CCF Sermon Devotional – August 16th, 2026

Day 1 — There Is a Right Way

Devotional

A joke circulates around the internet about Ecclesiastes 10:2. Some translations of the Bible follow the Hebrew wording closely, rendering Ecclesiastes 10:2 as ‘the wise heart goes to the right and the fool’s heart to the left.’ People then take it literally and share it as a political comment. The problem is that the labels ‘left’ and ‘right’ stem from where men sat in a 1700s government hall, while Ecclesiastes was written centuries before Christ. In other words, the joke misses truth by about two millennia. Thus someone shares Ecclesiastes 10:2 as a joke, but another takes it literally, causing harm rather than humor. This reveals a deeper truth about our behavior: we have taken something God created and used it by our own means, causing it to fail its purpose. That is the focus of this segment on Ecclesiastes 10–11. Wisdom is skill: handling an issue with the proper means God requires. Foolishness is a failure to live out wisdom. A verse, an axe, a marriage, a Monday morning, and a life all have proper handling. The Speaker of Ecclesiastes uses perfume as a metaphor; though meant to be beautiful, a few flies can make the whole bottle rancid. Wisdom and foolishness, two lanes on one road, opposite directions; the line between them is thinner than we think. Also, there is a danger that arises when we read such passages and begin sorting people: who is he, who is she? But, where is this danger; it’s because no one voluntarily chooses the wise lane.

Read God’s standard for righteousness in Ecclesiastes 7:20, always good, never sins.

That is the line between wisdom and foolishness; one sin puts you in the lane of foolishness.

God created everything with a purpose. God made people upright. Adam began on God’s way and walked away from it. Every person born since Adam’s sin is already in the foolish lane of sin. We then keep walking it by not following in God’s wise way (righteousness).

We do not wander onto that lane, nor find our own way off it; we live out what we were born into.

So this week is not a grading tool. It concerns the lane of life we were born on, the right way we are still called to live, and the path off the lane of foolishness toward God’s wise direction for our life, which we did not build.

Reflection Question

Where have you been handling something by your own means instead of God’s wisdom?

Day 2 — A World That Will Not Cooperate

Devotional

Today we pick up where we left off, on the road we were all born on. Now we ask what happens when that road refuses to cooperate.

Your boss is angry. Maybe you earned it. Maybe you did not. The Speaker of Ecclesiastes says do not walk out.

A quiet spirit can carry you through a real mistake. Storming off never has. The calm answer often does more than the correct one.

Then he widens the view. Sometimes the fool is the one in charge.

People who should not have authority get it. People who have earned it get passed over. The Speaker of Ecclesiastes says he watched it happen with his own eyes.

He does not tell you to fix it. He tells you it is normal in a broken world.

Then he moves from people to the ground under your feet.

Dig a well and you might fall in. Tear down an old wall and something might bite you. Work with heavy stone and stone might land on you. Split firewood and every swing carries risk.

None of those are foolish jobs. They are necessary jobs. Being wise does not make the danger go away.

Which makes verse 10 land hard. A dull ax still cuts. It just takes everything you have to make it happen. So sharpen it.

That is the picture. Wisdom is not a shield that stops the world from hitting you. Wisdom is a sharpened blade in a world that will hit you anyway.

Then the last line, and it stings. A snake charmer who forgets his own trade is just a man near a snake. The skill did him no good because he never used it.

Wisdom is no promise that life will be fair. It is no promise that life will be safe.

Wisdom is following God. It is trusting him even as he leaves this world in its fallen state for now.

God will redeem this world one day. The world we live in today he allows to remain. And it is doing our best with the circumstances we are given.

So we are reminded to sharpen the blade anyway.

Reflection Question

What have you stopped maintaining because it felt like it would not change the outcome anyway?

Day 3 — The Sharpest Thing You Handle

Devotional

Yesterday ended with a sharpened blade. The sharpest thing most of us handle is not an ax.

Look at the word gracious. The Hebrew behind it is the word for grace. It means favor nobody earned.

One commentator makes a point worth sitting with. We usually read this verse as saying wise words get you a good reputation. That is true enough. But the better reading is that wise words hand something to other people.

Grace goes out of your mouth. The person hearing it did not earn it. That is what makes it grace.

Now the other half of the verse. The fool’s lips consume him.

Another commentator notes something about the Hebrew here. It can just as fairly be read the lips of the fool swallow us up. The fool’s words do not only take him down. They take down whoever is standing close.

Watch how it happens. Verse 13 says the fool starts from a bad assumption. So the conclusion comes out wrong. Then he keeps talking.

He talks as though he knows what is coming. Nobody knows what is coming.

And verse 15 is almost funny until you see yourself in it. The fool wears himself out on a job and cannot find his way home. He set out to build something. He ended up lost.

That is what foolish words do. They aim at building and end up scattering.

Before you picture someone else saying all this, remember Day One. That way of foolishness was ours before it was anyone else’s.

Now remember the way of wisdom is God’s way. Wisdom isn’t there to make us look good. It’s here to lead us in this world in God’s way.

So here is the question, and let’s not soften it.

Your words this week did one of two things. They handed grace to someone who had not earned it to build them up. Or they swallowed something up in destruction.

Which one?

Reflection Question

Think of one conversation from the past week. Did your words hand grace to someone, or did they consume something?

Day 4 — Not the One in Charge

Devotional

Yesterday asked what your words did. Words slip out sideways when we forget who is actually in charge. Today is about that, hang with us for a second.

In verse 16, the Speaker of Ecclesiastes is talking about whole nations here, not just your workplace. He is describing a country under leaders who feast in the morning.

It reaches down to us from there.

Good leaders feast too. But they feast at the right time, and for strength. The eating serves the work. It does not become the focus.

When chasing a good time becomes a priority then a roof sags. Then a house leaks.

Notice nobody decided to let that happen. Nothing is destroyed on purpose. It just goes slowly untended, and falls apart.

Then we reach verse 19, and it sounds like a cheer for the good life, but it’s really a dig. A party gives laughter, wine gives happiness, money gives everything.

None of the good stuff removes a single duty. The party ends and the roof still sags.

Then verse 20, and it turns personal. Do not mock the king even in your bedroom. A little bird may carry it.

Be careful with this one. It is not telling you to have no opinion. There are times when authority must be challenged, and Scripture is not squeamish about that.

What wisdom knows is simpler. You live under authority you did not choose, even when it’s foolish. Challenge is real, and it will draw a response. The wise count that cost before speaking, not after.

Next, we turn to chapter 11.

A grain farmer loads his crop onto a ship and sends it away. He loses control of it entirely. That is the only way anything comes back.

So he splits it up. Several ships, several markets. He does not know what is coming.

He also puts his hands into other money ventures, as a further chance of having income.

And he plants without a forecast. Farmers who wait for perfect weather never plant.

Pastor Nate watched this in Montana one spring. Those farmers broadcast their seed. The seed lands loose on the surface and waits to germinate.

They read the sky and planted. Then a windstorm came through days later. All that loose seed simply left the field.

They could not have known. That is why they carry insurance.

Verse 5 is the answer to why. You cannot trace the wind. You cannot explain how a child comes together in the womb. You will not trace God’s work either.

So verse 6 tells you what to do about it. Plant in the morning. Keep working in the afternoon. You do not know which one will come to anything, and it might be both.

That is the shape of the whole thing. Obedience without control. Wisdom teaches you in a fallen world, how best to live.

You accept you cannot control the risks, but you minimize what you can; like not cursing the king. You cannot control the results of your hard work, and still take risks without knowing what will work best.

Reflection Question

What are you refusing to start until you can be sure how it turns out?

Day 5 — Every Day Counted

Devotional

Yesterday ended with still working even when you cannot guarantee the reward. Today asks whether any of it counts.

Light is sweet. The Speaker of Ecclesiastes says enjoy the day you are in. Then he says something that sounds like it cancels the first part.

There will be many dark days. Everything still to come is meaningless.

Slow down on that word. It does not mean your days are empty. It does not mean the good was never good, or the hard was never hard.

It means your days will not carry the eternal weight you keep loading onto them.

Think of a deal you worked for months. You put in the hours and the money and your best thinking. Then it collapsed.

The work still happened. Those months were real. But everything you were building it toward is simply gone.

That is what he means. Not that nothing happened. That it will not hold what you wanted it to hold.

Now look carefully at verse 9, because it is one sentence and we like to take half of it.

Rejoice. Follow the impulses of your heart. Take it in.

And know that God will judge your motives and actions.

Both halves came together. The release and the accounting are the same command. He is not handing you permission and then quietly attaching a warning. He is telling you the truth about days that count for something.

And notice why God judges. Not because we upset him. Not because he is reacting to being crossed.

He made everything; our lives and the world we live in. So He is the one who says what it is for. The standard is his own nature, and it does not move.

Here is the thing we miss. God’s judgment is the reason your days have meaning.

God is the only one who can make His purposes last, while every work that we do on our own is empty of meaning. Yet, knowing that God has created you and given you purpose means knowing that when we live in his purposes, our actions in Him have lasting meaning. But when we act on our own, the very thing that frightens us, that our life is meaningless, rings true.

So the Speaker of Ecclesiastes says to those older in life banish the stress and let go of the pain. To the young, stop worrying about, trying to live the good life, and making the most of your life. Both old and young, have the same reason for this, living in God’s purpose gives meaning to the stress and pain. Living in God’s way shows you the life that is good, and full of purpose.

The Speaker of Ecclesiastes is telling you to stop carrying the weight of making your own purpose and meaning.

Trust in God’s intentions for your life. Yet, this is where the Speaker of Ecclesiastes has to stop. He knew God’s judgment was coming. He knew God would weigh how we spent our days in accordance with our place in His purposes. He just could not tell you what God would do with His purposes in the future.

Reflection Question

What have you been trying to make your life count for that it was never built to carry?

Day 6 — Wisdom With a Name

Devotional

There is an old cartoon of a boy on a bicycle. He shoves a stick into his own front spokes and goes flying over the handlebars. The next frame shows him on the ground in pain.

That has been the week. We are the flies in the perfume. We put the stick in our own spokes and then suffer the wreck.

The Speaker of Ecclesiastes saw all of it. He knew God would weigh our days. He could not tell you what God would do about it.

We can see what he did.

Jesus says he came to accomplish God’s purposes in the Law and the Prophets. Not to cancel them. To fulfill them.

Sit with what Paul says. Christ has become for us wisdom from God.

Not a teacher of wisdom. Not an example of it. Wisdom itself, given to people who had none.

That has to be how it works. Remember, nobody starts on the wise lane of life’s road. We were born in the foolish lane and we could not get off it. So wisdom could never be a skill we finally mastered.

It had to be given. And it came in Jesus.

Look at what Paul says it includes. Righteousness. Holiness. Redemption.

Three words for the three things we could not produce.

Then hear what Jesus told Paul on the Damascus road.

Eyes opened. Darkness to light. Forgiveness for sins. A place among God’s people.

Two things happen there, and both matter.

Your sins are forgiven. The debt of our sin is settled, once, by someone who never sinned.

And you are set apart. That is another way of saying you’ve been made holy. God is changing foolish people into wise ones, in Jesus.

Notice he is doing it. He is not standing back to see whether you manage it. His hold on you does not depend on your progress. It rests on what he has done, and faith is how you receive it.

Peter reveals to us God’s ultimate purpose in Jesus. To bring you safely home to God.

That is the whole point. God was not content to leave his people in vanity. He wanted them home.

This is for everyone who trusts him. Not for people who cleaned themselves up first.

So here is where the week lands.

Wisdom isn’t a tool for controlling life’s unpredictability for our own purposes. It’s faithful obedience to living God’s way for his purposes.

And God’s way has a name. Look to Jesus. Follow him. Trust him.

Reflection Question

Have you been trying to become wise, or have you received the wisdom God gave you in Christ?