After The Message • Ecclesiastes - Week 7 • February 15th, 2026

This week, we dig into Pastor Josh's sermon on Ecclesiastes 7, where Solomon lays out a surprising curriculum for learning wisdom — and the classroom isn't where you'd expect. We talk about why Solomon says dying, mourning, crying, and rebuke are better teachers than their opposites, and what that means for people who are wired to chase the good vibes and avoid the hard stuff.

 

From there, we unpack Solomon's warning about anger and nostalgia — two things we don't usually put together but that are referred to as the fuel of a fool's fire. We explore how both are really attempts to control a life that isn't ours to control, and why our smoky existence often has more to do with how we respond to the world than what the world does to us.

 

We spend time on one of the sermon's most challenging ideas: that God entrusts us with hard days just like He entrusts us with good ones, and what it actually looks like to trust His sovereignty when you can't understand it. That leads us into the passage's most surprising warning — "be not overly righteous" — and an honest conversation about the checklist trap, where good spiritual habits become tools for trying to earn God's favor instead of resting in it.

 

We close with the New Testament connection from Ephesians 5, and what it means to live from love rather than for love — that obedience flows from being loved by God, not from trying to get Him to love us more.