Talk is Cheap
The Search for Meaning, Part 7 — Ecclesiastes 5:1-7
Stonebrook Sunday AM, 10/12/25, Matt Heerema
Please turn with me to Ecclesiastes, chapter 5.
There are a few well-known phrases in our culture that are easy to point out in others, and difficult to see in ourselves. “Actions speak louder than words,” and “Talk is cheap.” That’s what our passage is about today. When it comes to our spirituality and religion, Solomon says, talk is cheap.
Ecclesiastes 5:1–7 (CSB)
1 Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. Better to approach in obedience than to offer the sacrifice as fools do, for they ignorantly do wrong. 2 Do not be hasty to speak, and do not be impulsive to make a speech before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few.3 Just as dreams accompany much labor, so also a fool’s voice comes with many words. 4 When you make a vow to God, don’t delay fulfilling it, because he does not delight in fools. Fulfill what you vow. 5 Better that you do not vow than that you vow and not fulfill it. 6 Do not let your mouth bring guilt on you, and do not say in the presence of the messenger that it was a mistake. Why should God be angry with your words and destroy the work of your hands? 7 For many dreams bring futility; so do many words. Therefore, fear God.
The basic idea in our passage today is that the Teacher is telling us that we should “Guard our steps” (literally: “watch your step”) when you go to worship God, because “God is in heaven and you are on earth” (meaning he has perfect perspective over all things, including what’s going on in your heart and life— and you don’t), so therefore we should “fear God” and “let our words be few”.
As we walk through what this means for our lives this morning, we are going to study 1) The Teacher’s observations, we’re going to see how those relate to 2) The Prophets’ declarations, and then we’re going to hear 3) Jesus’s Invitation to us, which removes all fear and lets us come to worship with confidence.
The Teacher’s Observations
Solomon makes two observations: there are many people who claim to worship the One True God and say all kinds of spiritual-sounding things, but they don’t mean it.
In other words, there are many religious hypocrites. And second, he observes that God is after your heart, not your words.
Religious hypocrisy
Solomon warns us that we should “watch our step” when we go to worship God. In his day, this would have been about going to the temple in Jerusalem. In our day, the parallel would be going to church, and perhaps these warnings have special relevance at Christian concerts, conferences, and other gatherings where people claim to be doing things in Jesus’ name.
He is trying to help us grow in wisdom by warning us that there tend to be religious hypocrites in these places. And he’s also warning us to watch our step, lest we be one of them.
In this specific case, the hypocrite is someone who doesn’t realize Solomon’s second observation:
God is after your heart, not your words.
And he talks about two different categories: God is after your heart, not speeches (verse 2), or fancy religious vows (verse 4).
Speeches
The kind of speeches he is concerned with are declarations about your spirituality or your religiosity that don’t match your life. Think for a second about the kind of speeches people might make to try to sound more religious or more spiritual than they really are.
Trying to sound smart, spiritual, and deep in Bible study or community group. It’s possible to know a lot of theological facts or Bible trivia and spend a lot of time on these things as a screen or a distraction to avoid discussing what’s really going on in your world. Maybe the “speech” is sharing a minor struggle in your life, issues at work or in school, which lets it sound like you are being vulnerable, but lets you hide your actual, bigger, deeper issue struggles.
“Speeches” can take the form of making a good show of singing the songs really loudly. Amen’ing at just the right time. Smiling big and shaking hands and saying trite spiritual phrases when greeting people in the lobby when your home life is indistinguishable from those who do not know Christ.
Maybe its your social media bio, where you put a verse and “follower of Jesus!” Or the bumper sticker you have on your car.Posting photos of your bible and nature with #blessed, to show your great devotional time, but not actually following through on reading it.
God is after your heart, not your speeches or your vows. Yes, when your heart belongs to God, it will affect the way you speak. Which is why it is possible to hide behind speeches, saying all the right things can make you look like God has your heart. The question is does he? Solomon is helping us learn wisdom that some people are being insincere.
Vows
Vows are promises to God, made in front of people, that you don’t intend to keep. In those days, religious vows had to do with promising certain sacrificial offerings. Dedicating money or livestock to God, and bringing it to the temple. Vows in our day can take the form of promises like “I’m never going to do that sin again! I know I just fell in this area, but I’m done now, and it will never happen again.” Or declarations of bold activity for God. “I’m turning my life around starting today!” “I’m really going to start digging in to my bible from now on.” “I want to become a pastor or a missionary some day.” “I’m going to plant a church or go on a mission trip.”
The warning in verse 6 against saying “it was a mistake” - can be about excusing ourselves, rather than owning up to the fact that we were lying. We should say “I sinned and need forgiveness” rather than “I made a mistake.”
God is not after your words. He is after your heart. He doesn’t need you to boldly declare what you intend to do. He wants you to be faithful with what He is asking you to do.
Why do we talk so much?
If talk is cheap, why do we spend so much time on it?Why do we do these things? It seems that the problem Solomon is addressing is trying to look good in front of people, or trying to impress God with your statements of intention. Maybe both. In the Ancient Near Eastern pagan culture, and really down through to today, people try to impress God with their words, or their offerings, in order to try and manipulate Him, to win Him over, to get Him to do things for them.
And hey, God can use even those impure motives for His glory!
Martin Luther, who started the Protestant Reformation, famously dedicated his life to becoming a monk after being caught in a lightning storm praying for help!
Because of his Roman Catholic background, he prayed to St. Anne, vowing that if he made it out alive, he’d become a monk.
But God is not after our words. He is in heaven. He has perfect perspective. He has a plan. He has promises. He wants you to follow him. To have your eye on him. Solomon says that we should fear God when approaching him in worship. Sometimes in the Bible, “fear God” means to revere and respect Him. In this case, it is more literal. You should understand that God is in heaven and will judge you based on the thoughts and intentions of your heart. Based on your actual actions and motives, not based on your words.
God already knows your heart. He knows everything that is going on in your soul and life, better than you do. And on one level, that should cause us to tremble, and on another, it is very, very good news, especially to those of you who are afraid you don’t have the right words to bring to God.
You don’t have to get the words right. Your prayers don’t have to be perfect.
Verse one tells us today that if we are truly coming with a humble heart, ready to do what God tells us, our words should be few. We come ready to hear His words. We come ready to listen. Ready to do what he tells us.
This is what God is after. Not your words. Your heart.
The Prophets’ Declarations
Solomon is observing something in God’s people that the biblical prophets would later go on to declare is the major problem: lip-service worship.
Isaiah 29:13 (CSB)
The Lord said: These people approach me with their speeches to honor me with lip-service, yet their hearts are far from me, and human rules direct their worship of me.
In the Old Covenant, the Old Testament, God designed a system of worship and sacrifices meant to draw His people’s attention to Himself. So that they would trust Him, know Him, worship Him, and understand His nature and character, and understand who they were by contrast: sinful and in need of rescue.But God’s people instead started making up their own rules.
The prophet Micah characterizes the people’s desire to make vows and offerings to impress God.
Micah 6:6–7 (CSB)
6 What should I bring before the Lord when I come to bow before God on high? Should I come before him with burnt offerings, with year-old calves? 7 Would the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams or with ten thousand streams of oil? Should I give my firstborn for my transgression, the offspring of my body for my own sin?
These offerings sound impressive, right? Surely God will pay attention to these? But these were not the sacrifices prescribed by God. They were vows meant to impress him, but Micah goes on to say they were not paying attention to God and the things He actually values.
God speaks through the prophet Hosea:
Hosea 6:6 (CSB)
For I desire faithful love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.
God wants his people to love Him and know Him. He wants their hearts, not their words!
We are so prone to try to ignore God and His way for us, and instead find our own ways to try and impress Him, or even just impress people. Sometimes, that’s all the farther our religious-ness goes for us, just trying to impress people! I worry about that a bit any time there’s people doing religious things on camera and on a big stage for a big audience!
God is after our hearts, not our religious performance. And our heart is the problem. Our sinful pride, our forgetfulness of God and His way, runs so deep that it infects everything we do. The prophet Isaiah says that this is the case to such a degree that even when we do manage to do the right thing, it is infected with our sin:
Isaiah 64:5–6 (CSB)
5 You welcome the one who joyfully does what is right; they remember you in your ways. But we have sinned, and you were angry. How can we be saved if we remain in our sins? 6 All of us have become like something unclean, and all our righteous acts are like a polluted garment; all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities carry us away like the wind.
We cannot impress God. Our hearts are too broken.
And this is good news if you’ll let it be.
Our standing before a righteous and holy God, who every single one of us in this room has failed, has nothing to do with our great speeches or our impressive vows.
Our standing before a righteous and holy God has to do with trusting Jesus.
Jesus’s Invitation
Because Jesus lived a perfect life, perfectly following God’s commands, no lofty vows, no insincere speeches, just plain statements of the truth. All his words were God’s words. He is God’s word.
Because Jesus gave the perfect sacrifice, not bulls and rams and oil that could not pay for sin, but of himself, we can be forgiven.
We do not need to impress God with our words and our sacrifices; He is already pleased with His Son, Jesus. Jesus’s invitation is “I have already paid your way. Your vows and sacrifices are no longer needed. Your money is no good here. Trust me.”
The author of Hebrews put it this way:
Hebrews 10:19-25
19 Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have boldness to enter the sanctuary through the blood of Jesus—20 he has inaugurated for us a new and living way through the curtain (that is, through his flesh)—21 and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed in pure water. 23 Let us hold on to the confession of our hope without wavering, since he who promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider one another in order to provoke love and good works, 25 not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day approaching.
What this means is that, because of Jesus, we now go to worship, not to try to appease God to let us draw near, but we draw near already confident that God is appeased.
The kind of worship we offer now is praise for what has been accomplished, and the words we use remind one another of our forgiveness and encourage us in our love for each other. Deeds, not words.
God is after your heart, not your words. Let Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection capture your heart. Offer it to Him freshly this week.
Let’s pray.
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