Religion Is Meaningless without Jesus

then Yahweh your God will choose the place to have His name dwell. Bring there everything I command you: your burnt offerings, sacrifices, offerings of the tenth, personal contributions, and all your choice offerings you vow to the Lord.

Deuteronomy 23:21-23 adds,

If you make a vow to the Lord our God, do not be slow to keep it, because He will require it of you, and it will be counted against you as sin. But if you refrain from making a vow, it will not be counted against you as sin. Be careful to do whatever comes from your lips, because you have freely vowed what you promised to the Lord your God.

Look at one clear example of how vows worked. Numbers 21:2-3 says,

Then Israel made a vow to the Lord, “If You will deliver this people into our hands, we will completely destroy their cities.” The Lord listened to Israel’s request, the Canaanites were defeated, and Israel completely destroyed them and their cities. So they named the place Hormah.

So vows were made to gain God’s favor in order to urge God to grant a specific request. The worshiper could offer God a sacrifice, money, or property in exchange for God meeting the request. Thus, it was a kind of “I will do this for You if You do this for me.” Another example is barren Hannah, who asked the Lord for a child and vowed that he would be a Nazarite. When she weaned Samuel, she took him to serve at the tabernacle with Eli (1 Sam 1).

Even today during a crisis people often make vows or promises to God. “God, if You will come through for me, then I promise I will do this for You in return.” If God will take away the cancer, get you a job, give you a spouse, or get your children out of a jam, then you promise to walk more closely with God. The danger today, as it was back then, is that once the crisis is over, the vow might go unfulfilled. Now you want to hold on to that costly thing you promised or wait on doing what you vowed, and that delay angers God.

This reality can happen to all of us. I remember reading a book titled I Told Me So, in which the author talked about self-deception and how one of the ways we deceive ourselves is through procrastination. We say we will do something, but we do not do it immediately, and then ultimately we fail to do it at all. The author talked about sitting in a worship service looking at a commitment card for a mission endeavor his church was doing, and he thought to himself that there was only one week left to turn in the money he had committed. He determined in his heart to write the check as soon as he got home. He put the commitment card in his Bible, and a year later when he opened up to that same passage, he again saw the card and realized that he had forgotten to give to the mission cause (Elshof, I Told Me So, 43–45). People can get caught up in a moment of enthusiasm or crisis, and in that moment they make a promise to God or some kind of vow. You can hear a sermon and be convicted, and inside you say, “Yes, I need that. I need community. I need to confess my adultery. I need to get rid of my hidden sin so I can be free of it” (Chandler, “Approaching the Divine”). You leave the service with the best of intentions, but you never follow through on them.

Solomon says in verse 5 that it is better not to make a vow than to vow and not pay it. Hold your tongue. Keep your mouth shut. One example in our culture where we make vows is marriage. It is better to be single and unmarried than to get married and break your vows. In addition to marriage vows, we make private and public promises to God—like dedicating ourselves that we will raise our children to know and love Jesus, that we will be a better spouse, that we will give to some church campaign, or that we will not lose our temper anymore with our children—but we fail to keep our promises. We dedicate ourselves in front of God and the church to raise our babies right, and we start out so well, but once they grow up and ball games or recitals start happening on Sundays, we get out of church. You make a promise not to yell at your kids on Sunday, but by Wednesday you are tired, and they grate on your nerves so you explode.

Solomon says not to let your mouth make you sin and not to tell the messenger it was a mistake to make that vow. The messenger most likely refers to a temple official who ensured vows were fulfilled (Enns, Ecclesiastes, 68). So when worshipers would make a public vow at the temple, the messenger would go to the houses of people who had delayed in keeping their vows and point out their failures.

So your mouth dragged you into the sin of making a vow you could not keep, but do not try to excuse yourself by saying it was a mistake (Longman, Ecclesiastes, 154). That will anger God all the more. The words you voice to God matter to God. He hears them all! People do this type of thing with their vows all the time. Again, they do it with marriage. “We were in sin and should not have gotten married. This is not a godly marriage, so we need to end it.” People do it with other vows and promises to God, and this leads God to destroy the works of their hands (5:6; a major concern throughout Ecclesiastes). Do not try to excuse yourself; instead own it and confess it.

Do not try to hide it either. The story in Acts about Ananias and Sapphira illustrates this (Acts 5). They sold some property and said they were giving all of the proceeds to the church, but they secretly kept back some for themselves, and God killed both of them. It would have been OK for them to keep some of the money; they just should have been honest about it.

Solomon exposes throughout this section the meaninglessness of religion that tries to manipulate God. The idea is, “I’ll do this ritual for You if You will come through and do this for me.” So much of American “Christianity” is this same kind of paganism. We try to bargain with God to get what we want. We think if we do what God wants, then He will do what we want. I even see this in church signs that say things like, “God blessed America because America blessed God.” Do what God wants, and then He will do what you want. That is idolatry or sorcery. That is not the gospel!

Ecclesiastes 5:7

The author concludes the passage by again mentioning the fantasy of thinking our words affect God, and then He calls us to fear God. We have a hard time understanding the concept of the fear of the Lord because we live in a culture that has no reverence for authority. We no longer approach parents, teachers, or coaches with respect. Lack of respect and honor has bled over into a new casual Christianity where Jesus is our homeboy or copilot and not so much our absolute, formidable King and awe-inspiring, sovereign Master.

We should humbly submit to and stand in awe of God who knows all of our sins and empty promises. People may try to object to this idea and say, “Well, that is just the Old Testament,” but Jesus warns us to fear Him who can destroy soul and body in hell (Matt 10:28). We are called to reverent awe of God.

The only way we can appropriately approach God is through Jesus. We are separated from God because of our sin, and the temple system gave specific regulations for approaching God. However, that system was temporary because it could never once-for-all cleanse the worshiper and reconcile him with God. But Jesus is the better priest and the better sacrifice who can cleanse and reconcile us for all time! When He died on the cross—not only for all of our sins but also for all of our empty religion and promises—what happened? The veil separating man from God’s presence was torn in two from top to bottom, showing that man once again had access to Holy God (Matt 27:51). No longer was the way to paradise blocked. Now we can come with both confidence and awe before the living God. Hebrews 10 makes this so clear:

Therefore, as He was coming into the world, He said:

You did not want sacrifice and offering, but You prepared a body for Me. You did not delight in whole burnt offerings and sin offerings. Then I said, “See—it is written about Me in the volume of the scroll—I have come to do Your will, God!”

After He says above, You did not want or delight in sacrifices and offerings, whole burnt offerings and sin offerings (which are offered according to the law), He then says, See, I have come to do Your will. He takes away the first to establish the second. By this will of God, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all.

Every priest stands day after day ministering and offering the same sacrifices time after time, which can never take away sins. But this man, after offering one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God. He is now waiting until His enemies are made His footstool. For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are sanctified. . . .

Therefore, brothers, since we have boldness to enter the sanctuary through the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way He has opened for us through the curtain (that is, His flesh), and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed in pure water. Let us hold on to the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. (Heb 10:5-14,19-

Hebrews 10 recalls the critique of the sacrificial system. The sacrifices did not automatically cancel sin. They needed to be accompanied by obedience, and even then they could not deal with sin permanently. They had to be repeated again and again. Hebrews explains that Jesus fulfilled both the requirement of obedience because He did God’s will (10:8-9) and the requirement of a better sacrifice because His dealt with sin once for all time (10:12). Therefore, we can boldly enter the sanctuary (10:19).

Despite our careless words and empty religion, Jesus brings us back to God. He fully cleanses us and allows us to come boldly before God’s throne. We do this individually in prayer and private worship. Jesus makes this clear in John 4 with the woman at the well. You no longer have to go to a specific physical location to worship God. You can pray and worship Him anywhere. But while we can approach God in private worship, we approach Him in a special way in corporate worship. Now, according to Ephesians 2, we are the new temple where God dwells. Hebrews 12 says that when we gather for corporate worship, we gather at Mount Zion in the presence of God Almighty, innumerable angels, and the saints who have passed on. But we are still called to listen and fear! Hebrews 12 states,

Make sure that you do not reject the One who speaks. For if they did not escape when they rejected Him who warned them on earth, even less will we if we turn away from Him who warns us from heaven. . . . Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us hold on to grace. By it, we may serve God acceptably, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. (Heb 12:25,28-29)

We draw near to God’s presence in corporate worship to listen to God and to make an offering with reverence and awe. But now we do not offer animals; we offer our bodies! Romans 12:1 says, “Therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your spiritual worship.”

Christ has changed how we approach God, and He has revitalized our religious rituals. Now in Christ we can boldly approach the throne of grace to pray anywhere and anytime, and our Father hears us for Christ’s sake. We do not have to take off work, spend lots of money on a plane ticket, fly to Israel, and walk into a physical structure to draw near to God (Driscoll, “Guarding Your Steps”). We can come anytime we want, privately.

Now there are no sacred structures, but there is a sacred people that gathers together. As Alistair Begg argues, there is nothing special about the buildings we worship in except that God’s people are there (“Concerning Worship”). When we gather corporately at Mount Zion, we listen to God’s Word, we sing of His glory, and we offer our lives to Him. All that we are is offered as worship to our God: our bodies, our money, our praise, our confession, our love of our brothers, and so much more.

And now, in Christ, we let our yes be yes and our no be no (Matt 5:37). We keep our word and make good on our promises. How glorious would it be if the church of the Lord Jesus Christ was the one place in all the earth where people kept their vows and made good on their promises?! If that is not true of us, then we need to repent and confess. Let us stand in awe of our great God through the grace of Jesus Christ, and let us offer our whole lives and all of our words as pleasing sacrifices to Him!