, when were they saved? Things get talked about about family. And most of the time it's about how that person loved their family. Stories and memories of that person, family's events and relationships, meals together. And there's all this conversation too around the person's friends. Who their friends were, what fun things they did with their friends, what kind of love that they had for their friends, the impact that they had on other people. And then there's a lot of talk about what fascinated that person, whether it was cars or golf, or somebody's boat, and they go fishing, or their favorite sports team, or whatever it was that they enjoyed. But you know, I've never heard talked about at a funeral, I've never heard about how much money somebody had. I've never heard about how many houses they had. I've never heard how many projects they got done at work, how many social media followers they had. None of that stuff comes up. Because so much of this life is meaningless. Apart from the good gifts that God gives to us out of his love and his mercy and his power and glory. Imagine at your funeral. The things that are said about you, will they be about the good gifts from God that live beyond this life? The firm foundation, the stuff that really matters. And from today, I think there's probably some of us in the room that, in light of this, you you need to come to a place with the Lord where you're stepping into the fact that you realize that there's some things that you're chasing in life right now that are smoke, that's mist, that's vapor, and and you need to repent. You need to repent, whether that's greed or whether that's sexual sin or comfort or anger and rage, laziness, whatever that thing is that you're chasing right now, that ultimately is just vapor. Bring it to God and repent and ask for forgiveness, and he's faithful to forgive you and to set you on the right path. And then after repentance, you need to follow and obey. Maybe that's just one command this week that you need to really focus on. That you know that Jesus said, like forgiveness or honesty or purity or generosity or reconciling a relationship with somebody that you hurt or serving others. And you're not doing this alone. As you repent, as you obey, you've got to have a brotherhood, a sisterhood of other people around you who are following Jesus, the body of Christ. You're not doing this alone. You're doing with the Father, and then you're doing it with your family and friends of the life that you're walking out in faith together. You're not doing this life alone. You're doing it with all these people who are also trying to follow Jesus and follow in faithfulness. This uh this last week, I got to have three meals with friends from last Sunday's message. And I got to talk to five four guys this week and to talk to tell them about some insecurities that are going on in my life, and just confess that to them and ask them to speak into that and encourage me and pray for me. And that kind of vulnerability is that's not like easy to do, but it's good to have brothers in Christ. It's good to have sisters in Christ that you're able to walk with. And so some of you, some of you gotta, some of you gotta step in. You gotta step in. Some some of you, you've you've been in a small group, but you know, you gotta you gotta actually go in a little bit more. To have some friends around you that you're actually speaking to about what you're going through. Listen to me. If you want to feel forgiven, confess to God. If you want to feel healed, confess to a brother or sister. James tells us to confess to a brother so that we can, so that you can have healing. Some of you get to step in and say, all right, okay, I'm I'm actually gonna now take this plunge. I'm gonna jump on a team, I'm gonna get into a small group. I hadn't done it before. I'm intimidated to do it, but you know what? I'm gonna take this step because I want to build a life that's filled with meaning with other people who are also trying to build a life that's filled with meaning. And some of you don't have the good gifts at all because you've not yet given your life to Jesus and you've not received the first and highest gift of his salvation, the perk the salvation that he purchased for you on the cross in your place 2,000 years ago. And today is the day that you need to give your life to Jesus, which means you need to trust him, you need to put your faith in him, you need to give him your loyalty, your honor, your respect, your life as he gave his for you. And when that happens, the purposes and meaning of God are gonna overflow out of your life. And I don't know about you, church, but I want to see that happen for more and more and more and more people in our city. I'm so thankful for what God has done in this house, in this church, as I look across, I love you. I love what God has done in your life. Now, can God do even more? Can God use you? Can He use us? Because we know there's so many, there's so many people who don't know the love of God, who haven't experienced it. I believe that God can do that. Who is that that you can go to, that you can bring? I'm believing in faith that God is just gonna expand and continue to expand his kingdom in and through us. Do you believe it? I believe it. Will you stand to your feet as I pray that over us, God, right now, Lord, every house and home, Father, that is represented in this place, God, I pray, Father, right now, Lord, that you would instill in us, God, a reverence and awe, respect, and love, a loyalty to you, God. And also, Father, that you would help us, God, for us to continue to build a life, Father, that we're doing our very best to follow your commands. And God, we don't get it perfect. That's why we have you, Jesus, and your forgiveness, and we thank you for that. God, I pray right now, Father, for any anybody in this room who's not received you as Savior, who has not been healed and forgiven and set free, that today will be the day of their salvation. Today would be the day that they truly trust in you, Christ, and they give their heart and their life over to you. That they confess you as Lord of their life, that they trust you, they put their faith in you. And if that's you today, I want to encourage you right now to pray in your heart and mine, Jesus, save me. I believe that you're the Son of God, that you died on the cross for my sins, and that you walked out of the grave. Help me now to walk out of mine. I give you my life as you gave yours for my life. Forgive me. I put my trust in you, I put my faith in you. Now into eternity. Thank you for saving me.

Sallie 31:30

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