A Word to the Young (Eccl. 11:7 – 12:14)
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This text is a word to young people, though all of us can profit and benefit from it. Notice 11:9 – “Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth.” And verse 10 talks about “childhood and youth.” Then chapter 12 opens with the stirring exhortation: “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth.” It makes me think that the entire book of Ecclesiastes, like the book of Proverbs, is probably aimed at young people, and young men in particular.
And the question with which this book faces us is this: “What are you going to do with your life?” Are you going to live it with the knowledge that everything is hevel, fleeting and vaporous, or are you going to live like this world isn’t passing away? Are you going to make vain things into God-replacements, or are you going to see the things of this world as gifts from God which are to be enjoyed as the fleeting things that they are? Most importantly, are you going to throw your life away on things that don’t last or are you going to invest your life in that which matters most – the cause of God and truth?
Young people, Solomon, the Preacher, is going to argue that youth is not the time to put off serving God, but it is the time you are meant to start serving him. Now is the time, now is the day of salvation. Don’t get to the end of your life having spent your physical and intellectual and moral strength on things that are passing away. Get to the end of your life having invested in eternal things. Don’t waste your life; spend it for God.
One of the things that struck me, and I think it was true for all the guys who are reading Whitney’s book on the spiritual disciplines, was his focus on the stewardship of time. It is sobering to remember that time is not something you can hoard. He reminds us that time is not something you can get back. You may regain a fortune lost, but you cannot get yesterday back. Time is passing by in an irreversible direction. As the hymn puts it,
So what are you going to do with it? What does the Bible say you are to do with it? Will you listen to what God has to say? Will you listen to these words of delight, upright words, words of truth? (12:10). Will you let these words be like goads and like nails that fasten themselves to your heart and imagination? (12:11). After all, these are words “which are given from one Shepherd” (12:11). Who is this Shepherd? Does not King David, the Preacher’s father, say, “The LORD is my Shepherd” (Ps. 23:1)? Yes, these are the words of God. Young person, listen to what God has to say about how you are to plan your life in the years of your youth.
But I don’t want the rest of us to tune out either. No matter at what stage we are in life, we need to hear what the Preacher has to say. Even if we are no longer young, what the Preacher says are still acceptable words that we need to hear. And if it is urgent for young people to put these words into practice, how much more urgent are they for those of us who are older? So we all need to hear what Solomon has to tell us.
What does he say? There are basically two big commands here: rejoice in chapter 11 and remember in chapter 12. But these are not separate commands, because, as we shall see, the rejoicing is only properly done when we remember what we are supposed to remember in chapter 12. So let’s look at these two things together.
Young person: Rejoice!
Youth is full of optimism, and Solomon is saying that this is right. “Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun” (11:7). God made us to enjoy sunrises and sunsets. He made us to enjoy light. Young people have a lifetimes of sunrises and sunsets to look forward to, and Solomon is indicating that you should look forward to them. And what follows is not a concession but really a command. When he says, “But if a man live many years, and rejoice in them all” (8), I think the idea is that if we live many years, we should rejoice in them all. As we saw last time in Ecclesiastes 5, God gives us many good gifts in this life in the form of work and wealth and many other things. We are meant to enjoy them. Notice the word “and” in verse 8 in the KJV is in italics. It is supplied by the translators, so it literally reads, “If a man live many years, rejoice in them all,” which can be taken as a command, as it is in the ESV. In fact, in the following verse this is explicit, isn’t it? “Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes” (9).
Beware that you don’t reject Christianity because you’ve come to believe those who argue that the purpose of religion is to take away the happiness out of life. It’s not true. Beware of those who turn Christianity into an ascetic lifestyle. Beware of those who argue for a gnostic way of life that sees the physical creation as something to be avoided. Beware of
doctrines of devils; [of those who are] speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer. (1 Tim. 4:1-6)
True religion doesn’t deprive a person of the enjoyment of God’s creation; it makes them glad in God and in his gifts. It sees light and enjoys it as the gift of God. It enjoys the gifts of youth as a mercy from the Most High. The commandments of the Bible does do not drain life of enjoyment, but help us keep a proper perspective so that we don’t turn God’s gifts into idols which will poison the pleasure and load us with regrets in later years.
This is the purpose of the second half of both verses 8 and 9. In verse 8, we read, “yet let him remember the days of darkness; for they shall be many. All that cometh is vanity.” In other words, it is stupid to take and enjoy these passing pleasures as if they were not passing away. It would be like a child being given an ice cream cone on a hot day and thinking that she should just keep it instead of enjoying it. But it will melt if it is kept. Or like the Israelites who tried to hoard the manna, but when they did that, it bred worms and stank. My friend, hoarded pleasures will stink because the pleasures of this life are decomposing. The days of darkness are coming, which could either mean that life is full of good things and bad things, and that the bad days will more than balance out the good ones. Or, which I think is more likely, Solomon is just reminding us that we are going to die. Our Lord told his disciples, “I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work” (Jn. 9:4). That he is referring to his impending death when he said, “the night cometh,” is clear from the following verse when he says, “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world” (5). So Solomon is just reminding us that we should enjoy the gifts of God now, but do so remembering that life is followed by death and our bodies are going to lie in the ground for a long time until the Lord raises them up in the last day. Don’t make of the pleasure more than it is because if you do it will cause you to put it in the place of God and that will bitterly disappoint you in the end.
And then in verse 9 we read, “but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment.” Verse 8 reminds us that we are going to die; verse 9 that we will stand before God in judgment. These twin realities are something the NT reminds us of as well: “it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Heb. 9:27). The thing is, if we don’t see the things of this earth as passing away, we’re going to misinterpret the usefulness of the gifts of God and misuse them. We will turn them into idols. We will try to get more out of them than what they can give us. And that will leave us bitterly disappointed in the end. It will leave us empty and disillusioned. Praise God he helps us to see his gifts for what they truly are!
If we don’t see our lives as moving inexorably toward God’s judgment seat, we are also going to abuse and misuse God’s gifts. We don’t get to choose how God’s gifts are to be enjoyed; God does. You don’t get to choose how you enjoy God’s gift of sex; God does. We live in God’s universe and in God’s world and the things we have are God’s things and we will be held accountable as to how we used them. We need to remember that, and the Preacher is helping us to do so.
Now brethren, our supreme joy is to be in God as we are to love God with all our hearts and souls and minds. But that doesn’t mean we love God by despising his creation. One of the ways we love God is to enjoy his gifts. Imagine that a loved one gave you a gift, but you snuffed at it and despised it. Would you say that was a loving thing to do? Would it not rather be loving to receive it as a gift and enjoy it for what it was given? I know that people can give us bad gifts. Someone might give you a sauerkraut pie, like happened to a friend of mine. But God does not give bad gifts. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (Jam. 1:17). Even the discipline God brings into our lives, the hard stuff, the painful stuff, though it does not seem “to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby” (Heb. 12:11). God works all things for our good (Rom. 8:28). Love God and enjoy his sunsets. Love God and enjoy the meal that he gave you to enjoy. Love God and enjoy the things he has given. Be thankful and bless his name!
And so, as chapter 11 comes to a close, the Preacher exhorts us: “Therefore remove sorrow from thy heart, and put away evil from thy flesh: for childhood and youth are vanity” (11). Of course we can’t always avoid sorrow or pain. But I think Solomon is saying that you don’t have to go looking for it either. There will be plenty of it anyway as we get older, “for childhood and youth are vanity,” that is, they are fleeting. And it gets replaced with a body that gets increasingly broken down (as we will have vividly set before us in the next chapter). So enjoy God’s gifts that he gives you now. Be thankful to the Lord, be joyful before the Lord, have hope in the Lord! Be optimistic!
However, we cannot safely rejoice without sanctified remembering. As we rejoice, we need to remember some things. And that brings us to our next point.
Young person: Remember!
What we are to remember
There is both a what and a when to remembering. Let’s consider the what first. As we rejoice, we are to remember three things. First, we are to remember that life is momentary. In 11:8, the young person is exhorted, “but let him remember” – what? – “the days of darkness, for they shall be many.” Then in 11:10, “childhood and youth are vanity,” that is, passing away. Life is a momentary thing. Our life is a vapor that appears for a little time and then passes away (Jam. 4:14).
You may think that this just torpedoes any pleasure and rejoicing a person could have! But as we’ve been saying above, it is this perspective, the perspective of the end, that helps us to enjoy God’s gifts properly and in a way that doesn’t do violence to their intended purpose. It keeps us from hanging more emotional weight on them than they are meant to bear. Youth can give the false impression that it will last forever and that keeps us from thinking about eternal things and the state of the soul. So Solomon is helping us to have a proper perspective here.
Second, we are to remember that life is molded. The same verb “remember” from 11:8 is used again in 12:1 – “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth.” You have a Creator, and God is that Creator. He made us; we did not make ourselves in the past and we do not make ourselves in the present. Which means that we belong to him, body and soul. He defines reality; we don’t. He is therefore the ultimate Lawgiver before whom all kings must bow. You need to remember that.
And you need to remember that, especially today. Our society has by and large bought into the lie that we can shape our lives any way we please. The culmination of this tendency can be seen in the transgender movement, which really does believe that we can change the physical bodies that God has given us, often by mutilating them, in order to bend it to our own ideas and desires. But here’s the thing: all sin is in some sense the same thing. All sin is the declaration that I can do with my life what I want. All sin is telling God that I make the rules, not him. So you may not buy into the transgender ideology, but if you’re stealing from others, it’s the same basic impulse. If you’re committing fornication, it’s the same basic impulse. If you’re addicted to porn, it’s the same basic impulse.
Or it can just take the form and shape of a God-ignoring life-style. You learn to be content with a prayerless life, a life not informed by a constant immersion in God’s word, a life that does not regularly connect with God’s people in the weekly rhythm of gathering for worship. You’ve become a slave of the world, and you get caught up in the fads and movements of the culture. That’s what interests you. You are not a God-hater, per se, you don’t claim to be an atheist, but at the same time you have forgotten your Creator. You live as if he doesn’t exist.
In Matthew’s gospel, in chapter 2, there are three categories of people who are confronted with the birth of the King of the Jews. Of course there are the magi, who came to worship him, and they do. Then there is King Herod, who believes that Jesus is a threat to his rule, and so he deviously makes plans to do away with the King of the Jews. Herod represents all those people who hate Christ, and do what they can to do away with godly influences over their lives. But then there is a third category of person in this story, which to me is the most tragic. It is the category of the scribes and Pharisees. They were religious, even very religious, and they could put chapter and verse in answer to the question as to where Christ was to be born. But that is the last you hear of them. I would have expected the religious leaders to go along with the magi. Wouldn’t they at least have been interested? Apparently, they don’t go with the magi. They aren’t interested. They miss this wonderful opportunity to meet the incarnate God.
Young person, are you like that? Maybe you aren’t like Herod; you may even call yourself religious to a point. But when confronted with the realities of eternity – the good news of forgiveness and redemption in Christ, the judgment to come, the resurrection of the dead, a new heaven and new earth – you are bored with it all. It doesn’t interest you. How sad! And how terrible will be your judgment, you who have had all these precious opportunities and let them pass by. Young person, remember now your Creator in the days of your youth.
There is a third reality you are to remember. Because you are molded by God, your life is meaningful. What makes it meaningful is that you are created in God’s image. You were created with a purpose: to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. When the Preacher talks about the dissolution of life and the death of the body in 12:8, he speaks of it in terms of the snapping of a silver cord and the breaking of a golden bowl. Life is valuable!
That it is meaningful is also seen in the fact that we are to be held accountable for our lives. “Know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment” (11:9). “For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil” (12:14). It matters how you live. Your life is eternally meaningful. You need to remember that.
I object therefore to the interpretation of hevel, or vanity, that says it refers to meaninglessness. Certainly our lives are not meaningless. They are vaporous, yes. They are passing away, yes. But they are not meaningless.
When we are to remember
So that’s what we are to remember, but I also said that there is a when to the remembering. Young person, when are you to start remembering these things? When you graduate from college? After you start a family? Get a good job? Retire from your job? No! When are you to remember? Now! Now, whether you are five or fifteen or twenty-five, you are to remember these things starting this very moment, if you haven’t already.
“Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth,” which he then goes on to define as, “while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them” (12:1). In other words, the Preacher is saying, “Don’t spend your strength on things that don’t ultimately matter. Spend your strength for God. Don’t wait until you don’t have anything left and then give the leftovers to God.” Young person, God did not give you your physical strength, your memory, your ability to learn, so you could spend all of it on things that are passing away. Spend it on God! What better thing, what more noble, what more valuable, what more lasting, than to spend your life on the cause of God and truth. Give it to Jesus Christ.
Yes, it may look like the life of a famer or a housewife. It may be in business and industry. It may not be in formal ministry, though I would strongly urge all of you young people to consider that. It is an option. But in your normal and sometimes boring life, you serve Christ. You live each day as a witness for Jesus. You serve others. You serve in the church. You live each day for the King of kings. The world may not recognize you. It will probably hate you in fact. But when you open your eyes in glory, and hear the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” I can absolutely guarantee that it will have all been worth it. Use your intellect for Christ. Use your physical strength for Christ. Use your imagination for Christ. Use your optimism for Christ.
Because, as Solomon tells us, there is coming a day when your options are going to get limited. How sad it will be if you get to be 50 or 60 and you’ve spent all your energy and emotions entirely on video games – or even gardening. Spend it for Jesus, before the evil days come when you can’t get joy out of them anymore.
And so Solomon goes on in verses 3-7 to list all the abilities that we lose as we get older. I want you to notice that what he is highlighting here are the diminished capacities of our faculties as we grow older. He tells us that in old age we have a diminished capacity to enjoy things in verse 1 (“I have no pleasure in them”). He tells us that in old age we have a diminished capacity for seeing in verses 2-3, when he says, “While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain . . . and those that look out of the windows be darkened,” which seems to be a metaphor for failing eyesight. He tells us that in old age we have a diminished capacity for strength: “In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves” (3), a metaphor for brittle bones and failing muscles. He tells us that in old age we have a diminished capacity for eating – “the grinders cease because they are few,” is obviously a reference to fewer teeth as our facial features go from bad to worse. He tells us that in old age we have a diminished capacity for hearing: “And the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of musick shall be brought low” (4). In old age, we have a diminished capacity for daring: “Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way” (5).
All in all, as we get older, things begin to break down, which is the imagery invoked in verses 5-7: “and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets: Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.” The almond tree blossoms are a reference to the greying hair of the aged. The imagery of the grasshopper is of one that is crippled and dragging itself along. The rest of the imagery is disputed, but the overall meaning is clear: they represent things that are breaking down. As we get older, that’s what happens, isn’t it? And it culminates in death, when “the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.”
And then the Preacher ends the way he began: “Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, all is vanity” (8). It’s all passing away. We can fail to see that when we are young. And if you fail to see it, one thing that might happen is that instead of enjoying the manna God sent your way, you’ve been trying to hoard it, and now it all stinks. Instead of surrendering your life to Jesus, you spent it on the worst possible thing: yourself. And you can’t get it back. The time is gone.
That’s why Solomon says to you young people, now is the time to remember your creator. Not as an intellectual exercise, but a commitment of the heart. And that brings me to my last point: how do we remember our Creator in the days of our youth? Or maybe in the days of our old age?
How we remember
I have three closing exhortations, which I am taking from the final verses of chapter 12. They have to do with a certain focus, a certain fear, and a certain faithfulness.
First, focus on the Word of God. We are told, “And moreover, because the preacher was wise, he still taught the people knowledge; yea, he gave good heed, and sought out, and set in order many proverbs. The preacher sought to find out acceptable words: and that which was written was upright, even words of truth. The words of the wise are as goads, and as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies, which are given from one shepherd. And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh” (12:9-12).
We live in a day of massive information overload. That was not the case in Solomon’s day, so his exhortation is even more pertinent. You can spend all your life studying things. You can read a lot of books and even write a lot of books. You can become an expert on something, maybe even something very important and life giving like brain surgery. But the Preacher warns us, as our Lord told Martha, that there is one thing needful. And that is to give heed to the words of our Great Shepherd which have been mediated to us in a book written by inspired men like the Preacher. Let its truths be driven into your heart like a nail. Let it drive you like a goad if necessary. Young person, give attention to God’s word. Read it, meditate upon it, memorize it, and above all things, believe it and act upon it. Let your life be fashioned by God’s word. Let it be said of you, as it was said by Paul to the Romans, that you “have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine” into which you were committed (Rom. 6:17).
Second, fear God. What does this mean? It does not simply refer to being afraid of God, though given our smallness and God’s greatness, there is an appropriate amount of that kind of fear that is proper for creatures. But in the Bible it primarily refers to a life lived before God in such a way that we love him, trust in him, and obey him. For example, in Deut. 10:12-13, God commands the people of Israel who are in covenant with him: “And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, to keep the commandments of the Lord, and his statutes, which I command thee this day for thy good?” The fear of God is not bad for us; it’s good for us. It was the fear of God that kept Joseph from giving in to temptation. It was the fear of God that caused Job to turn away from evil (Job. 1:1, 8; 2:3).
Young person, live before God in a godless age. Don’t live like muckrakers who spend all their lives just looking down and grubbing for the stuff of this earth. Look up. Lift your eyes into the heavens. Put your hope and your trust in God.
And that means put your hope and your trust in God’s Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Our Savior told his disciples, “believe in God, believe also in me” (Jn. 14:1). The psalmist put it this way: “Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him” (Ps. 2:11-12). Our Lord died for us so that all who believe on him might have all their sins forgiven, so that as we fear him we need not fear his judgment. We rejoice with trembling and receive the blessing that belongs to all who put their trust in him. So I say to you, as the apostle Paul said to the Philippian jailor, who asked what he needed to do to be saved: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house” (Acts 16:31). And if you believe on him, confess his name publicly and be baptized (33).
And then finally, be faithful and keep God’s commandments. “Fear God and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man” (Eccl. 12:13). What does God require of you, you may ask. Well, here it is: fear God and keep his commandments. This is the whole duty of man. It is important that it’s not just any commandments we are to keep, but God’s commandments, and you aren’t sure to find them any place other than the Bible, the written word of God. Don’t look to your dreams. Don’t look to your favorite social media influencer. Don’t look to the government. Don’t look to the academy. Look to God’s word and see what God requires of you there. This is not legalism; it's obedience, which is the inevitable outcome of a life of faith and repentance, without which no one can be saved. “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14).
Young people, life is a romance. But it is a romance for eternity only when it is lived for Christ. Winston Churchill is one of my heroes, but there is little evidence that he was a Christian. His life was a romance too, serving in the British Parliament for over 50 years, serving in both world wars and in the second almost single-handedly saving the West from Nazism. But his religion wasn’t Christ; it was the British empire. And at the end of his life, he watched as the British empire disintegrated before his very eyes. And it made him incredibly sad and depressed, even at the end of such a productive and adventurous life. But Christians aren’t living for earthly empires. Martin Luther’s hymn comes to mind, doesn’t it?
As C. T. Studd so memorably wrote:
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