How to Walk Wisely in a Broken World • July 19, 2026 • Matthew Spradlin • Ecclesiastes 9-11-10-10

Welcome to the Valley Baptist Church sermon podcast.

We're so glad you're here, and we hope this message inspires you,

builds your faith, and moves you toward a deep relationship with God.

Today, you'll find great insight into the Bible

and learn how you can apply it straight to your life.

So welcome and enjoy the message.

If you have your Bibles, open them to Ecclesiastes chapter 9.

Ecclesiastes 9 · chapter mention

We're going to continue our series of messages through the book of Ecclesiastes.

Now, Ecclesiastes is part of the wisdom literature of the Bible, and it's right after the book

of Proverbs, although Ecclesiastes contains a lot of Proverbs.

Well, a proverb is a container of wisdom.

It's a small statement about a big truth.

It's a short sentence that takes a long time for someone to learn in their life.

It's important to understand that proverbs are not promises,

they are principles.

They are high probability statements.

They tell you what generally happens,

but they don't mention the exceptions that happen.

Proverbs help us to see that certain conduct produces certain consequences within our life,

and so much of wisdom is understanding the connection between our behavior and the results.

But the other books of the Bible, the other wisdom books of the Bible,

help us to see the exceptions that take place in life.

That's why Psalms and Proverbs are next to each other within our Bible.

Proverbs tells us the ideal,

but Psalms is God's people wrestling with the ideal not happening within their life.

Now, Solomon tells us in Ecclesiastes that the world has been broken by sin.

And so now, under the sun, the world doesn't always work the way that it is supposed to work.

And so the book of Ecclesiastes and the passage we're going to look at this morning

is about how to walk wisely in the exceptions of a broken world.

Well, what is wisdom?

Well, wisdom is living out God's word in God's world.

And we're gonna see in the passage that there's a contrast

between foolishness and wisdom.

Foolishness is living life from your perspective.

And, of course, that perspective is very limited, and often it is flawed, and it's affected by our sin nature.

And wisdom, though, is living life from God's perspective.

And the way that you and I gain God's perspective is from God's holy word.

Now, the Bible teaches that wisdom is more than just knowledge, and it's more than just

intellect, because we all watch very smart people do very stupid things within life.

Wisdom, then, is not just what you believe,

it is how you behave within your life.

It's not just about learning, it is about living.

Now you say, well, I believe in Jesus, that's great,

that's the beginning of wisdom.

But we would also like you to live for Jesus.

And we would also like you to live like Jesus, if possible.

And so wisdom is about applying God's Word to your situation and circumstances within your life.

Now, if you want to grow in wisdom, I encourage you to take God's Word and ask the Holy Spirit

to give you wisdom to personally apply it to your life in whatever decisions that you're trying to make.

And so if you're a husband, the Bible says that you are to love your wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her.

And so you can study how did Jesus love the church and how does Jesus give himself for her?

And that's good. They'll gain a lot of wisdom through that.

But also you can pray, Holy Spirit.

Would you give me wisdom to know how to love my wife well based upon who I am and who she is?

We all need the wisdom of God.

Let's begin looking in Ecclesiastes chapter 9 beginning in verse 11.

Ecclesiastes 9 · chapter mention

Solomon says,

For man also does not know his time.

Like a fish taken in a cruel net, like birds caught in a snare,

so the sons of men are snared in an evil time when it falls suddenly upon them.

Now remember, in this passage, Solomon is dealing with the exceptions of life.

And several times within this passage, he's going to say that wisdom is better than foolishness,

that there's an advantage to wisdom within your life, even though there's exceptions that play

themselves out within life. And so overall, I think the point that Solomon is making is that

exceptions don't make good rules. But you know, the fool always thinks they're the exception,

don't they?

In other words, good decisions can have bad outcomes

in a broken world, but it's still good to be wise

and to act wisely within your life.

Now, I think there's another principle we see

in this passage that Solomon keeps pointing at,

and that is that wisdom is not about controlling outcomes,

it is about being surrendered to God.

The fool says, well, I need to make success happen.

I'm in control of my destiny.

I'm in control of my life.

But the wise says, I need to find and follow God's plan and purpose for my life.

Wisdom surrenders to God's will, even when the outcome is not what I want it.

And so here's how you know that you are becoming a wise person.

You love God more than you love your plans.

You want what God wants more than you want what you want.

You see, the fool is always trying to control outcomes.

Of course, they're always frustrated because you and I don't always control the outcomes of life and all that happens.

But the fool is always trying to control the outcomes because he is leaning on his own understanding.

But the wise person surrenders to God's direction within their life because they trust the Lord with all of their heart.

Notice what he says in verse number 13.

He says,

Words of the wise spoken quietly should be heard rather than the shout of a ruler of fools.

Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good.

Solomon gives us a parable or illustration, and he says wisdom often goes unnoticed within life,

but he says it still can save you from a lot of pain if you follow it.

You see, wisdom is very controversial when taught, but very compelling when lived.

If you share your wisdom, then you will be despised.

Because Solomon says the fool doesn't want to listen and they don't want to learn.

But when you start living wisdom, God's wisdom out within your life, then something happens.

It becomes compelling and magnetic within the life of other people.

You see, Christianity becomes real to others as we live it out in our everyday lives.

People have to see wisdom in order to get it.

They have to see it lived out in order to want it within their life.

Now notice what Solomon says in chapter 10 in verse 1.

He says, dead flies putrefy the performer's ointment and cause it to give off a foul odor.

So does a little folly to one respected for wisdom and honor.

Now, he gives us a proverb, and it's kind of like our modern proverb, one bad apple spoils the whole bunch.

He says just one fly or a few flies in the perfume can spoil the whole thing.

And so here's the application, or one application.

One bad decision can undo a lot of good decisions within your life.

After my wife and I got married, we moved to another city and I was going to school.

After church on Sunday evenings, we would try different places to eat to try to find the best places to go.

One evening, we went with some friends to a burger joint.

And I was so hungry, it was later than I was used to eating, and so I ordered two big old

cheeseburgers, and I couldn't wait for them to get there. And so they got there, and I don't

always do this, but for some reason I kind of opened the bun up to look at all that was in

the burger since it was my first time, and there was a big hair right there on my burger. I'm

And I thought, I don't know if I can work around this,

you know?

But I thought, you know,

I'm glad I ordered two big cheeseburgers

because I'm really hungry.

But there was something in me that said,

maybe I should look in the next one.

And so I opened it up and I kid you not,

there was another hair in that burger.

And I thought, well, I'm hungry.

but I'm not that hungry.

Those hairs kind of spoiled the whole thing for me.

And so I was like, what is going on, you know?

And at that point, I wasn't going to order another cheeseburger.

I didn't trust anything.

And so as we were leaving, there was a window,

and you could see into where they were cooking.

And there was a guy cooking there, and it was kind of hot,

and he was sweating, and he had a tank top on,

and he was flipping the burgers.

And then he took the spatula and went like this and would work.

Suddenly I knew what was happening.

But those hairs ruined the whole experience for me.

And Solomon is saying that we foolishly think that we can let just a little bit of sin and foolishness into our lives and into our relationships and it not spoil anything.

Solomon said that just a little bit of sin and foolishness within your life is like a hair on your burger.

It's like a fly in your perfume.

It spoils the whole thing.

And what Solomon is saying is that small sins

can have big consequences within your life.

So choose wisdom.

Notice what he says in verse two.

He says, a wise man's heart is at his right hand,

but a fool's heart at his left.

You see, foolishness and wisdom start in the heart

is what Solomon is saying.

Even when a fool walks along the way, he lacks wisdom, and he shows everyone that he is a fool.

See, there's some foolishness in our life that everyone can see but us.

The fool's going along and he's not recognizing that he's acting foolishly,

and yet everybody can see that he's being a fool.

And there's some things in our life that everyone else might be able to see except for us.

We call those blind spots.

And the truth is we all have them.

You see, you cannot see yourself by yourself.

That is why you need other people in your life.

that can speak into your life.

Now, one of the aspects of good comedy

is that someone never learns a lesson.

I mean, think about your favorite comedy.

It's funny because no one ever learns a lesson,

even though it's painfully obvious.

Now maybe by the end they do,

but that's when the movie stops being funny

and it just is like, ah, that's nice.

They finally learned their lesson.

Now it's funny when you're watching a dumb character on TV

who can never learn a lesson,

but it's extremely painful when you are the one

who can't learn a lesson in real life.

You see, life is too short,

and too painful for you to learn everything from personal experience.

Let other people pay the dumb tax for you.

Learn from their pain, not from your own.

You see, in Ecclesiastes, Solomon is telling us every dumb thing that he has done.

He said, I lived for lust, and I lived for money, and I lived for work, and achievement, and popularity,

and I lived for all these things, but they left me empty inside,

and they had consequences within my life and my relationship with God.

And he tells us all the dumb things he's done and all the pain that it caused within his life.

Why? So that we can learn from his failure and his pain instead of our own.

You see, other people are not nearly as committed to our false self-narratives as we are.

And so we grow in wisdom by giving others permission to speak into our life

and to have courageous conversations with us.

One of the only ways to grow within your life is to have courage.

is giving godly people the opportunity to have hard conversations with you.

Notice what he says in verse 4.

He says,

If the spirit of the ruler rises against you, do not leave your post,

for conciliation pacifies great offenses.

Wisdom seeks to resolve conflict without overreacting or withdrawing.

Now, one of the areas in which we often make poor decisions

is in the area of conflict.

When there's a conflict, our emotions become elevated.

And we sometimes can become defensive.

In fact, studies have shown that

when your emotions are elevated,

whether it's good emotion or bad emotion,

it kind of shuts down the prefrontal cortex of your brain,

the cognitive center of your brain,

and it causes us to not think as clearly within our life.

And so sometimes when there's conflict,

that's when we make the worst decisions within our life.

When there's conflict,

Our instinct is fight or flight.

And Solomon says usually neither is helpful in resolving conflict.

The problem is when we are offended, we often start filtering everything through the lens of that offense.

And that causes us to overreact to the situation

or whatever it is that's going on.

And instead, Solomon says,

when there is a conflict within your life,

keep your composure and stay calm.

Don't fight and make it worse.

Don't run away and withdraw.

That's just telling someone, well, you're not worth the effort.

And rulers don't really take to that very well, is what Solomon says.

Instead, seek conciliation, which means to gently pursue peace with the one that you have offended.

Notice what he says in verse 5.

He says,

There is an evil I have seen under the sun, as an heir proceeding from the ruler.

Folly is set in great dignity, while the rich sit in a lowly place.

I have seen servants on horses, while princes walk on the ground like servants.

Solomon says, sometimes those who are the least qualified

and those who are foolish are the ones that get ahead.

But he says, everybody knows it stinks.

Everybody knows that in a broken world,

there's corruption and there's cronyism.

And sometimes the fool gets ahead

and the wise person doesn't.

But I wanna encourage you

Not to abandon God's wisdom because of the foolishness of others.

That's a fallacy that we often make.

To say, well, that pastor or that Christian was a fool.

And he didn't follow the Lord, so I'm not going to follow the Lord either.

I'm going to be a fool just like him.

Don't do that. Don't allow the foolishness of others to cause you to make foolish decisions

and to go your own way instead of going God's way.

Here's the principle. Bad decisions can lead to good outcomes, but they're still bad.

Now, earlier he said that good decisions can lead to bad outcomes, but

But they're still good. But here he says bad decisions can lead to good outcomes, but they're still bad.

You know, a fool drives home drunk and says it was a good decision because no one got hurt.

No.

It was a stupid decision that happened to not kill you or anyone else this time.

It was still a bad decision, even though this time it happened to be a good outcome.

We need to be quick to admit mistakes that we have made, even when the outcome is good.

even when it doesn't result in a bad outcome,

even if we get the job or we get ahead,

doesn't mean that we're making good decisions.

It just means that sometimes the world doesn't work out

the way that it's supposed to work.

You see, outcomes are a matter of skill and chance.

Have you ever noticed that

that when you are playing a game, when you win, it's skill,

and when someone else wins, it's luck?

I don't know if you've ever had that cognitive fallacy within your life,

but sometimes we're tempted to say, well, it was a good outcome,

so I must have made a good decision.

No, not always in a fallen world.

Sometimes chance...

Ended in a good outcome, but it was still a foolish decision.

And so we need to be careful not to evaluate our decisions simply by the outcomes of our decisions,

but by the quality of the decision itself.

Was that decision based upon God's nature and God's word?

Was that decision driven and compelled by love or selfishness?

Otherwise, we'll be like the drunk driver who thinks they're an exception of the rule until they realize they're not.

And we'll keep making the same bad decisions in life.

Notice what Solomon says in verse number 8.

It says,

It says,

Solomon says there is no risk-free way to live your life.

And when we start thinking in terms of absolute certainty,

we end up making poor decisions within our life.

Wisdom does not eliminate risk,

but Solomon says it does prepare for the future.

You see, wisdom anticipates and prepares for the future.

My dad used to say, let's work smarter, not harder.

And then we just kept working hard, and I never really understood it.

But what he meant, let's be smart about it, and we'll get done sooner.

We'll get it done more efficiently and more effectively.

And Solomon is saying, look, if you want to cut down trees, then you need to start sharpening your axe.

In other words, you need a plan and a path for your future.

You need to prepare yourself.

for what it is that is coming within your life.

Now, in the Bible, wisdom is often described as a path.

And the path that you are on determines the type of person you're becoming.

You see, you are always becoming something

based upon the path and the decisions that you're making in the present.

And so you need to make sure that you're on the right path.

That's why wisdom is described often as a path.

Only the path of purity leads to intimacy.

Only the path of generosity leads to you owning stuff

and stuff not owning you.

Only the path of honesty and vulnerability

leads to deep relationships within your life.

And so the question becomes,

what kind of person do you want to be

Do you want to be a person of integrity?

Do you want to be a person of purity

and humility within your life?

Wisdom is getting your path to match your plan.

And a lot of times we have a plan

to become a certain type of person,

but we're not on the right path

in order to become that person.

Wisdom is connecting our path to our plan.

And so if you want to be a good steward,

of the financial resources that God has given you,

then you need to get on the right financial path.

You need to get on the path of integrity

and honesty and hard work and wise investments.

If you want to be a spiritual person,

if that's the type of person you wanna be,

you need to get on the path to spiritual maturity.

You need to spend a lot of time with God

in His Word and in prayer.

You need to spend a lot of time with God's people

and allow them to speak into your life

and to see and to say God's grace within your life.

Solomon is saying over and over

that wisdom does not always work out in the short run,

but it works out in the long run.

There are times in the short run

where things don't seem to work out.

where there's exceptions and there's obstacles

and there's things that happen

that maybe don't always look ideal.

But he says in the long run, if you will follow the Lord

and you will stay on the path of wisdom,

he says it'll pay off.

It's kind of like making a good investment.

In the short term, it may go down,

but in the long term,

it compounds over time.

And Solomon is saying, if you choose to walk in God's wisdom,

you may fall off the path, you may face obstacles along the way,

but the benefits of wisdom compound over time within your life.

There's another point of application that I want to make this morning,

and that is that wisdom goes from the general to the personal.

Wisdom and the wise go from people are sinners to I am a sinner.

The wise goes from Christ died for sinners to Christ died for me.

When we're wise, we go from people need to repent to I need to repent.

You know, there's a difference between reformation and renewal.

Reformation is, I want to get the gospel right.

Renewal is, I want it to be real in my heart.

And when the doctrines of sin and grace become real within your heart and within your life,

then you can name the sins that you struggled with this week.

And you know that you need the grace of God.

every moment of your life, in every situation of your life,

and you know that others need the grace of God

in their life as well.

Now, when I am honest with myself,

and sometimes that's hard to do

because we are prone towards self-deception, aren't we?

I tell my kids, nobody lies to you more than you lie to you.

And so you've got to deal with that.

before you can really deal with anything within life,

you've got to face the enemy within your own life

and within your own heart and within your own mind

and within your own decisions

before you can go out there and face the enemy in the world.

You've got to fight all that.

But when I am honest with myself,

I have some wisdom in my life,

but I also have some foolishness.

in my heart, and in my life as well.

You see, the gospel and its wisdom need to move deeper into our hearts.

We may know the answers in our head, but we need those answers to penetrate our heart and transform our heart so that we have the heart of Christ and we have God's heart and out of

God's heart and the Holy Spirit working in our life flows the decisions of our life,

the priorities of our life, the values of our life, what we love and what we hate,

what we want and how we live.

And when you come to Christ, your life becomes connected to God.

And now through the Holy Spirit in your life,

there is power to say no to sin and foolishness and to say yes to God.

But we need to pursue Christ every day, every moment,

because the Bible says in him are the treasures, all the treasures of wisdom.

If you want to become a wise person, then you need to let Christ rule and reign within your heart,

within your life, within your relationships. If there is an area of your life that lacks wisdom

and you've been living out foolishness and it's resulted in pain within your life,

what you need to do is to allow Christ through the Holy Spirit to rule and to reign over that

area of your

life. And so if Jesus came to you right now and he put his hand on your shoulder

and he said to you, you are not walking in line with my wisdom,

where in your life would he most likely be talking about?

You see, whatever is on your mind right now may be exactly what the Holy Spirit is trying to grab a hold of you about.

Now, the Bible says that the beginning of wisdom is to recognize your sin and your need for God's grace.

You see, it's all about the grace of God.

And the grace of God flows from the cross of Christ.

Jesus has paid for our sin on the cross.

He has risen from the dead.

He has defeated sin and death and Satan.

And the only way to experience the grace of God

within your life is to come to the Son of God,

the Lord Jesus Christ,

and ask Him to be your Savior and your Lord.

That is when wisdom begins,

and that's when you get on the path.

of God's wisdom.

Because the truth is, you and I are not good enough.

We are not wise enough.

We are not strong enough to save ourselves.

We need the grace of God.

Not only do we need God's grace to be saved,

we need God's grace to

to walk and to live in His wisdom.

Let's bow our heads and prepare our hearts

for what God wants to do in our life.

Here in a few moments,

we're gonna have a time of invitation

and this really is a time for us

to respond to the word of God

and the spirit of God within our life.

And I wanna challenge you not to say,

wow, that's a great sermon for other people.

I really hope so and so was listening to that.

I really hope people apply that to their life.

I wanna challenge you to go from the general to the personal

What does the Holy Spirit want to do in your heart and your life today?

What area of your life is there that you are not walking in line with the gospel and the wisdom of God?

Stop saying other people are sinners

and start saying I'm a sinner.

Stop saying other people need to repent

and start saying I need to repent.

Stop saying other people need wisdom and need Christ

and start saying I need God's wisdom

and I need Christ in my life right now.

And so we're going to have a time

where we worship and we pray

and we seek God's face.

I want to encourage you, if you have never given your life to Christ, to do that this morning.

There will be those standing here at the front.

Come forward and say, I want to give my life to Christ.

We'd love to talk to you and pray with you and help you understand what that means.

Maybe you say, I want to be baptized.

I want to go public with my faith through believers' baptism.

We can set up a time for you to do that.

Maybe the Lord's leading you to join this church and say,

I need other people in my life that love Jesus and love me

and can speak truth and grace into my life.

But maybe this morning,

there's some area of your life,

it doesn't matter how big or small,

God's big enough to take care of it

and he's loving enough to care about it.

Maybe there's some area of your life that you would say,

you know what, this is an area

that is not yet fully surrendered

to the Lordship of God.

Maybe there's some foolishness

and you would say, you know what,

this is a point of pain and pressure in my life

and maybe for years, maybe for decades,

you say, I know there's some foolishness there,

but I don't know how to identify it

and I don't know where to go from here.

Would you just bring that to the Lord in prayer?

And just ask God, ask the Holy Spirit to give you wisdom

of how to apply His word to that situation

to those decisions, to that area of your life,

this is a time for us to seek the Lord.

Maybe you'd like to come forward.

We're going to have counselors and prayer partners here.

And you would just like to ask someone to pray over you.

Pray that God would do a great work in your life and a great work in your heart.

Doesn't matter how big it is, how small it is.

God loves to answer those prayers.

And there's power through prayer.

I want to encourage you to come.

Our Heavenly Father, thank you for your word.

Thank you for your wisdom.

Give us the grace and the wisdom to apply it to our lives.

Lord, if there's anyone here that doesn't know Christ

as Lord and Savior, I pray that you would just

open their heart and draw them to you.

They would see the beauty and the love of your grace

this morning and they would desire it.

Lord, that they would long for it.

And that you would just pull them and draw them

to yourself this morning.

Lord, all of us need you.

So draw our hearts to you, Lord.

May our hearts be open.

Lord, help your wisdom and your word

to go from the general to the personal

in each one of our lives, Lord.

There's some foolishness in each one of us that you want to transform and you want to change.

And I pray, Lord, that we would just surrender and allow the Holy Spirit to change and transform our heart.

And out of that would flow wisdom and grace.

So, Lord, bless this invitation.

Help us to seek you with all our heart.

Help us to trust you with all of our heart.

Help us to follow you with all of our heart.

Amen.

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