Part 13 – The Sermon: Consider This– Reverend Kyle McClellan, Pastor, Grace Church The Sermon Passage: Ecclesiastes 7:13-14

Have you ever wondered what God is doing in your life? Are Christians really okay to think that God is dealing with them individually not just with his body the church as a whole? What do we do when God is at work in our lives in ways we just don’t understand and can make sense of?

The Big Idea: In the midst of a fallen world, God’s people must consider His providential work in all circumstances.

I. Consider God’s wisdom and power (v. 13).

Who can change the path God has laid out though to us it looks crooked? Answer: no one. When things are going well we don’t ask why is God doing that? Likely, even, we say that we are awesome. We fall into thinking when things are good it’s us, and when it’s bad its him. This is not what Solomon says.

Romans 8:20-21 says that God is in the midst of something and working even though it’s crooked. Is the world in which we live crooked? Yes. Why? It’s subjected to futility from the Fall in the garden. Vs 28 in the same chapter, Paul answers what he is up to: he is making all things work for our good as followers of Christ who love him, even if we can’t see why it’s crooked.

Somehow we think that God owes us an explanation behind everything he does. In the same way a child cannot effectively pickup the family car with the parents not telling them all their logic, Gd does not tell us all the logic behind his ways.

II. Consider how to live rightly in light of God’s plan (v. 14).

V14 is interesting: God makes both the good paths foor us and the hard paths. We will not always get the answers why. We want these answers but we don’t get them. The bible is full of examples of this. The most stirring is Christ in the garden when he prays over his crooked lot that God would change it. But he willingly submits to Gods will to be done.

The passage:
13 Consider the work of God: who can make straight what he has made crooked?
14 In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him.