Dead flies make the perfumer’s ointment give off a stench, so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor.
– Ecclesiastes 10:1
That’s a potent picture. Ecclesiastes 10:1, talks about dead flies, making a perfumer’s ointment smell horrible. Who wants to put on perfume that’s been infested with dead flies? Who wants to put on their bodies a stench of dead flies? Nobody wants that. Just picture the nicest, most expensive, extravagant, beautiful-smelling perfume. And then put a couple of dead flies in it and give it a little time, and it’s totally ruined.
Ecclesiastes 10:1 warns us against foolishness.
And that’s the picture God gives us of a little bit of folly. Just a little folly, Ecclesiastes 10:1 says, “outweighs wisdom and honor.” Wow, what a picture. Doesn’t this make you want to avoid any folly, no matter how little it might be? Any foolishness, to avoid any foolish thought, foolish desire, any foolish or flippant word we might say or thing we might do. This verse just leads me to want to pray. Well, let’s pray according to it.
God, guard our thoughts and our desires and our words and our actions to avoid all folly. We pray. God, help us to avoid all folly in our lives today, all foolishness. Help us to speak only that which is wise, to think in ways only that are wise, to desire things that are wise and good. And God, help us to live wisely today. Guard us, keep us in every way from folly.
Ecclesiastes 10:1 encourages us to think and live wisely.
And God, we pray this for the people around us, for friends, for family members, we pray that you would guard them from folly. Even a little bit of it, knowing that it outweighs wisdom and honor, that it takes the beauty of wisdom and honor. And like a fly ruining the stench of perfume, folly ruins, and overwhelms wisdom and honor. Oh God, by your Spirit, guard us, we pray today, and help us to think, desire, speak, and live wisely. We need your Spirit, oh God, to help us do this. We pray for your Spirit of wisdom, to empower us to live with wisdom and honor in every way today.
And Jesus, we praise you for making this possible for us. We praise you that not one time did you do anything foolish. There has never been even a little folly in you. All glory be to your name. So help us to live fully in you.
Prayer for the Hakka Chinese People
And God we pray you help us to spread the good news of who you are, Jesus, your sinless life and your sacrificial death, and your resurrection from the grave. Help us to spread the wisdom of the cross through our lives today and to all the peoples of the world.
God, we pray for the Hakka Chinese people… 44 million of them total, four million of them who live in Taiwan, who don’t have knowledge of your love in Jesus, of the wisdom of the cross, of your death there for us in resurrection from the grave, God, we pray that the gospel would spread of the Hakka Chinese people. And God, we pray that your wisdom would be evident in our lives today by the power of your Spirit in us. Guard us from even the smallest amount of folly we pray in Jesus name. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
