Element Christian Church of Santa Maria

Ecclesiastes is about living in a way that honors God first. Ultimately that is what will bring us satisfaction. It starts with our hope in the person of Jesus as He rescues, saves, and makes all the difference. Jesus tells us that if anyone is in Christ they are a new creation; they are His children, and they are precious. When we build our satisfaction on others we find dissatisfaction, because...

Solomon turns his attention to worship. Worship comes from Latin and it means – to ascribe worth to. It could almost be said as the word “worth-ship.” In the Christian context, Worship is knowing who God is and responding to Him as He has revealed Himself. It is getting our worth-ship/worship out of the realm of the created into the realm of the eternal, focusing on the one who is already worthy....

We are in week 12 in our series on the book of Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes is a look at an old man surveying his life and realizing that everything apart from God is meaningless because there is no purpose in life if there is no God. Solomon will make a lot of comparisons throughout the book, he will make these comparisons to help us understand what is actually better in life. Trusting God, communi...

Today we are in Ecclesiastes Chapter 4 where Solomon will talk about work and rest in the context of life “under the sun.” The book of Ecclesiastes keeps coming back to center on the idea of what happens when you get everything you ever thought you wanted, when you attain whatever goal you set for yourself, and then you wake up the next morning and you are still you…what do you do then? It shows h...

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...

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 sn...

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 t...

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 Scripture...

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 fro...

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 bri...

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...

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, a...

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 o...

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 rule...

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 p...

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 yo...

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, wit...

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, wit...

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 pa...

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...

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...

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 i...

Today in our Reason for God series we are talking about the biblical concept of a place called Hell. In the book, Keller will talk a lot about how the doctrine of Hell isn’t as bizarre as modern hearers think, it’s actually not only practical, but logical. Where divine judgement for our culture is one of Christianity’s most offensive doctrines, it can also be shown to be one of the greatest testim...