Emmaus Road Church

Ecclesiastes 11:1-10 RISK IS RIGHT Risk is defined as any action that exposes you to the possibility of loss, damage, or harm. It’s something we all face and deal with because it is woven into the very fabric of our lives. We cannot avoid it even if we want to. As followers of Jesus Christ, we must not let fear keep us from obedience and acting in faith. Risk it all to serve your King!

Ecclesiastes 10:1-20 LIVING UPSIDE DOWN This fallen, upside down world is all any of us have ever known. We can easily become too comfortable with it, and forget that Jesus didn’t turn the world upside down. The Fall did that. Jesus came to an upside down world and lived rightside up. He made a way for anyone who would follow Him in faith to live rightside up as well.

Ecclesiastes 9 DEATH AND TAXES Yes, death and taxes are constant realities in this life, but there is a constant that is better and sweeter and higher and greater. It is the Love of our great God. And our Great God seeks His glory not at the expense of His creation, but at the expense of Himself.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the WHAT of Christmas, but when the WHAT is divorced from the WHY, Christmas becomes something else entirely. Whatever your Christmas traditions, make sure you make time with friends and family, you slow down, enjoy God’s Word, and remember the WHY of Christmas.

Ecclesiastes 8:10-17 DAZED AND CONFUSED Solomon’s situation in Ecclesiastes is one of being dazed and confused on some points related to God and life.Remember that at his point on the timeline, there is no Bible like we have now, and he’s lacking some information that we have in the complete Word of God. Praise God that we have not only His Word written, but also the Living Word - Jesus!

Ecclesiastes 8:1-17 UNDER AUTHORITY Authority flows to those who take responsibility. Authority flows away from those who avoid and evade responsibility. You cannot be a good authority until you’ve learned to be under authority. This is true in all 3 spheres of authority that God has established on earth: the Home, the Church, and the Government.

Ecclesiastes 7:14-29 SOVEREIGN OVER ALL We keep looking for ways to hack the system (lifehacks) but we always fail because God is sovereign over the system, and He never fails. Jesus calls us to give up finding our own unique pathway to eternal life and instead embrace the Way that He Himself has opened up for those who would come in humility and faith. And as we receive the Gospel for the first time, or lovingly listen to it for the hundredth time, we take it with us as we go and give it to others in Jesus’ Name!

Ecclesiastes 7:1-14 DO HARD THINGS When we do hard things, we’re rejecting the path of least resistance and developing Godly character. It moves us towards Christlikess more than almost anything else in this life. The Scriptures call us to become men and women of Godly character marked by grit. And if you absolutely must rebel, then rebel against the status quo and cultural expectations and DO HARD THINGS!

Ecclesiastes 6:1-12 A PERSPECTIVE ON LIFE The futility and meaninglessness of this life “Under the Sun” is that nothing satisfies the heart’s longings except the One who made it. So by taking us through these perspectives on life, Solomon is essentially slamming all the doors for us that we might otherwise try to open and walk through in a vain attempt at finding meaning. With Christ, we have everything. Without Christ, we have absolutely nothing.

Ecclesianstes 5:8-20 The Anxiety of Wealth The things that we value so much here according to worldly standards will be of little-to-no value in the life to come. This is why the Scriptures tell us that we need to be renewed in our minds and our thinking. We should heed the warning and invest accordingly. The most foolish thing we could ever do is lay up earthly wealth when Jesus has called us to store up treasure in Heaven.

Ecclesiastes 5:1-7 FEAR GOD If our lifestyles and our daily choices are divorced from the words that our lips are singing when we're gathered as the Church, then it is because at our core we do not FEAR God. The culture around us, this lost world, doesn’t need practical advice for living.vThey need Jesus the God-Man. The answer for the Church’s lack of faith and for the lost in the world is the same: Fear God!

Ecclesiastes 4:1-16 Solomon’s Lament In all his “wisdom,” Solomon thought that because he understood the principle behind the Law, he was not constrained to obey it. And we are likely to do something similar quite often. Fame and popularity, riches and glory are all fleeting. That was true even for Solomon, and here in his journal it would seem that he recognizes it deeply. We each get one go at life as we wheel around under the sun, and if we are truly wise, we will humble ourselves under the Son

Ecclesiastes 3:1-22 Nothing Really Matters A culture that rejects God as their authority over them is doomed to go headlong into meaninglessness and futility. Our hope is not in this life or our circumstances.Our hope is placed securely in the One who not only knows the future, but holds it in His hands.But for many around us who are still without hope, there is a frantic scramble to gain immortality by any other means.

Ecclesiastes 2:1-11 The Pursuit of Pleasure When we experience fear, it is almost always things that we are scared will enslave or overpower us. Yet very seldom do we fear our pleasures and passions accomplishing the same end. But in a Divine twist of fate, that is the more common occurrence. Solomon arranged every aspect of his external world to afford him maximum pleasure, but he never experienced true happiness or lasting joy or peace.

The Futility of Life We could spend our whole life on earthly pursuits only to find that they are in vain. Imagine looking up to find your life over and wondering if some other pursuit might have given meaning to your life. Solomon had the means to pursue every avenue of pleasure and meaning, and he tried them all for us.Now we have the opportunity to learn from his example.

Approaching Armageddon The Day of the Lord is coming. It will not hurry, and it will not delay. God’s timing is perfect in all things. God desires all men, women, boys, and girls to be saved. He’s given us His Son, and the Word about His Son, the Gospel. Because of that assurance, we have hope that we will escape the time of God’s wrath that is coming upon the whole earth. Video: https://vimeo.com/462720246 YouVersion Event: http://bible.com/events/41725619 Give Generously: https://emmausroadstanwood.churchcenter.com/giving

The Apex of Humanism God is the only Being or Person who can and does know the future with accuracy and precision. These predictive passages in the Bible are not given to us to frighten us, but to remind us that Man’s solutions, apart from Jesus, never solve Man’s problems, that our battle is spiritual, and that people are lost and dying without Jesus. We have been called to rescue as many as we can.

The Most Detailed Prophecy in the Bible Because of sin, mankind suffers from a deep-seated lust for power, pleasure, prestige, and possessions. Deep in our wayward, broken hearts, we believe that our worth and identity, our satisfaction and desires are all met in these. Pursuit of these is a fool’s errand, and we have seen it time and time again down through the ages, tracing all the way back to Cain and Abel. How gracious of our Heavenly Father to give us these lessons in His Word, that we might learn from those who’ve come before us and avoid their pitfalls.

SPIRITUAL WARFARE You and I were born into a world that is at war, a spiritual war that has been raging almost since the beginning of time. We must learn to respect our foe, but not fear him. We need to become aware and familiar with his tactics, but not become preoccupied by them. As born-again Believers in Jesus Christ, we do not fight FOR victory - we fight FROM victory because Jesus has already won the war!

Daniel’s 70 Weeks ProphecyProphecy is God’s Impurmater - His divine mark on the text of Scripture that we might know with full assurance that it is from Him. The prophecies in the BIble that have come to pass prove this beyond a shadow of doubt, and give us confidence in the ones that are yet to be fulfilled. God’s clock restarted with the rebirth of Israel in 1948, and now we are seeing the 70th Week of Daniel forming on the horizon. Let us make the best use of what time we have to make Jesus known!