TEXT: Eccelesiastes 12:13-14

SUBJECT: Henry on the Whole Duty of Man

Tonight, with the blessing of God, we’ll take up a new Puritan study called Matthew Henry on the Whole Duty of Man. Matthew Henry is a name you know, of course, but did you know that his father, Philip, was also a minister? And did you know that Matthew’s great Commentary on the Whole Bible was pretty much a rehash of what his father had taught him in family worship over the years?

Family worship has been lost to most Christian families. Between the demands of work and school and chores and entertainment, most homes can’t find the time to gather each day around the Word of God. If Philip Henry felt that way, we’d have never had the commentary Charles Spurgeon called

If you’ve given up family worship, I wish you’d get back to it. Especially if you have kids. Who knows? Maybe the stories you tell them will one day be put into a book and bless people for three hundred years. It could happen; in the Henry family it did.

Pardon me for getting off topic, but I thought the example of Philip Henry was worth telling—and putting into practice.

The last two verses of Ecclesiastes tell us what the Whole Duty of Man is. Henry divides his subject into four parts. The first of which is…

Solomon wrote this Book some 3,000 years ago, but it’s as up to date as tomorrow’s newspaper. Most people don’t spend much time thinking about the big questions. Maybe they did in college, but that was a long time ago and now, they’re just too busy to mull over them. Yet, God put eternity into our hearts—and no matter how hard we try to distract ourselves—every once in a while the questions occur to us: Where did I come from? What am I here for? And Where am I going? We try to shake them, but we can’t. We try to drown them out with TV or music or talk radio, but in the quiet moments of life, they come back to us. What is the meaning of life? What am I here to do?

Solomon spent a great deal of time thinking that over. Having a scientific cast of mind, he used the experimental method of trial and error. He tried wisdom and folly, pleasure, riches, beauty, drunkenness, and many other things, only to find out in the end that he had been grasping at the wind.

After wasting all those years trying this and that, he returned to what he had learned at his father’s knee: "Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man".

Some of you have gone Solomon’s way and found a dead end everywhere you turned. Now you see the old preacher was right: Thank God for teaching you that! Thousands die every day still hoping that happiness and meaning are in one more dollar, one more pleasure, one more wife, one more accomplishment. They are not.

St. Augustine had lived a life not much different than Solomon’s. After trying philosophy and fame and women and money and travel and everything else he could get his hands on, he had to confess,

Some of you haven’t made Solomon’s mistake. You’re still young and most of your life is before you. Don’t learn from experience; don’t graduate from the school of hard knocks. Take it from a man who knows: your happiness lies in fearing God and keeping His commandments.

This is a good memory verse—and a fine verse to live by. Henry says,

He’s right. Every day is full of a million questions, some of which are extremely complicated and take a lot of time to think through. But you’ll never go wrong by fearing God or keeping His commandments.

That’s the backdrop.

Henry goes on to tell us what the verse is—

Henry is very shrewd here. He lived at a time of intense and passionate theological debate. Like other Puritans, he took part in the debates. Yet he realized that true religion does not lie in one’s opinion of the church, the sacraments, the civil authority, and other issues then raging in England, but in godly fear and sincere obedience.

Because truth matters, doctrine matters! But one can be right on every point of theology without being godly. What Henry calls "religion" we’d call godliness. And godliness begins with a deep respect for God and a trembling at His holiness and love. The sense of awe before the Lord creates a conscience that wants to do what He tells us to do and is pained when we don’t.

To Henry’s way of thinking attitude and actions go together. What you are and what you do are related as cause and effect. He says

God-fearing people are not perfect, of course, but Henry says they are obedient—and not to their own lights, but to the Word of God,

The verse gives a short and excellent summary of the Christian’s way of life: "Fear God and keep His commandment". That’s the second point of Henry’s teaching. Next, we have…

THE IMPORTANCE

I’m not sure what I can add to this! Most people don’t think fearing God and keeping His commandments are at all important. Christians know better, but how many of us make them our chief and continual concern? We care very much about other things—health, jobs, vacations, investments, schooling, and so on. We ought to spend some time thinking about these things. But our main concern has to be fearing and obeying the Lord! It’s better to be a poor man who fears the Lord than a rich man who doesn’t! It’s better to be a stupid man who obeys the Bible than a brilliant man who disobeys it!

Every word in the paragraph ought to be underlined! "Vast importance…whole duty…chief care…continual concern…main matter…all in all".

Matthew Henry was not a sinless man, but if you read his life, you’ll find that he lived this way! Despite poverty and persecution and many children and hard work and not enough hours in the day, he lived as though fearing God and obeying His Word mattered more than anything else. Now in glory, do you think he regrets the priority he gave to them?

Henry’s last point is also the most solemn. It’s one we’d like to wish away—maybe—but we cannot. I’ve heard pastors try to explain it away, but when their sermons were over, the Word was still there. Henry says we have

Kids, if you don’t know the word, an inducement is a motive or a reason to do something. Some inducements are negative: your mom says, "If you don’t clean up your room in the next hour, I’m going to spank you". Others are positive: your dad says, "If you clean up your room in the next hour, I’ll take you out for ice cream".

The Judgment of God is both negative and positive. Those who live without fearing or obeying God will get in trouble—big trouble. Those who fear and obey the Lord will be rewarded.

Henry doesn’t add much here, but he summarizes the main points implied in the verse:

Every person in this room—man, woman, boy, girl, angel or demon will one day stand before God and have his whole life laid open to the All-Seeing Eye. On that day, fearing the Lord and keeping His commandments will seem like very good things to do. And they are—not just then, but now.

So get to it. And the love of God be with you. Amen.