How do you make the most of your life? That’s the subject of our passage today. But let’s start with a bit of background.
The book of Ecclesiastes describes one man’s search for meaning in life. Most of the book was written by someone called “The Teacher”. Some kind of wise man with a public ministry in ancient Israel.
How did he get on with his quest for meaning? Pretty well. Look at verses 9 and 10 in our chapter: He pondered and searched out and set in order many proverbs. The Teacher searched to find just the right words, and what he wrote was upright and true.
So what did he discover? What is the meaning of life? Well here’s a summary of what he found. Verse 8: “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Everything is meaningless!”
Well that’s depressing. But that’s exactly right if you leave God out of the picture. Life is utterly meaningless. For most of Ecclesiastes, the Teacher quite deliberately leaves God out. One of his favourite phrases is “under the sun”. He says: Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try. No hell below us, above us only sky. Imagine all the people living for today. Are you picturing that? … Everything is meaningless.
And then in a few points he lets heaven break through. There is a God. Life does have some real meaning.
And one of those passages is chapter 12, that we’re looking at today.
Remember your Creator in the days of your youth
The first verse sums up the chapter: Remember your Creator in the days of your youth.
Chapter 11 ended with an appeal to make the most of your life while you can. Look at chapter 11, verse 9: You who are young, be happy while you are young, and let your heart give you joy in the days of your youth. Follow the ways of your heart and whatever your eyes see.
This is wisdom that many people today would share. While you’re young, life feels like an all-you-can-eat buffet. So tuck in. There are places to go, pleasures to have, experiences to notch up. Seize the day! The time will come when you’re less nimble, less hungry, middle-aged to put it bluntly. Then will come old age. But while you’re young, take life by the horns and go for it.
Fewer people today would share the wisdom of chapter 12, verse 1. Remember your Creator in the days of your youth. All those pleasures come from somewhere, you know. Don’t just enjoy the good things in life. Get to know the God who made them, and do that while you’re young as well.
Why do we need to do this while we’re young? Because the capacity to get to know our maker will also fade when we grow old. What follows is a poetic portrait of old age and death. He paints a number of different pictures.
In verse 2, we get the picture of a persistent rainy day. Remember your Creator, verse 1, before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark, and the clouds return after the rain. You know the kind of day. It rains and rains. But what’s worst is the grey, overcast, dullness. The sun barely shines through. It looks like it’s set in for weeks. The sun will never shine again. This dreariness is here to stay.
Then in verse 3 we get the picture of a large house. Perhaps think of Downton Abbey. It’s a picture of the human body. 4 groups of people in the house are described. I’ll let you work out which parts of the body are being referred to.
First we get the male servants, the keepers of the house, the footmen. They’re trembling. Then we get the men upstairs, usually so strong, the powerhouse of the establishment. But they’re stooping, bent double. Then we get the female servants, whose job would have been to grind grain to make bread for everyone. But there aren’t as many grinders as there used to be. The final group are female, we know that from the wording, so these are the ladies who would normally enjoy the views out of the windows. But it’s all beginning to look dim. The house is going to ruin, bit by bit.
Then in verse 4 we get one of the paradoxes of growing old. You hear less, and yet you’re more easily startled, more restless. The doors to the street, (that’s a pair of doors, a reference to the ears), are closed and the sound of grinding fades; when people rise up at the sound of birds, but all their songs grow faint. The birds wake you up early, even though you can hardly make out their song.
Verse 5 is a little tricky. I think it portrays an elderly person, walking down the street. It’s a slow walk in the final stages of their old age. They’re afraid of heights and of tripping over. The white flowers of the almond tree mimics their hair. A grass hopper with a broken leg drags itself along, copying the way they walk. And then by the time they get to the end of the road, they’re in the grave, and it’s their funeral procession that’s now in the street.
Just listen to verse 5: When people are afraid of heights, and of dangers in the streets; when the almond tree blossoms and the grasshopper drags itself along and desire is no longer stirred. Then people go to their eternal home and mourners go about the streets.
A rainy day. A decaying house. Everything going very quiet. Hobbling nervously along a street.
Then verse 6 brings us to the end. Remember him, before the silver cord is severed, and the golden bowl is broken; before the pitcher is shattered at the spring, and the wheel broken at the well.
Snap. Shatter. Gone. This is death itself.
Life is a precious thing. Like a silver cord. Like a golden bowl. But then is broken.
We live off water, and they used to get water from wells. But if the bucket is shattered, and the pulley wheel is broken, there’s no more water, no more life.
And so the Teacher has taken us poetically through decaying old age to death itself. Many people have spoken to me from experience, and told me that they really don’t recommend getting old. The writer of Ecclesiastes would agree.
And when this all kicks in, you lose your faculty for getting to know the Creator you’ve avoided all your life. Many elderly people have a delightful faith in God. But it’s usually one they’ve nurtured in earlier life. Some, by God’s grace, come to faith in their last years. But that doesn’t negate the Teacher’s advice: Get to know your maker before the day comes when you wake up and find you haven’t got the energy to do so.
Remember your creator in the days of your youth.
Questions
Saying that raises a number of questions in our minds.
Firstly, what does he mean? How do we remember our creator? What does it mean to know God?
But secondly, why does it matter? We understand his point: Getting acquainted with God is a limited-time offer. But I get all manner of flyers through my front door offering me this that and the other — provided I phone up by next Tuesday. They’re all rubbish. It’s all very well to say that I only have so long to get to know God. But what if I don’t? What if I reach the end of my life and never knew God? Does it really matter?
To answer those questions, we must turn to the final two verses of the book.
He tells us what it means to know God. Two things. And he’ll tell us why it matters. Two things.
So first, then what does it mean to know God? Two things
Fear God
First, fear God. Fear God.
Which doesn’t mean be afraid of him. It doesn’t mean to be frightened. It means to respect him. To care deeply about what God thinks, how he feels. For that to mean more to you than anything else.
Which means it’s almost the same thing as saying we should love God. We should prize, value, respect, cherish him. It’s to remember that he is God and we are not.
Fear God.
Keep God’s Commandments
And the second thing it means is to keep his commandments. Keep God’s commandments.
Verse 13: Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments.
God is not a silent God. He is there, and he is not silent. God has spoken, and he still speaks what he spoke. Supremely, of course, God spoke in the person of his Son, the Lord Jesus, his living word. You can't be a Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ, and not believe in a God who speaks, since Jesus is his speech.
If we’re going to remember God, fear him, love him, we’ll live in the light of what he’s said. We’ll read our Bibles, we’ll trust his promises, we’ll obey his commands.
That’s what it mean to remember our creator in the days of our youth. To let what God has said shape your whole life.
But why? Why does it matter that we do this? Well our last two verses give us two reasons.
It’s what God made us for
Firstly, it’s what God made us for.
Verse 13 goes on: Fear God, and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind.
Literally, it’s what we are. It sums us up. It’s what we’re for.
It’s great to watch animals in their natural habitat. If you’ve ever watched a demonstration of birds of prey, they come out of their artificial house. When the falconer sends the bird off, up it goes and flies around high in the sky. Sad to see a caged bird; exhilarating to watch them do what they’re meant for. Much more satisfying to watch fish in the sea than in an aquarium, and either is better than in a glass bowl.
That’s not to say it’s wrong to keep pets. Nothing wrong with that at all, provided you look after them properly. But there’s something quite wonderful about animals doing what they were made for.
So how about you? What were you made for? Made to work, perhaps? Made to eat and drink? Made to love? Made to go to church? Made to laugh? Yes – all of those things, to a degree. But more than anything we were made to know God.
There’s a document from the 17th Century called the Westminster Shorter Catechism. It’s a sting of questions and answers that were designed to be memorised, to help people learn what the Christian faith teaches. Question 1: What is the chief end of man? Answer: Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.
Is that right? Is it what the Bible teaches? It is, and one of the many passages you could turn to would be Ecclesiastes chapter 12.
Here’s the first reason it matters that we remember our Creator. It’s what God made us for.
There will be a judgement
There’s a second reason, and it’s in verse 14. There will be a judgement. There will be a judgement.
For God will bring every deed into judgement, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.
At one level, death is the end. It’s our eternal home. But at another level, it’s not the end at all. For after death comes judgement.
The pendulum keeps swinging, with school work, as to whether it’s best to assess someone on a big final exam, or on coursework the whole way through. In some ways, a final exam is more scary. You have to remember everything at the end of the course, and you only get one chance. But I happen to think that coursework is more scary. You’re not just being assessed at the end; you’re being assessed the whole way through.
But then imagine that it wasn’t just a few bits of coursework, it was every lesson. And every moment between every lesson. And the things you did that nobody knew about. And what you thought about while you were brushing your teeth. And what goes through your dreams when nobody really is watching. Every thought, every word, every action, from the start to the end of life.
That’s not some weird science-fiction plot. It’s the God who sees and knows everything. There will be a judgement.
We human beings don’t get a choice about whether we meet our maker or not. We will meet him as our judge. We do have time, now, to make sure we meet him prepared rather than unprepared.
So there’s the second reason why it matters that we remember our creator in the days of our youth. There will be a judgement. Now’s the time to get ready.
So says the writer of Ecclesiastes: While you’re young. While you have the energy. Don’t just enjoy the good things in life. Remember the one who made them; remember your maker. Fear him. Live in the light of what he’s said. Get to know him. It’s what he made you for. And one day, we’ll all be judged.
Hebrews 9:27-28
The book of Hebrews picks up this thought of death and judgement in chapter 9. But the gospel of grace adds a wonderful twist to it, and it’s where I want to leave us this morning. You might like to turn to it – it’s page 1207.
Chapter 9, verse 27: Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgement. There’s Ecclesiastes 12. There’s our motivation for getting our lives in good order. We’ll all die. We’ll all be judged.
Just as that is so, verse 28: so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many. There’s a way to be ready for that judgement. None of us is perfect. But Jesus died once, two thousand years ago, to take away all the failings that leave us dreading the judgement.
And then the verse goes on: and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him. Life under the sun, then growing old, and finally dying, is not all there is. Jesus will come back for everyone who is waiting for him. For everyone who got to know him while there was still time.
And when he does he will rescue us. From sin. From death. From growing old. From a treadmill of life feeling empty and meaningless. Into something so wonderful we could scarcely imagine a part of it.
So: Remember your creator in the days of your youth.