Wisdom & Words

Transcript

Good morning, family. Would you please turn with me in your Bibles to Ecclesiastes chapter 10. Ecclesiastes chapter 10. This morning we’re going to be looking at the entire chapter, that’s 20 verses. What we’ll see in this chapter is what’s called wisdom poetry, where the Kohelet, or the preacher, has spent most of his book observing life under the sun and asking hard questions about it. But here, in chapter 10, he slows down and offers us some wise counsel. And what’s interesting about this chapter is that it kind of sounds a lot like the book of Proverbs, in that it’s full of these short, punchy sayings, these vivid pictures and images from ordinary life. One thing to keep in mind is that this is poetry, and poetry doesn’t hurry. It asks us to slow down and sit with the images and let it work on us. And so that’s what we’re going to do this morning. We’re going to take our time and do our best to unpack what the Kohelet means with these pictures and, most importantly, what it means for us as believers. And so I’ll read the text, we’ll pray, and then we’ll try to work through this. Ecclesiastes 10, verses 1 through 20. Dead flies make the perfumer’s ointment give off a stench. So a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor. A wise man’s heart inclines him to the right, but a fool’s heart to the left. Even when the fool walks on the road, he lacks sense and he says to everyone that he is a fool. If the anger of the ruler rises against you, do not leave your place, for calmness will lay great offenses to rest. There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, as it were, an error proceeding from the ruler. Folly is set in many high places, and the rich sit in a low place. I have seen slaves on horses and princes walking on the ground like slaves. He who digs a pit will fall into it, and a serpent will bite him who breaks through a wall. He who quarries stones is hurt by them, and he who splits logs is endangered by them. If the iron is blunt and one does not sharpen the edge, he must use more strength. But wisdom helps one to succeed. If the serpent bites before it is charmed, there is no advantage to the charmer. The words of a wise man’s mouth win him favor, but the lips of a fool consume him. The beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness, and the end of his talk is evil madness. A fool multiplies words, though no man knows what is to be, and who can tell him what will be after him. The toil of a fool wearies him, for he does not know the way to the city. Woe to you, O land, when your king is a child, and your princes feast in the morning. Happy are you, O land, when your king is the son of the nobility, and your princes feast at the proper time, for strength and not for drunkenness. Through sloth the roof sinks in, and through indolence the house leaks. Bread is made for laughter, and wine gladdens life, and money answers everything. Even in your thoughts do not curse the king, nor in your bedroom curse the rich, for a bird of the air will carry your voice, or some winged creature tell the matter. Family, this is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let’s pray. Our Father and our God, we thank you for the words contained in this wisdom poetry. We pray, O God, that you would give us the help of the Holy Spirit this morning as we seek to understand both the beauty and the complexity of these words. We pray, O God, that you would soften our hearts this morning so that we might receive what you have to say to us, that you would expose our folly, and that you would make us wise. We confess that without the help of the Holy Spirit, we could do nothing. We need you and your wisdom to make us wise, and we pray to that end this morning. We pray these things in Christ’s name, amen. He worked for the same company for 19 years. He started in the warehouse unloading trucks at 4.45 in the morning. Over the years, he learned the business. He listened to people who knew more than he did, and it helped him grow in the company, so much so that eventually he was running the entire regional office. His boss trusted him. People depended on him. In many ways, he had made himself somewhat indispensable, but somehow along the way, he had gotten a little loose with his words, especially when he was frustrated. A sarcastic comment after a meeting, a joke about a difficult customer, an email to a co-worker saying something he’d never say to a person’s face, nothing too serious, just a little loose with his words. So he thought. Then one Thursday afternoon, a client got under his skin because the client had sent an email to him and one of his co-workers expressing some concern about a shipment. His co-worker replied first to the client, and then sent a separate email to him. And so he answered his co-worker, making fun of the client. Again, nothing too crazy, just two sentences, a little sarcastic, a little demeaning, and then he hit reply. Or so he thought. It was only a few seconds later when he looked at the address line and realized the client was on the thread. See, he hadn’t just replied to his co-worker. He accidentally hit reply all. He had sent his short and unfiltered words directly to the difficult client. And so immediately, he, in a panic, called the client to save face. He admitted he was wrong. He asked for a chance to make it right. But by Monday, the account was gone. By Wednesday, he was sitting in the HR office. And by Friday, he was sitting across from his boss being told that he needs to clear out his desk. And he couldn’t believe it. After everything he’d done for this company, 19 years, he was getting let go over one email. And now the company and his co-workers are dealing with the fallout of the loss of this account. Then he has to go home and tell his family that he’s lost his job. They didn’t write the email. They didn’t choose those loose words. But now they’re wondering how the bills will get paid. You see, his foolishness had reached the people he was responsible to care for. His poor, seemingly small decision has become something his family now has to carry. Family, why do we take the big sins so seriously, but treat the small sins of foolishness as if it’s no big deal? As if they really have no consequences? Well, the Kohelet won’t let us think this way. In fact, listen to how he ended chapter 9. He said, wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good. One sinner, much good. That’s exactly what we saw with this man in the office. 19 years of good undone by one foolish moment. And that’s where chapter 10 picks up. It shows us how that happens, how a little foolishness can undo a great deal of good. And the Kohelet does it with pictures, images from ordinary life that help us see the difference between wisdom and folly. And this morning, we’re going to follow these pictures to guide us through the chapter. And we’re going to look at three of these. We’ll look at the fly, the axe, and the roof. So let’s begin with the first image, the fly. We see this in verses 1 through 7. Look at verse 1. Dead flies spoil the perfumer’s ointment. Here the preacher shows us something made to smell beautiful, beginning to carry the aroma of death, all because of something as small as a fly. I think about the careful work that goes into making perfume. I don’t know if you know about that. It’s a lot of work, especially in this culture, long before anything was mass-produced, before the… industrial revolution. All that knowledge, all that time putting the right ingredients together, making sure the scents worked well with each other. And then there’s the difficult part of waiting while the oil slowly absorbs the ingredients and becomes perfume. And then along comes a little fly that lands in the jar. Because the oil is so thick, once the wings touch the surface, it can’t get out. And so there, the fly dies. Something as small and insignificant as a little fly spoils the whole jar of perfume. The point he’s making is that it takes a lot to make something good, but it doesn’t take much to ruin it. That’s the point of the second half of the verse. So a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor. You have to see this verse as a scale. On one side, you have wisdom and honor, very weighty. And on the other side, you have just a little bit of folly. The preacher is showing us how much damage that little bit of folly can do. Now, we know instinctively that this happens. We recognize this, of course, when we’re looking at other people’s lives. We can see how one careless decision brought consequences that they never anticipated. And we often look at them with a bit of judgment. But when it comes to our own behavior, rather than walking cautiously, we make excuses for our small sins of folly. Oh, I was tired. Or they provoked me. Or everybody’s doing it. It’s no big deal. It’s just a little bit of money I’m taking off the top. And you see, underneath those excuses is this massive assumption. This little bit of foolishness isn’t going to cost me anything. But the Kohelet is warning us not to be so confident in that. So maybe you’ve been faithful in your marriage for years, but now you’re starting to entertain this flirtatious conversation with that coworker, and you know you should end it. Family, that kind of small foolishness can have devastating consequences. Maybe you’ve worked hard to earn people’s trust, but now you’re beginning to kind of shade the truth a little bit to protect your reputation or maybe even to protect your profit. The point is, all the good you might have done doesn’t make the sin you’re excusing harmless. What this image is pushing you to realize with sober eyes is that wisdom pays attention while the thing looks small. Listen, you can’t measure the seriousness of your sin only by whether you’ve been caught or whether the consequences have arrived. You need to be wiser than that. You see, something can be wrong long before it ever becomes a crisis. And listen, if someone who loves you, like a wife or a close friend, is asking you to pay attention, don’t just brush that off. It may be mercy to you. They may be noticing what you have been willing to ignore this whole time. We need people to tell us the truth while we still have the opportunity to listen. Listen, family, this is one of the gifts of church membership. You don’t just have a community that you gather with on Sundays. You have a community of people who love you, who know you. You have a community who has promised to protect you. You have real people in your life who will tell you the truth about those small but potentially shipwrecking sins. But the truth is, that only works if you’re willing to let members in close enough to see what’s going on in your life. Look at verse 2. A wise man’s heart inclines him to the right, but a fool’s heart to the left. Now, don’t read this image here through the lens of modern politics. This picture here isn’t about liberal or conservative. It’s about two directions. Meaning the heart of a wise person leans one way, but the heart of a fool leans another. And in Scripture, the heart, it includes so much more than just our emotions. The heart is actually where we think. It’s where we desire. Where we make decisions. It’s where we determine what matters most to us, and that inward direction will eventually show up in how we live. So the image of the fly is so much more than just a momentary or isolated mistake. The foolish action is a real problem, but it’s revealing a deeper problem with the heart. Think about the man in the opening illustration. 19 years of work undone in 19 seconds by two sentences. So certainly there was a fly in his perfume, but clicking reply all wasn’t the deepest problem. The contempt in the email was already deep in his heart. We know how that works. A harsh word to our spouses or our kids. It really only reveals the impatience we’ve been nursing. A little white lie. It only reveals how badly we want to protect ourselves or maybe esteem ourselves. Family pressure doesn’t just create what’s in us, it simply brings it to the surface. And our actions, well, they begin to reveal what we really love. That’s why repentance is more than just, I’m sorry, I won’t do that again. We need to ask the deeper question. What did I want so badly that I was willing to sin to get it? Repentance isn’t just turning from what we did, it’s actually turning our misaligned love back towards the God we were made to love. That’s repentance. Verse 3 says, even when the fool walks on the road, he lacks sense and he says to everyone that he is a fool. And what this means is that a fool doesn’t have to introduce himself as a fool. Everybody knows it because his conduct does it for him. Even in ordinary life, his foolishness is made visible to the people around him. And I do think it’s important to understand this here. In the Bible, foolishness isn’t simply or merely a lack of intelligence. I mean, you can have a PhD and run a successful company. You can even stand behind a pulpit and still be a fool. Listen to Proverbs 1.7, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. So the question isn’t whether you understand intellectually, it’s whether you’re willing to receive God’s instruction and then submit to Him. You know, a fool can know a lot about the Bible and still refuse correction. So don’t look at this and then picture somebody else every time you hear the word fool. Family, let this passage examine you. When someone points out a pattern in your life, do you listen or do you immediately explain away the wrong? You don’t understand. I’m not trying to hear that. Or who are you to come at me like that? When you receive correction, family, even when it’s delivered imperfectly, family, a teachable heart is willing to be exposed because it desires to grow in wisdom. This again is why church membership is so important. It’s where you get to practice the art of speaking truth to one another and learning to receive it and respond to it. Our brother Eliezer just did a wonderful job doing that for us this morning. Some of you in this room know exactly what it feels like to have a fly spoil your perfume. You’ve made a poor decision that brought massive consequences and you’re still living with it. It’s because sin does real damage, big or small. But listen, don’t confuse the consequences of your sin with the limits of God’s grace. The fact that you’ve made a mess of something doesn’t mean that God is finished with you. There is forgiveness in Jesus Christ. Now that forgiveness doesn’t always remove the consequences, but your sin doesn’t have the final word. And this is why, family… Every single week we confess our sin together. We confess and then we hear the words of God’s pardon. Not just for the big sins, but for the small ones too. The careless words, the quiet resentment, the small compromises we made this week but barely noticed. Sin is how we refuse to let those things pile up in the jar unnoticed. It’s how we confront those things and begin to turn from them and obey Jesus. We name them, we bring them into the light and then we hear the wonderful pardon. The good news that in Christ those sins are forgiven. Every week we’re reminded that we need more grace than we can think and that God gives more grace than we deserve. That’s not just a ritual that we rush through. It’s a rhythm of a people learning to take small sins seriously and to take God’s grace even more seriously. So turn from your sin and start thinking more clearly about your sin so that you might avoid the pitfalls of sin. Look at verse four, here he gives us a place where the direction of our hearts gets tested. If the anger of the ruler rises against you, do not leave your place for calmness will lay great offenses to rest. So imagine standing before an angry boss. Your instinct might be to defend yourself, argue or let them know exactly what you’re thinking. But the preacher says, wisdom stays calm because a measured response can settle what anger would only make worse. You know, we often confuse anger with strength, but sometimes the strongest person in the room is the one who refuses to lose his temper, amen? Sometimes what we call standing up for ourselves is really just wounded pride. And I do want to be clear here for a second. This verse has nothing to do with staying in a dangerous place or keeping silent about abuse. That’s not what this text is about. This verse is about us exercising self-control. You don’t let someone else’s anger determine your response. You can speak truthfully without trying to hurt people with your words in response. You can admit a mistake without trying to defend everything. You can wait until the heat of the moment begins to settle. And I know that is difficult because our pride always wants the last word. But wisdom asks what would actually help even when it doesn’t let us win the argument. And listen, kids, this isn’t a warning for adults only. This is for kids too. When your mom or your dad or your teacher corrects you, I know it’s really, really hard to not want to argue back. It’s hard not to roll your eyes. That’s a big deal with you kids right now, I get it. Or to say something under your breath. But God gives you a better way. You can take a deep breath. You want to know a good practice for you? When your parents give you instruction, instead of responding, count to five quietly, okay? You can listen and you can say, I’m sorry, I was wrong. And listen, kids, this is really important. Saying you’re sorry I was wrong doesn’t make you weak. It actually makes you wise. And if you do that, you could be smarter and wiser than most adults in this world. Crazy, huh? Yeah. The Bible tells us, kids, that a soft answer turns away wrath, okay? Now adults and Thomas, that verse is equally important. A soft answer turns away wrath. Amen? In verses five through seven, the Kohelet acknowledges the other side of this. That sometimes the person in authority is actually acting like a fool. He says, there is an evil that I have seen under the sun, as it were, an error proceeding from the ruler. So this image here is meant to show us a world turned upside down. Look at your text. It’ll say, there’s slaves on horses and princes walking on foot. And to be clear, the preacher isn’t measuring anyone’s worth before God. He’s showing us the disorder that a foolish ruler creates. And we’ve seen this kind of damage before in businesses, in politics. I mean, just think about Portland, for example. Foolish rulers. I mean, we’ve seen this in families. We’ve even seen this in the church. And what this means is that a position of authority doesn’t automatically come with wisdom. But somebody else’s foolishness doesn’t give us permission to become foolish ourself, okay? So something may need to be confronted, but we still need to ask whether our words are serving the truth or just giving our anger a place to vent. So here’s what I want you to take away from the first image here. Folly or small sins may appear small in our actions, but reveal something much deeper in our hearts, okay? I’ll say that again. Folly or small sins may appear small in our actions, but it reveals something much deeper in our hearts. And this is why the Kohelet shows us in our next section that wisdom is better than folly. But even wise choices don’t always produce the results we expect. We see this with the acts in verses 8 through 15. In verses 8 and 9, if you’re looking at your text, we meet people that are digging pits, breaking through walls, quarrying stones and splitting logs, which is the poetic way of explaining ordinary work with real danger attached to it. A person falls into a pit, a snake bites, stones and logs injure the people handling them. This verse doesn’t say every injured person was a fool, but rather even ordinary work carries risk. Now listen, Ecclesiastes keeps telling us that wisdom is better than folly, which means wise choices matter, but they don’t guarantee everything will turn out the way we want. We’ve talked about this before. Wisdom is a principle, not a promise. These observations, particularly in the Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, teach us how life generally work, but they don’t guarantee wise people will escape difficulties or suffering. We can trust every promise God makes without turning every proverb into a promise that He hasn’t made. So what this means practically is that you can work hard and still lose your job. You can care for your body and still get sick. Sometimes suffering does follow a foolish decision, and what this means is that we can’t work backwards from someone’s pain and assume we know its cause. We’re just not given that knowledge. In John chapter 9, the disciples saw a man that was born blind and asked Jesus whether it was him or his parents that sinned that caused the blindness. And Jesus’ response was, it was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. Family, some of you have tried to be faithful, and for whatever reason, things still seem to fall apart in your life. You need to know this, that your suffering isn’t necessarily evidence that you’ve been foolish. Sometimes the person with the sharpest ax still gets hurt. And that’s a hard concept to accept, mostly because I think we love control. Somewhere along the way, many of us learn to believe, maybe not with our words but in how we live, that if we’re faithful enough, God won’t let hard or difficult things happen to us, that we’ll live, you know, the prosperous life. But then things do fall apart. The diagnosis comes. The job ends. Or the marriage. The marriage begins to strain, or the prayer to save your child seems to go unanswered. And then we start to wonder, what did we do wrong? Or whether God still cares for us? Listen carefully, because I want you to hear this properly. Your suffering does not necessarily mean that God is punishing you. That’s what the disciples assumed in John 9, and Jesus said, no, that’s not the deal. But your suffering is never wasted. Listen to Romans 5, verses 3 through 5. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Notice what Paul doesn’t say here. He doesn’t say, you’re suffering because you failed. But he says, in the hands of God, suffering produces something deep inside of you, endurance, character, hope. God doesn’t need your pain to punish you. Christ has already borne the punishment for your sins. But He does use pain to form you and to shape you into a more needy, dependent Christian. And notice where it ends. God’s love has been poured into our hearts. So suffering is not evidence that God’s love has been withdrawn from you. It’s actually the contrary. For the believer, it’s the one place where his love is poured in. And I know that’s hard to hear, especially when you’re sitting in one of those seasons of suffering. You may not know why you’re suffering or difficulties are happening, but you can know who is holding you in it, and that He will not waste a single tear of your suffering. I know by way of experience that when we’re hurting or suffering, God’s love is not typically the first place we go to in our minds. Instead, we tend to replay the conversation or the diagnosis or the decision or the whatever and try to find, you know, that one thing that would have changed everything. If I only did this, then maybe this wouldn’t have happened. And then maybe there is something to learn, but we aren’t given the ability to explain every loss or difficulty or suffering. The Lord hasn’t given us, you know, the burden to carry everything He knows. He simply asked us to trust Him and to be faithful with what’s right in front of us, including our suffering, our hardships. And family, that also should change or affect how we care for each other. When a brother or sister is suffering, don’t just rush to try to explain it, like, oh, maybe you’re suffering because you did this wrong or that wrong. Listen to them, sit with them, pray with them, cry with them. Help them carry what’s become too heavy for them to carry alone. This again is what the church is for. Wisdom teaches us humility about what we don’t understand. But not understanding everything God is doing doesn’t mean that preparation is pointless. And that’s exactly what verse 10 shows us. If the iron is blunt and one does not sharpen the edge, he must use more strength. But wisdom helps one to succeed. So here’s a man swinging a dull axe, trying to break logs, and he keeps working harder and harder but making no progress, when really what he needs to do is just stop swinging and start sharpening the edge. In other words, sometimes the wisest thing we can do is stop working long enough to prepare for the work. That sounds obvious with firewood, but it’s a lot harder to see when we’re tired or when the deadline is approaching, when we’re full of stress and anxiety because of the heaviness of work, or when we’re just reacting constantly to whatever’s in front of us. Think about the man in our opening illustration. It was wisdom that moved him up in the company. He used to prepare for difficult conversations, but somewhere along the way he stopped sharpening his axe. He just kept swinging, tired and frustrated, until one careless swing cost him everything. And even afterward, he did the wise thing. He called, he apologized, but by then the damage was done. You see, preparation would have helped him. Regret couldn’t save him. So can I ask you this morning, where do you need to sharpen your axe? For many of us, it’s obvious that it’s in the area of temptation. You know where you’re vulnerable. You actually know exactly where you’ve fallen before, and yet you keep swinging back into those same places with no help, with no change, and with no plan. That’s swinging a dull axe and hoping for a different result. Wisdom takes that pattern seriously and starts to make a plan. Maybe talk to a member who can help you establish some accountability, put distance between yourself and what keeps pulling you towards that same sin over and over again. Give yourself to the Word and prayer. Family, wisdom prepares you long before the pressure comes. And part of that preparing means admitting we need help. The foolish pride says, I’ll be fine. I know what I’m doing. I’ll just do it this one time and it’ll be done. No one needs to know. I got it. But wisdom slows down and receives help. This again is why God gives us the church. Brothers and sisters who will help you with the plan, who will build you up, who will not just, listen, not just hold you accountable, but who have promised through a membership covenant to hold on to you so that you don’t fall. And verse 11 adds this picture, if the serpent bites before it is charmed, there is no advantage to the charmer. In other words, it doesn’t matter how skilled the charmer is if he’s already been bitten by the snake. The point here is that timing matters. Wisdom has to be used when it’s needed, which maybe necessitates a plan. Knowing what to do isn’t the same thing as doing it. You can understand patience and still answer harshly. You can know you need counsel and still refuse to talk to somebody. You hold that idea together with what verses 8 and 9 said, that preparation matters, but the outcomes are out of our control. You see, wisdom isn’t a way to control your life. It’s a way to live faithfully in a life you don’t control. So we prepare because it’s wise, but we trust the Lord because our lives are in His hands. Then in verse 12, the preacher moves from our hands to our mouths. He says, the words of a wise man’s mouth win him favor, but the lips of a fool consume him. This means a fool’s greatest downfall is actually his mouth. And verse 13 shows us how. The beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness, and the end of his talk is evil madness. In other words, he says something foolish, and then he keeps going. Instead of admitting he’s wrong, what he does is he actually tries to explain himself. But then the explanation, it only makes the situation worse, and so then he gets defensive, and then she starts to say something even more damaging. Family, I’m sure you’ve watched this happen with other people, or with your spouse, or with your children, and you just think to yourself, dude, just stop talking. You’re making it worse. Some of us have been that person, right? Freedom can simply say, that was wrong, I’m sorry, and be done. It doesn’t need five more paragraphs explaining why you did what you did in hopes that they understand and all that. It doesn’t need it. Verse 14 says, a fool multiplies words, though no man knows. what is to be. So he speaks a lot and he speaks confidently about a future he can’t see and his certainty outruns his knowledge and really this sounds a lot like our culture if you think about it. Everybody has an opinion or a prediction or a hot take and everybody has a platform to post about it immediately. All you see, all you hear is a whole bunch of words. A lot of people expressing confidence in those words but confidence doesn’t make us right. In fact wisdom can say I don’t know. It can ask a question and actually wait for an answer. Back in chapter 5 Ecclesiastes 5 2 tells us that when we come before God let your words be few. That same humility should shape how we speak to each other. Okay and listen, I talk for a living so talking isn’t necessarily the problem. I know I could say some crazy stuff but the question isn’t about our words necessarily or how many words we use. It’s about the content. Are we using our words in a way that is truthful and helpful? In other words just because you can say something doesn’t mean that you should always say something. That’s a good wisdom principle to live by. Some of us just want to talk because you can when you really should just be quiet. Are we listening? Are we reading the room or are we just waiting for our turn to talk so that everyone can know how wise you are? The Kohelet says that’s actually not wise when you do that. It’s foolishness and everybody else knows it. Finally verse 15 he says the toil of a fool wearies him for he does not know the way to the city. What he means here is that he’s worn out with all of those words and all that effort but he still can’t find his way into the town. In other words all that confident and he’s still completely lost. He doesn’t know what he what he’s saying and what this tells us is that effort alone or words alone or people that just talk a lot don’t make us wise. We actually need humility to receive instruction to prepare carefully and also to know our limits. That’s the lesson of the acts. Wisdom prepares us to live faithfully but it never puts us in control. I’ll say that again. Wisdom prepares us to live faithfully but it never puts us in control. And with that the preacher returns to the issue of leadership and shows us what happens when leaders neglect responsibilities that they’ve been given and this brings us to our final image, the roof. We see this in verses 16 through 20. Just look at the first few verses 16 and 17. Woe to you O land when your king is a child and your princes feast in the morning. Happy are you O land when your king is the son of the nobility and your princes feast at the proper time for strength and not for drunkenness. Okay so right here he’s poetically creating contrast. He’s saying that there are leaders that are marked by indulgence and there are leaders that are marked by discipline. And notice who actually is being addressed here. It’s not the leaders but the land. When leaders can’t govern themselves everyone under them pays for it. So you have one group of leaders that feast in the morning so their appetites actually come before their responsibilities. And then you have other leaders who eat at the proper time which is for strength so that they can do their work and serve the land. Notice both eat but one eats to serve and the other eats to indulge. And it’s easy to only think of politicians here but most of us if we’re honest have been entrusted to some degree with the care of someone. As a parent or as a spouse, a supervisor, a caregiver, a teacher, or even a close friend. Some of us serve as elders or deacons and so the question is are we using our position to serve the people that depend on us? Or have their needs become an interruption to the things that we want to do for ourselves? Family, this verse should warn us that our private habits have public consequences. We tell ourselves, well it’s my time or it’s my business. Who am I hurting with what I do? But the people who depend on us don’t experience our habits as separate from their lives. Parents, and I’m speaking to myself here too, our temper and our priorities they shape our home in ways that you can’t even imagine. They shape our children and the way that they grow up. I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately both as a parent and as an elder. So I need to hear this just as much as anyone else. The way we live privately affects the people that God has entrusted to us. So character matters because the people that God has given us matter. And that’s a sharp rebuke for elders. The person we’re becoming comes home with us, goes to work with us, and it walks into the church with us. So that should cause us to live our lives with a very public perspective, okay? Verse 18 gives us an image of this. Through sloth the roof sinks in and through indolence the house leaks. So imagine noticing a small brown stain on your ceiling and you think to yourself, I should get someone to look at that before it starts raining again. But work gets busy and the kids have sports and then it doesn’t seem as urgent in the moment and then the rain starts like it always does in Portland and then the stain grows. You tell yourself you’ll deal with it soon until part of the ceiling collapses. That damage didn’t happen the morning you first noticed. Water had been getting in there for months. The point is sometimes things fall apart because of the little things we neglect. And that should be a strong rebuke to many of us as parents. Foolishness isn’t only what we do, it’s also what we fail to do. Think about a marriage where the small hurt goes unaddressed. The conversation feels uncomfortable so you do everything you can to avoid it. Nothing dramatic happens but over time you stop expecting to be heard and what once felt close starts to feel cold and then the marriage begins to break down. Or think about your walk with God. Less prayer, less scripture, less church. Nobody knows what you’re struggling with because no one’s close enough to you to ask. There’s no single moment when you decide to walk away. Just a series of these things that keep getting left unattended and then it begins to affect your whole household. So maybe you’ve already noticed the stain. You’ve been telling yourself you’ll deal with it when life slows down. Family, life will not slow down for you. Ask for help. Have a conversation. Take the first faithful step while there’s still time. Verse 19, bread is made for laughter and wine gladdens life and money answers everything. Over and over again Ecclesiastes calls food, drink, and enjoyment gifts from God. And money is really what ordinary life requires. But the Kohelet is being facetious here. Money can’t solve our deepest problems. This book has already shown us that. So enjoy God’s gifts but when our appetites start to govern us the people who need our care become easy to neglect. And no amount of distraction like wine or whatever or money can fix that problem. And then the chapter ends in verse 20. Even in your thoughts do not curse the king nor in your bedroom curse the rich for a bird of the air will carry your voice or some winged creature tell the matter. Family, what this is telling us here is that words we thought were private inevitably find their way to people we never expected to hear them. And to be clear naming a wrong and indulging our contempt are two different things. And family I do think that there is this implicit warning here about gossip. It starts with a whisper just between us. I’m only telling you so that, you know, you can pray for so-and-so. But those words travel and they end up wounding people that never heard them in the first place or firsthand. And then what happens is it quietly poisons trust in families and in workplaces and especially in the church. It ends up damaging the very people that God has entrusted to you. You understand that? The members you are committed to that have been entrusted to you, you could very well damage by gossip. So gossip feels small when we say it, but it’s never small to the person it’s about. Careless speech unattended in this church is like a stain on the ceiling. And when the damage comes, it impacts everyone under this roof. So here’s the lesson of the roof. What we neglect in private can eventually damage the people entrusted into our care. I’ll say that again. What we neglect in private can eventually damage the people entrusted into our care. So the fly, the axe, and the roof. By looking at these three images, we’ve seen how much wisdom matters. But knowing what wisdom requires isn’t the same as being wise. Family, how many times do you know exactly what to do and then you’ve done the opposite? You know you should keep your mouth shut, but you say it anyway. You know you needed to deal with that one particular sin, but you keep putting it off. Our problem is deeper than information. Remember verse two, our hearts have a direction. Jesus said in Matthew 12 34, for out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. So yes, better habits do matter. They are important, but more than habits, we need new hearts. You can sharpen the axe to the best of your ability. You could watch your words as a very disciplined person. You can even attend to the roof, and you should, but none of those can remove your guilt before God or save you from death. The Kohelet has already told us a wise man dies just like the fool, and this is why our eyes must be raised above the horizon. Listen to 1st Corinthians chapter 1 verses 23 and 24, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles, but to those who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Family, Jesus is the wisdom of God, and in verse 30 Paul says that Christ has become for us wisdom from God, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. We need righteousness because we’ve sinned against God. We need sanctification because the folly in our hearts must be consistently put to death. We need redemption because we can’t free ourselves from sin’s grip, and Paul points us all to Christ for all of it. Where we’ve lived foolishly, Jesus lived with perfect wisdom. He never spoke a careless word. He never neglected what his father entrusted him. He never used his authority to serve himself in public and in private. He loved his father and did his will, and what did the world do with him? They mocked him, they rejected him, and they nailed him to a cross. The only perfectly wise man who ever lived was crucified by foolish sinners, but what looked like foolishness was in fact the wisdom of God. Jesus wasn’t dying for his own sin, he was dying for our sin. 2 Corinthians 5 21 says, for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Family, that is good news for all of our foolishness, all of our careless words, all of our selfish decisions, all of our harsh words, all of the responsibilities that we’ve neglected, all of our big sins and all of our small sins, Christ carried them all to the cross. That means our foolishness does not have the final word. Christ Jesus does. Some of you are living with very painful consequences because of foolish choices. Forgiveness doesn’t always make those things go away or disappear. Trust may take time to rebuild and some losses will remain, perhaps, until you die, but those losses don’t place you beyond the mercy of Christ. You can go back to him even though you can’t go back and change that decision. You can turn to Christ, you can ask for forgiveness without demanding to be trusted right away, and you can obey him today while still grieving what happened yesterday. We receive because of his righteousness, not ours, and that should change the way we pursue wisdom. Not to earn God’s love because in Christ we already have his love and he’s given us his spirit to help us walk in it. In fact, Paul puts it together in Ephesians 5, 15 through 18. He says, Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is, and do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit. So family, bring these three images before the Lord. If there is a fly you’ve been excusing, confess it, bring it to the light, and if you’ve hurt someone, seek forgiveness. If there is an axe that needs sharpening, prepare for the pressure you know is coming by asking for counsel. Take the next wise step forward, and if there is a roof you’ve been neglecting, give attention to what God has entrusted to you. Don’t wait for a more convenient time, and then when you fail, come back to Jesus honestly. We have a Savior whose grace is greater than our sins. Amen? And friend, if you’re here this morning and you don’t know Jesus, as smart as you may think you be, you may be, you are not wise enough to save yourself from sin. But Jesus lived a life you could never live, and he died the death that you deserve because of your sin, and he rose from the grave so that you might come to him and find salvation in him, so that your guilt might be removed, and so that your heart can be made new. You don’t have to fix everything right now. Your reason to come to him is because you need a Savior. Our greatest hope is that the wisdom of God has come to save foolish sinners like us, and the wisdom of God is personified in our Savior Jesus Christ. Embrace him today, and he will save you from your sins, give you a new heart, and help you to learn to live wisely. And if you have questions about that, talk to any member of this church. They would love to help you follow Jesus. With that, family, let’s pray. Our Father and our God, we thank you that you have not left us to our own intelligence to figure out how to live this life, but you’ve given us your Spirit and your Word, and so we can learn from the wisdom in your Word to live wisely, and we can be helped by the Holy Spirit to apply what we’ve learned to live wisely. Protect us from the direction of the fool. Help our hearts lean towards the wisdom of your Word, towards the perfection of our Savior, so that we might enjoy him and enjoy life the way you’ve intended us to. We pray these things in the name of our Father.