“Never be rash with your mouth nor let your heart be quick to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you upon earth; therefore, let your words be few.”  – Ecclesiastes 5:2

Here is a slightly edited manuscript of the sermon I preached on Sunday, May 26 at Unity Reformed Church from Ecclesiastes 5:1-7. If you’d prefer to listen to the message instead, you can find an audio recording here: https://www.unityref.com/downloads

Fluffy Faith – Ecclesiastes 5:1-7

Back when I was in Bible college, I was given the opportunity to be the teacher’s assistant to my Old Testament professor. This meant that I had the chance teach some lower-level seminars a few times a semester. And that was always a lot of fun. But, the bulk of the work that I did as a T.A was not fun. I graded a lot of papers. And I’m sure the grading work that I did as a T.A pales in comparison to those of you who have been High School or Middle School teachers here, but I can remember a lot of late nights trying to grade 50 or so essays and just struggling to not lose my mind. 

This wasn’t because the essay topics were boring. No, and especially when it came to freshman classes, it was a struggle because these papers were always filled to the brim with fluff.

Maybe you know what I mean. Maybe you can think back to your days of doing homework when you were in school. But there is a particular way of writing that focuses a lot more on meeting word count or length requirements instead of content or clarity.

A student might raise the font size one or two clicks so that their words are slightly bigger, or add an extra space after each word so that less is required within each line. A student might include unnecessary and long quotes in order to eat up paragraph space. They might use flowery language or overly complicated vocabulary that doesn’t quite fit but definitely proves that they own a thesaurus.

A student might even go on tangents that are irrelevant to the essay. For example, if the topic was on the structure of the book Song of Solomon, I could count on at least one or two people telling me what songs they were currently listening to on the radio somewhere in their paper. 

There was just so much fluff!

They were writing a bunch of words but they weren’t committing to actually understanding the subject they were writing about. They were saying a lot of stuff but at the same time saying absolutely nothing. 

Yet, this is not just a college essay issue. The author of Ecclesiastes called out this same type of problem within the language that the Israelites were using in their times of worship about 3000 years ago. And I think that the words we use when we talk about God still matter, even today.

So, here’s what we’re going to do. Let’s consider how Ecclesiastes 5 might help us trim the fluff out of our faith by way of the two movements in our morning’s text. We will initially talk about what these movements would have meant to the ancient Israelites who first heard them. We will then talk a bit about what they might mean for us here and now.

Think Before You Speak – Ecclesiastes 5:1-3

Along with Proverbs, Job, and Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes is one of the books of wisdom that can be found in our Old Testaments.

A lot of people attribute it to King Solomon, David’s son. And within this book, Solomon, or the Teacher, writes out a description of life in the world as he’s come to understand it. That is, life doesn’t always work in a way that we’d deem fair. Creation has been marred by sin and is fallen. Because of this, those who do right are sometimes rewarded with difficulty and pain but those who do evil are sometimes rewarded with wealth and power. Injustice abounds. But more, chasing after power, prestige, and material possessions is pointless too as such things are ultimately like vapor. They’re here for just a short meaningless moment and then they’re gone.

Ecclesiastes is a great book to read if you’d like to be put into a bad mood. But it isn’t all depressing!

There are a few instances within the book that the Teacher breaks his descriptions in order to give advice to the listener. Sometimes that advice is indirect and sort of serves as a warning to not do something Solomon has already experienced and had regrets about. Sometimes, however, it’s a lot more pointed.

In fact, chapter 5 verse 1 is the very first time that the author gives any sort of direct command: “Guard your steps when you go into the house of God.”

The Israelites needed to be careful when they entered into the LORD’s Temple.

And it wasn’t because there were lots of physical tripping hazards that they needed to be conscious of, or poles they could run into if they were looking at their phones while walking. No, there were dangers in coming before God in halfhearted ways. God’s people needed to be aware of the magnitude of the moment, as well as the privilege they had been granted in having access to a space in which the LORD inhabited.

To make light or to trivialize such a reality was to make light of God Himself.

The next few verses go on to give examples of how an Israelite might make light of their worship in the Lord’s house. First, the Teacher warns that his readers should not be like the fools who come to sacrifice yet have also normalized sinful practices in other areas of their lives. It is better for someone to just come and only listen than to take actions that are hypocritical or come from a place of peer pressure or habit.

And to me at least, this calls to mind the prophet Isaiah’s oracle concerning Temple practices a few generations later.

As God declares in Isaiah 1:

“When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more! Bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me…When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.”

Sacrifices offered by those who are committed to sin are pointless. Religious action that isn’t coupled with compassion or a contrite heart is offensive to God.

The second warning the Teacher gives in this movement builds upon the first one. Worshippers should not be rash with their mouths or quick to utter words before the Lord. They should truly know what they are talking about before they speak. And that’s because one might express resentment, or speak wrongly about a sister or brother in prayer without meaning to. One might use elaborate phrases in order to make themselves look impressive instead of the God they’re praying to. One might even hide behind religious jargon in order to trick those around them into thinking they have it all together or are closer to God than they actually are.

To call upon another Old Testament prophet, think about what Jeremiah says to the false prophets of Judah in Jeremiah 7:3-8.

He states:

“This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Reform your ways and your actions, and I will let you live in this place. Do not trust in deceptive words and say, “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord!” If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your ancestors for ever and ever. But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless.”

In Jeremiah’s day, God’s people had fallen into the trap of worshipping the Lord in only superficial ways and weren’t heeding the prophet’s cries of imminent disaster. And furthermore, false Judean prophets had risen up to make counter claims.

According to these false prophets, no harm would come to Israel because they worshipped within the Temple of the Lord. Surely God would protect his own! Surely God would secure his Temple for generations! There even was an often-repeated slogan used to reassure people about this supposed fact.

And, of course, there was a kernel of truth in what these false prophets were saying. God did promise national security to Israel. The Lord did miraculously save Jerusalem from the Assyrian armies not long before Jeremiah’s time. But their promise of safety was contingent upon their faithfulness to God’s law. Their unjust acts towards the marginalized voided such promise.

In the end, this slogan did not do Judah any good. God’s people did not fear the Lord. Babylon came and burned Jerusalem to the ground despite the majority hiding behind nice sounding words which insisted that they wouldn’t.

The author of Ecclesiastes charged his listeners to think before they spoke. He also reminded them that remaining silent is often better than saying or doing something they didn’t mean.

We’d do well to heed his wisdom even today.

If school is the breeding ground for some students to train themselves in fluffy writing, church prayer meetings are that for some believers.

I don’t know if you are like me, but when I am in a group in which we are all expected to pray at some point, I often get very anxious. I feel that other people are going to judge the way that I pray, or think less of me if I don’t have things polished. I’ll even go down a checklist in my mind sometimes: “that person used the phrase ‘hedge of protection’ so that’s now off the table.” Or “I better quickly think of a Bible verse I can quote that’s relevant to what we’re praying about,” or “maybe people will think I’m theologically astute if I say something about God already knowing our requests before we even speak them.”

I get in my head about this stuff. And when I do, I am often tempted to make praying more about people’s perceptions of me instead of about the God in Heaven who I am speaking to.

What a privilege it is that we are able to pray to the Lord of creation anywhere, and that He truly wants us to do so. I don’t think that He cares if our prayers are fancy. Yet I do think He cares when we hide our half-heartedness behind words we are only speaking to impress those around us.

Let me make one more point before we move on to the next movement in our text.

German historian Hannah Arendt, in her book The Life of the Mind wrote this: “Cliches, stock phrases, and adherence to the conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality, that is, against the claim on our thinking-attention that all events and facts make by virtue of their existence.”

Arendt was writing in response to the cliché’s she heard Nazi officials use in order to hide their own consciences from the horrors of their crimes. But her words about stock language, in a more general sense, can be applied to our topic now. Phrases like “too blessed to be stressed,” “let go and let God,” “God said it, I believe it, that settles it” or even “let’s go have an impact for Christ,” all have kernels of truth within them. They are right on some level. But they are fluffy.

Christian clichés and slogans are sometimes helpful, but they can also shield us from speaking the entire truth about ourselves and God. And using them in excess can make us lazy as they have the power to rob us of doing the hard work of genuine reflection. Just like some ancient Israelites were doing, we might be tempted to use words that sound pleasing without really considering their meaning.

It is better to think before we speak.

Do What You Say You’ll Do – Ecclesiastes 5:4-7

When we think of vows today, our first thoughts are often of weddings or work contracts. Yet when people thought of vows in the near Eastern world, their first thoughts were almost always of a religious nature. That is, vows were a very common feature in ancient worship.

If you think back a few months ago to when Pastor Dave first started the 1 Samuel series, you might remember that Hannah made a vow to offer her son in service to God if he granted her a child. Samuel was born. Hannah then returned and gave Samuel to the priest Eli so that he might be raised within the house of the Lord.

But, and in conjunction with this, Hannah brought a bull and a skin of wine in order to make a peace offering to God within the Temple. God had listened and responded to Hannah’s prayers. This sacrifice was a thank you to God as prescribed in Leviticus 7 for all Israelites who made vows.

But, of course, there were many simpler vows made at Temple quite regularly, too.

Someone might offer a tenth of their grain if the LORD brought bounty in their harvests that year. Someone might offer a sum of money if the LORD allowed them safe passage to their ancestral land. Someone might even offer themselves up in service to God for a period of time if God healed them of their sickness. This was a very common practice.

Israelites were not required to make vows. Yet if God granted the request of the person making a vow, it was required to follow through on what was promised.

In fact, vows made in the Temple were monitored. And if the person making a promise didn’t pay what they said they would, a Temple messenger would come and find them in order to remind them of their obligation and to collect what was promised.

This is what Ecclesiastes 5:6 is getting at. The Teacher explains that it is better to not vow at all than to do so and not fulfill it. And more, it is better to not argue with the Temple messenger by claiming that your promise was made in mistake lest the Lord become angry at you and take back what He has blessed you with.

But why was all of this such a big deal? Why did the Temple need religious debt collectors? Why would the Lord be angry if someone didn’t bring in their few heads of grain after promising to do so? It’s not like God actually needed that grain, wine, or those sacrificial bulls, right?

Swearing an oath to God and then retracting what was promised was to make light of the Lord’s holy name. It was an act of dishonor. It was to not believe that the LORD really was who he said he was, or that it was truly the LORD who answered their prayer. It was to say “God, I know you are powerful enough to do this” and then when He does, claim that it was actually accomplished through their own might or luck. It was to think that the word “God” was magical in and of itself without realizing that the God they were invoking in their promise was real.

To not fulfill a vow, in essence, was to take the Lord’s name in vain, a breaking of the third commandment. And it was another way that ancient Israelites were flippant or fluffy with their language.

Just like a student today might use fluff in their essay in order to trick a teacher into thinking that they are competent, Solomon was warning Israel against using God’s name in manipulative ways.

They weren’t to try to trick others in the Temple listening to their vows into thinking that they were more pious than they truly were. And they especially weren’t to attempt to force God into answering a prayer on the basis of a promise that they had no intention of keeping.

No, Israel was to remember Who they were talking to. And they were to fear the LORD, the One who loved them and had made a vow to their ancestor Abraham, the One who had promised them salvation from Egypt and provided through plague and a splitting of the sea. 

God had always kept His promises to them. 

Israel was to do likewise.  

And so are believers today.

I’m sure we all know that it is still a temptation to not follow through on what we say we will or to use God’s name lightly. This just looks a little different now than it did a few thousand years ago.

For example, when we see posts on social media describing a difficult situation that our friends might be experiencing, it so simple for us to type that we will be “praying for them.” And our doing so always comes from a place of good intentions. This is a way for us to show our friends support and to tell them that we’ve heard and seen their struggle. But, deep down, this might also be a way for us to feel good about all the other people who will read our comment too. And I wonder how often our typed-out phrases translate into genuine time on our knees before our Lord.

There might not be Temple police that come and check to see if we are following through on our promises today, but it surely still matters that we do what we say.

I also think that it is still very common for us to use God’s name in manipulative ways.

Here’s a youth ministry example: Sometimes Christian teenagers who are interested in dating other Christian teenagers will use this line: “God told me that you should be my girlfriend.” And as adults, we can see how silly such a thing is. They are clearly trying to use God to get something that they really want.

But it is sort of hard to argue against a “God told me…,” right? 

And language like this doesn’t just show up in the mouths of teenagers, either.

God does direct and guide, we can be confident of that and I had a conversation just this past week with someone who God had clearly directed. But nevertheless, there is something seductive about over spiritualizing something in order to get a desired result while at the same time leaving God out of it in all but name. “God told me that if you give me this amount of money, you will be blessed immeasurably,” or “won’t the Lord be mad at you if you don’t let this go?” or “As your husband, doesn’t the Bible command you to do such and such for me?”

The Teacher in Ecclesiastes would have described all of this as “letting our mouths lead us into sin.”

We could also describe it as spiritual abuse.

When we talk about God, our words truly matter. As believers in Jesus, we are his representatives. That’s why it’s best to think before we speak. That’s why it is important to not take the Lord’s name lightly, or to use it in manipulative ways.

And we should truly do what we say we will do because our God has never broken a promise to us. God has promised us salvation in Jesus. And he made that salvation possible by going to the cross and dying so that we might have life with Him. God promised that He would rise on the third day, and he did so. God promised that He will one day return, and we can be confident that He will keep His word.

So let us keep our word. Let us be rid of all of our fluffiness and speak well when speaking of our Lord and Savior.