Ecclesiastes 10:8-14

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Ecclesiastes — iconic scene

Service recording Sunday 6th September looking at Ecclesiastes.

Watch the service — 6 September 2026

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Chapters

Ecclesiastes 10:8-14

Scripture Readings

Today’s New Testament reading comes from Romans 10, just reading verses 5 through 13. So open your Bibles, push the button on your devices, or cast your eyes to the front, and let’s follow with me while I read these few verses. The grass withers, the flower fades; the Word of God, though, it endures forever. And we believe this is God’s Word.

For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. But the righteousness based on faith says, do not say in your heart, “Who will ascend into heaven?” (that is, to bring Christ down), or “Who will descend into the abyss?” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that is, the word of faith that we proclaim. Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, everyone who believes in Him will not be put to shame. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing His riches on all who call on Him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Rich words. Yes, rich words. And now open the Scriptures with me again. Flick your devices on or cast your eyes to the front. Our text comes from Ecclesiastes chapter 10, reading today from verses 8 through 14. More practical help from a wise man for us today.

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 favour, 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?

Opening Prayer

Let’s ask His help. Father, we thank You again for Your Word. The Lord is not just concerned about lofty spiritual things, but it teaches us how to live and how to represent You in this life that You have given us. And Lord, there are so many corners of our lives, and our lives are so complex. There are so many things that we need to address. But we pray that as we do tick them off one by one in our lives, and continue to change and to continue to be changed by You, that we will better represent You in this life that You have given us, no matter how many days we have left. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Looking Back: Wisdom Directs a Man to the Right

I just want to remind you briefly, as I often do, of where we were a couple of weeks ago. We were talking last time when we were reading the book of Ecclesiastes that wisdom directs a man to the right, resulting in might. The right hand, or the right, is the place of strength, of power and authority. And it should be sought by us with our whole hearts. It’s not something that we want to be half-hearted about.

It’s demonstrated by precision and coordination. Most of us that are right-handed know that if we have to use our left, then we are a little bit more uncoordinated, unless you’re like one or two people that I know here, ambidextrous types where you can use both. But even then you have to decide which hand you’re going to use, and it can be confusing. Nevertheless, it is demonstrated by precision and coordination, sensibility, steadiness, sureness, showing poise under pressure, composure, being composed under pressure. All of that is carried with the idea of the right approach.

And we looked at that in great depth, but we don’t need to look again in great depth, because all I’m doing is just really setting up for the next practical lessons. The believer’s desire is to be at the right, or on the right, not the left, for it is where Jesus dwells. Jesus, having ascended to the Father, has sat down at where? The right hand of God the Father. And so that is where you and I want to be as believers. We want to be in the presence of Jesus, our Lord and our Saviour.

And as a result, we can know that at God’s right hand we can gain strength, power, authority and favour by God. There we can know God’s love and affections. There we can hear His guiding voice through His Word now, but in person there when we get there, to see His glory and His majesty.

And remember we finished off with the words of the Lord to the church at Laodicea, having said already, behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with Me. Followed by those great and glorious words: he who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, having already established that it is at the right hand of God. Marvellous things, aren’t they?

Three Heads

Anyway, our text today really is somewhat of an extension of what it might be to live practically, and in the presence of, and for the Lord Jesus Christ. And there are three easy heads. There are around six verses, and two of each, and we can divide it up quite easily, that is, before us. The first is that we should live a life that is watchful. The second is that we should live a life that is thoughtful. And the third is that we should live a life of careful speech. Of careful speech.

And all of these things, of course, as I said and as we prayed: the Christian life is full, and it’s a complex business. In some ways it’s a simple business, isn’t it? I mean, we live, and there’s nothing more or less complicated about our lives just because we’re Christians. We’re born, we live, we die, and that is the case, and we fill in the gaps in the middle one way or another.

And so in one sense it’s quite simple, isn’t it? But in another sense, there are all these little avenues and little facets of life. And it’s not only that, it’s not the same for everyone. It’s not the same for you as it is for me. And so when we come to the Scriptures, we’re very thankful that the Scriptures are complex in this sense: that they delve into every little corner of our existence, and in doing so work in us to change us. Your Word, says the Lord in His prayer in John 17, Your Word will sanctify. The Word of the Lord will sanctify us, and the Word of the Lord is truth.

And so we expect that when we expose ourselves to, when we open God’s Word, when we think and when we dwell upon it, when we meditate on God’s Word, that the Lord will bring about change in our lives. Ever so slow from our point of view; it’s not God’s fault, it’s our fault. We’re not as open to the change that God would bring about in our lives as we think that we either ought to be, or are.

That is our experience, isn’t it? And if it’s not your experience, you’re a very young Christian. If you just hung around Christian circles a little longer, you would realise just how hard it is, and how hard-fought good change is. Bad change is real easy. You can do that overnight. But good change, man, it has to be worked hard at, because we are pedalling upstream, brothers and sisters. It’s not like going with the flow. It is not like going with the flow at all.

Watchful: Take Care in All That You Do

Anyway, our first head is to be watchful, to take care in all that we do. Check out the verses again and just read them again: he who digs a pit may fall into it. First of all, the digging of a pit and falling in it: this is a bit of a Hebraism. It occurs quite a few times in the Scriptures. Another time that came to mind, I was listening to the Scriptures the other night and it was reading to me Psalm 7, and it says a similar thing there too. Job 4 says a similar thing. And there are other passages in Isaiah that also say a similar thing.

And the idea is that if we’re digging a pit, we need to be careful. We need to put the red cones around; and I know we mock, don’t we, the local councils and the health and safety individuals, but if you did ignore the red cones and carried on, you may well fall into a pit or into a hole.

They are digging up the road at the bottom of our hill for about the fifth time in about five weeks now. Every time they smooth it over and they make it nice, and then they think, oh, I forgot to do that. And so they dig another hole. And the hole is deep. I don’t know what they’re looking for down there, but the hole is deep. And if you fell into it, or if they fell into it having dug it, then you’d be very thankful that the red cones surround it. So remember that. We need to watch, and we need to be careful, that if we are digging a hole we don’t end up falling into it, especially if such a hole is not a useful hole. And we can do that. We’ll talk more about that a little later.

Along with that, it could also be that complacency can make us careless. Complacency can make us careless. You notice that it’s Michael’s birthday, by the way, this week, along with one or two others. I don’t know what it is about this week in the life of the church; we have heaps and heaps of birthdays and things. But Michael has the wonderful record now of having fallen off a motorbike twice and injured himself lately, which is absolutely marvellous, and we think that’s terribly funny. Check out the cake in the back afterwards when you’re dining.

But at any rate, we would advise Michael not to be complacent when he’s riding his motorbike in the future, because if he is complacent about doing so, he may fall off it again, and the cutting and the breaking of one’s leg might not be the only thing. But anyway, he’s a young fellow, and I understand. I said to him, I said, you must be competing with me. He’s got all sorts of scars around his legs now, and he said he’s got some time to do that. So he comes by the adrenaline rush quite honestly, so that’s okay. The Lord’s preserved us so far, all of us, hasn’t He?

But at any rate, there it goes. Complacency can make one careless. So be careful when you’re digging a hole that you don’t end up falling in it. Think ahead to assess the consequences of one’s activities. To be proactive, in other words, rather than reactive in the issues of life. To be proactive rather than reactive. So much of our life is really demonstrated by that. We go through it and we live every day at a time, and then something happens, so we’re forced to react to it. But it’s actually smarter to be proactive rather than to be reactive in that sort of situation.

A person’s finest achievements can also be his greatest danger. Are you digging a hole? Well and good. If you dig a big hole, that’s doubly good. That might be your finest achievement, but be careful, because your finest achievements will very likely, and or can, be your greatest dangers. I’ve known that not just in a practical sense, but in a spiritual sense in the church. You generally find that people that are very, very strong theologically, and very, very strong in terms of their understanding of the Scriptures and of systematic theology and things, are the very ones that are most prone, perhaps, to be Pharisees, and to be a little bit looking down their spiritual noses at other people in the church. So we must be careful of that sort of thing.

Thoughtful: Good Preparation Saves Time and Energy

Watch. Watch, therefore, says the preacher. Watch, says Solomon to us. Be careful. Think. Good preparation saves time and energy. And I noticed that we read it in the ESV. I actually like the NASB better in this particular instance. In the ESV it translates the word as iron, but axe makes more sense to me, because I have chopped a lot of wood in my days, and I know perfectly well that if you’ve got a blunt axe then you’ve got an issue, and you do really have to use so much more force. The trouble is, when you have to use more force when you’re doing a job like that, you’re more likely to stick the thing through your leg, or to bounce off and to break you in the head. And so that’s the sort of stuff that you have to deal with if you’re using an axe.

And so good preparation in life is good. It saves time and it saves energy. A sharp axe is a very helpful thing. And not only that, using a sharp axe with good technique is an even more helpful thing, and I won’t bore you. When it comes to chopping wood and following the medullary rays and the growth rings of what you’re trying to chop up, those sorts of things, that’s sort of technical stuff for trees. But if you do that, it makes the job easier. But you know, you are urban folks, and you don’t often get out there on a Monday morning and chop your wood for the week.

A task done well doesn’t need to be done again. That was one of my dad’s. I’m going to share a bit more of what my dad used to share with me concerning those things, but that’s the sort of thing that he would say to me, because I would like to get it done so that I could get on with life and get on with something else. But he would always say that a task well done doesn’t need to be done again.

Four Things My Father Taught Me

I want to share with you four things that my father shared with me, and I love to pass on his wisdom, because he was a very wise man in my opinion, and set me up for life. Because we’ve got lots of things in our life. We’ve got practical things. We’ve got spiritual things in our lives. But we also, of course, have financial things. And you say, well, what’s finance got to do with the Christian life? And the answer is, must be quite a bit, because the Bible deals with it a heap. And the reason why it deals with it a heap, of course, is that it can be really a competitor to God.

And let’s face it, all of you have to face it. If you don’t own a home, and you may own a home, and that’s wonderful, you have to pay rates and now water bills and whatever else, and you have to pay maybe the interest on your mortgage. But if you rent, you’ve still got to pay that. It’s just that you pay it to somebody else who pays that sort of thing. So it affects us all. We can’t live freely, any of us. And so when we come to thinking carefully, my father had some careful advice for me, and I want to share four things anyway with you in regard to that.

And the first is this. Remember that financial success cannot be achieved by just hard work, but by using your head. As a youngster, and I’m talking a youngster, 16, I girded up my loins and I decided that I was not going back to school, and I went off and learnt the finer arts of shearing sheep. The reason for that is that I was going to be rich; it was a very lucrative thing to do. When I was a youngster, you could earn 100 dollars a day doing that. Now, I know that you guys earn thousands of dollars every day now, but take inflation into account. In those days, I could earn more doing that than anything else.

It’s a very hard job, a very physically hard job, and it’s probably part of the reason why I’m a bit of a cripple now, and I have a mat for my knees, because it takes a bit of the sponge when I’m up here for an hour, and I’m very thankful of it. And so, but at 16, I had left my schooling behind and I was going to become rich. And that was the advice that my father gave me. He says, you cannot work hard enough. You cannot work hard enough to make a lot of money. You need to use your head. In other words, be prepared. So here’s the advice to you if you’re a young person, or to you as parents: encourage your children to get a good education. And that would be one part, anyway, of being a good steward of that particular situation.

The second point, he used to say this. He says, learn to make money work for you rather than working for money. In other words, be a saver. Now, I don’t know if you parents have got provision made for your children that are here, because most of them are out at Sunday school; we could address them directly here. But please, mums and dads, encourage your children to be savers, so that when they get to be older, money is working for them and they aren’t working for money. Because when you work for money, you cannot outwork it. It will be eaten away. But if money ends up working for you, then you can get on with something else as well.

The third thing that he used to say is this. He used to say, borrow money only for assets, never for liabilities. Isn’t that great? I sometimes turn on the TV to look at The Chase, and there’s always in The Chase you’ve got to bear with the adverts, don’t you? And there’s always some financial institution there wanting to loan you money for exorbitant amounts of interest. And they’ll say, combine all your debts into one, and we will loan it to you, and you will be my slave for the rest of your life. Well, they don’t say that, but that’s really what they mean, isn’t it? That’s really what they mean.

When you borrow money, if you ever do borrow money, and you don’t have to, but if you do borrow money, remember that you should always borrow money for what is an asset, not a liability. Not for going on holiday; that’s a liability. Not for buying Father’s Day presents. Just a reminder. But for assets, things that are going to grow and help you. So that was the third thing that he used to say.

And then fourthly, he used to say this. He says, give priority to paying down your debt as soon as you can if you do borrow, because a borrower, and here he used to quote the book of Proverbs, a borrower is always a slave to the lender. That’s all part of having a sharp financial axe. And when you do that, you’ll be far more effective in life. It amazes me just how practical the Bible is, isn’t it? It’s marvellous. And if we follow it, and if we follow its principles, and the principles that are given to us by the wisdom of others drawn from the Scriptures, then we surely shall be prosperous in this life.

Careful Speech: Let Your Words Be Full of Grace

Thirdly, my third head is to speak wisely, or to speak well. That’s what we’re encouraged to do. Let your words be full of grace, the NASB says. Let your words be full of grace, because words contain power and meaning.

Remember our passage in Romans 10, for instance. Words are part of our salvation. Remember that if we believe with our hearts that God has raised Jesus from the dead, and confess Him, Jesus, with our mouths, we shall be saved. We shall be saved. Now, them is words full of grace, and pointing us to the grace of God, not to having to work our way in terms of our salvation. That’s the context of Romans chapter 10. The context is, if you believe that you’re going to be saved by keeping the law, you must keep it all. And of course no man can do that. But what does the Word say? The Word says, and it speaks of Jesus being brought down to die on the cross for our sins: confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord.

Evil words can be destructive, yet gracious words will always build up, not destroy. Hebrews 10, verses 24 and 25, says this about our fellowship together, and I pray that it’s the content and the context of our fellowship here: let us not neglect to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as we see the day drawing near when the Lord will return. Encouraging one another. Good words, gracious words, will build up, not destroy.

Gracious words will give life and not cause death. There’s an interesting passage in John chapter 6, if you remember. Jesus is talking, He’s giving teaching about life, about the body and the blood of the Lord Jesus. He says, he who eats My flesh and drinks My blood, he will be saved. Because He’s talking about what we celebrate, and what we will celebrate today, in terms of the Lord’s Supper here, where the bread represents the body of the Lord eaten, consumed by us, taken in by us, and the blood drunk, taken in, so that it represents the salvation that Jesus Christ achieved on our behalf. That’s why we come to this table every month, to remind ourselves of the fundamentals, the basics of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

But in the course of that, in John’s passage in chapter 6, at the end of it, having taught such a difficult teaching to those around Him, many of His so-called disciples disappeared. They didn’t want to handle it. That was too much for them. And they couldn’t stand it. And Jesus turns to His disciples, supposedly the twelve, that were particularly His closest allies, and He looks at them and He says, do you want to leave Me also? Do you want to leave Me also?

And Peter’s reply is just excellent. It’s just excellent. He says, Lord, where would we go? You have the words of life. You have the words of life. And so Jesus’ words contain life to us. And it is those words that are for us, as it were, to understand, and to spread that word by even our own tongues and our own lives. As we do so, we’re demonstrating that the words of Jesus, and the words that we speak on His behalf, give life, not death.

Words Should Encourage, Not Discourage

Words should encourage, not discourage. We should never miss an opportunity to discourage gossip in our church. You know the trouble with the churches: the church is full of sinners. But we have to be careful sinners when we’re in the church. And we have to be very careful that we’re not gossiping about one another.

We’re like a big family. And we all know how families work. The trouble with families is that you actually know one another quite closely, and so therefore you know not only what are the good points of one another, but also the bad points. Also the areas that I struggle in that you don’t struggle in, that you struggle in that I don’t struggle in. And it’s so easy, isn’t it, in the context of our own experience, to speak of, to talk of, somebody else in the family.

And that, brothers and sisters, is a terrible thing. It’s called gossip. And it comes out of the very pit of hell. Why? Because the book of Proverbs says this, in 17:9, the same Solomon that wrote Ecclesiastes said, or quoted, he who conceals a transgression seeks love. But listen to this: but one who repeats a matter separates intimate friends.

Be so careful. Be so careful when you’re speaking. If you are to speak, that you’re speaking words of encouragement, not gossip of somebody else. Because as you do so, that is the very heart of where divisions and difficulties and relationship problems come within the body of Christ and the family of God. Rather conceal a matter. Rather keep it to yourself. There are a lot of things we say, and we’re all guilty of it, but there are a lot of things we say that we just ought not to say. What is the value of it? But yes, when we do, what happens is that we separate intimate friends.

I once knew a pastor, and I’m reluctant to use some examples like this, but we can, for reasons I know. And I was aware that this pastor was coming under pressure in the church, and he had got into trouble, and there was a group in the church that had decided that this guy ought not to be a pastor because his children were out of control. He had teenagers. You’re trying to round up teenagers? They’re not human. Honestly. Most of them aren’t human until they turn 20. At 20 they become human again. But somewhere about the ages, with girls it’s about 10, and with boys it’s about 12, they turn from being reasonable human beings into something that is alien.

And one thing about being a pastor I can tell you is this: that everyone is very quick to judge you, to look at the work you do, particularly in your own home, and to judge you by what your children do, think and say. If you don’t understand what I mean, ask any pastor’s son or daughter. They get judged, and then the judgment comes on the pastor.

Well, this particular pastor called me up. He needed a hand. He was meeting with a particular individual that was leading out the great rebellion in the church and wanted him sacked, because his children weren’t coming up to scratch. And so I arrived there, and here’s this young guy who’s arrived. He’s got three kids himself, and they were all under four years old. And he said, this guy should not be a pastor in our church because his children are out of control. I said, you come back in 10 years’ time and tell me about your children, and then I’ll listen to you.

See, it’s harder than you think, because by the time they’re getting into teenagerhood they’re making up their own minds and they’re going to make some mistakes. Well, that wouldn’t be surprising, because we all did that, didn’t we? Well, if you didn’t, you’re liars. Hey, gossip. Come back to me when you’ve had some life experience, I said, and then we’ll talk about how well or not this pastor is doing.

Combining All Three

Sometimes when it comes to taking care, watching, thinking and speaking, we’re so good and clever we can combine them all. I can. I quite often dig holes when I’m preaching and then I fall in. Everyone looks at my wife and thinks, what’s he going to get when he gets home? I quite often dig holes. When I’m splitting wood with a dull axe, when I lack preparation sometimes, when the words that I speak don’t bring healing but they perhaps bring hurt to somebody. We can combine all three.

But listen, and I want to leave it here. When it comes to the words that we speak, it speaks of our assurance, the assurance of salvation. We often ask that question, don’t we? Again, there are some people that don’t ask it, but these people just avoid the world. They ask, and here’s a question, I’ll ask it for you: am I really a Christian? Am I really saved? If I was to die tonight, am I super-duper really extra sure that I’m going to go to heaven?

Now, we all ask those questions, and I think rightly we do. But listen, listen again to the words of Scripture for your comfort. He who believes in his heart that God has raised Jesus from the dead, and confesses with his mouth that Jesus is Lord, he shall be saved. Words. Powerful things. Watch. Watch, therefore. And be careful. And speak words. Speak words that you know will bring you salvation.

Closing Prayer

Father, we thank You again for the so practical teaching of the preacher in the book of Ecclesiastes, and there’s so much more perhaps. We’re perhaps only skimming the surface of the meaning and the depth of Your Word. But Lord, what we have heard today and thought on, help us to think on for the rest of the week. And help us, most of all, and convert us, work in our hearts and in our lives, that we can believe in our hearts that You, our Father in heaven, have raised the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead; and that if we confess with our mouths, we shall be saved. Amen.