Ecclesiastes 9:13 – 10:20
The sermon text. It reads like a stack of unrelated observations. Read it once for the whole thing and let the pattern come later.
A poor wise man saves a city and is forgotten. What does that tell you about how wisdom usually travels?
A wise woman saves an entire city with her words, and Scripture never gives us her name. Read Monday first and you will recognize the story the Teacher told.
Count how many verses in chapter 10 are about words and speech. What does the Teacher think a tongue can do?
A portrait gallery of the fool. Ecclesiastes 10 assumes you already know this material.
Wisdom is better than weapons, but one sinner destroys much good. How do you hold both halves of 9:18?
Wisdom sets a table and calls out. So does folly, from the same street, using nearly the same words.
Where has a small foolishness been outweighing a lot of good in your life? 10:1 gives the picture.
Two builders heard the same words. The difference was never in the hearing.
Ask God to make you someone whose quiet words are worth hearing — and for courage when they are not heard.
What are the Marks and the 3 Circles?
The Marks of a Disciple
Each week names one of these — the practices we are cultivating in each other.
- Daily Devotion
- Time with God every day, in the Bible and in prayer.
- Prayer
- Not only a set appointment, but a life of prayer at any hour, for anything.
- Generosity
- Giving your effort and your resources to this church and to God’s kingdom.
- Service
- Giving your time and talent to the church and its mission in the community.
- Witness
- Seeking people far from God and telling them about Jesus and about your own finding of him.
- Worship
- Weekly praise together, and a life presented daily to God’s service.
- Spiritual Disciplines
- Fasting, solitude, study, sabbath — the old practices of the faith.
The 3 Circles
How we tell someone about Jesus — simple enough to draw on a napkin. Each week names the part of it that week’s reading sits in.
- God’s Design
- The world and your life as God made them to be.
- Sin
- The arrow out. We each go our own way instead.
- Brokenness
- Where that leaves us. Ecclesiastes spends most of twelve chapters here.
- Repent & Believe
- Turning from our own way and trusting what Jesus did.
- Gospel
- Jesus lived the life we could not and died the death we deserved.
- Recover & Pursue
- The way back toward the life God designed.