The passage we will be looking at today is kind of a lengthy one. It is Ecclesiastes 11:7 going all the way down to Ecclesiastes 12:8. This particular chunk of passage is actually considered probably the last words that Solomon wrote at least in this book. Even though there are words that follow, as we will talk about next week, those words were believed to be written by an editor. The core theme of today’s passage is the idea of remembering. Specifically remembering your Creator and more specifically remembering your Creator while you are young. If somebody would please stand up and read from Ecclesiastes 11:7 all the way down to 12:8. (Scripture read here.) Did you pick up the theme in there of remembering? Especially remembering your Creator during your youth.
But speaking of remembering, before I go farther in the sermon, is anyone old enough to remember the name Glen Campbell? About half of you. Here is a picture of Glen in his early age. Some of you may know he is a country music legend. He wrote a lot of songs. He played a lot of songs. He played a lot of instruments. He did backup for a lot of different musicians. He is probably best known for some of his popular songs. Can anybody name some of his songs? Wichita Line Man. Rhinestone Cowboy. Southern Nights. I did a little homework and found out that he produced 70 albums and 12 turned gold and another 4 were platinum and another one was platinum plus. The bottom line is he was a very successful country music entertainer. In fact, he had his own show for a while called the Glen Campbell Good Time Hour way back in the day. In 2011, he and his wife decided they wanted to do one last concert tour. At the age of 75, they decided they were going to set across America and begin this tour. The problem was a few weeks before they started the tour they found out that Glen was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. It is a devastating disease that first affects your mind before it begins to take hold of your body. The doctors recommended he hang up his guitar and he just can’t do this. He said I am going to do it. So what was supposed to be a five-week tour turned out to be 151 concerts I think ending in Napa Valley in 2013 or something like that. There was a documentary some of you might have heard of. It is called ‘I Will Be Me’ and it was basically a documentary about this last concert tour of Glen Campbell. What makes it special is it wasn’t just about following his music or his life. What was special about it is it chronicled his journey of Alzheimer’s. If you have seen that documentary, the last song he recorded was ‘I Am Not Gonna Miss You’. It is a strange title for a song. It actually sounds self-centered, but it actually has to do with Alzheimer’s. As some of you know who have experienced your family members who gradually begin to forget things what happens is that person kind of goes away. In their case, their father, husband, friend Glen was no longer there. Although they missed him, he had gotten to the point where he couldn’t miss them at all. It is the sad irony of it. You can only miss what you remember. When you can’t remember somebody, you don’t miss them. Watch this video. It is a short video of the song and a little bit of the concert tour and I believe it opens up with Glen going into an MRI machine. (Video shown here.) Sad song. It is a sad song and it is really sad about his life because right now he is in a home for Alzheimer’s patients in Nashville, TN. He can no longer speak for himself. His family has to speak for him. It speaks of the devastating results of the disease called Alzheimer’s.
As we begin to explore today’s passage in Ecclesiastes it doesn’t address Alzheimer’s but it pretty much speaks of the devastating effects of aging on the body especially. As a refresher, we know that Solomon was probably very aged when he wrote Ecclesiastes, so he had a lot of good wisdom that comes with age and a lot of experience. He could share wisdom with people. He would often find himself sharing wisdom to the youth. In this particular passage, though he speaks towards the age, he is really directing it towards the youth and the importance of remembering the Creator while they are still young. He starts off this passage by saying “Light is sweet, and it pleases the eyes to see the sun. However many years a man may live, let him enjoy them all. But let him remember the days of darkness, for there will be many. Everything to come is meaningless.” This is an interesting passage because he is basically saying enjoy life. Based on your understanding of Solomon, you know that Solomon could be a bit of a melancholy, Eeyore-type personality. This doesn’t even sound like him. If you were here last week in chapter 9, you may have also seen that one of his conclusions and really his conclusions throughout the entire book is given this meaningless life, you might at least try to enjoy it. That is what he is basically saying here. And not just a part of life. Enjoy all of it. The good and the bad because the bad days will come. The dark clouds will come and they will keep coming. The sun may go away forever as we will see towards the end of the book. He is directing this primarily towards youth. We know that because he goes on to say “Be happy young man 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 isn’t probably one of the passages that parents of teens really want to share around the dinner table. It is like whatever you want to do, go do it. Just follow your eyes. Follow your desires. In fact, if you are not careful, I think your teen could use this passage against you. If you are getting a little too restrictive on their comings and goings, they could say ‘Listen, mom, Pastor Chuck preached on this passage last week and I am just doing what he said.’ We know that Solomon probably wouldn’t get any best parenting awards because it seems like he is encouraging a life without boundaries. Especially if you just read this as an isolated text, which some people often do. But if you notice, there is a comma and what follows the comma is the qualifier. “But know that for all these things, God will bring you to judgment.” So he is saying when you are young, enjoy life. Go for the gusto. Dig yourself into life because it is going to get harder when you get older. Enjoy life. But do it responsibly. We hear the phrase drink responsibly. He is saying live your life responsibly. Your entire life. Even though you may be away from home and the parents can no longer judge you, there is a Creator out there that is very capable of judging you. He is encouraging you to enjoy the gifts you have been given. The wonderful gifts of life. But do it with moderation. No what to say yes to and what to say no to. If you grew up as a Christian, you know you have this built in thing that we call a lie detector or what the culture would call conscience, but we call the Holy Spirit. It allows you to really make good decisions if you are willing to consult the spirit to determine what to say yes to and what to say no to. But unfortunately a lot of the young people make decisions based on how they feel. How do you feel about this? What is it going to do for me? How is it going to affect my feelings and my desires and my passions? What often happens is kids follow their passions and if they continue to make decisions based on their passions, they are going to hit the wall. It is just a matter of time. One of my favorite passages in the Bible is one that I think every student should take away with them when they go to college and put it somewhere they are going to remember it. It is from Proverbs, which actually is also written by Solomon. It says “There is a way that seems right to a man (I inserted there woman), but in the end it leads to death.” Have you ever been in a situation where it just seemed so right? That song ‘If loving you is right, how can it be so wrong’ or something like that. You are in those situations where it just feels so right so how can it be wrong. It is because the Devil is basically telling you it is right. He wants you to screw up. He wants you to make decisions based on your feelings rather than on the word of God and the truth of God. In this opening section here, he is speaking of the idea of enjoying your life but enjoying it with a sense of responsibility.
Then he shifts and begins to move from enjoyment of life to remembering your Creator. He says “Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say ‘I find no pleasure in them anymore.’” This passage is not saying just enjoy your Creator in your youth and forget about him when you are old. We know that we are supposed to constantly remember our Creator. That is why we have the Lord’s Supper every week. That reminds us. Bottom line is we have short memories. Around here, we do communion every week because we need to be reminded of the most central event in all of history: the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So everybody is supposed to remember. But what he is suggesting is that there is something about being young that, if you remember your Creator or learn about the Creator when you are young, it will carry over into adulthood. There is some statistic out there, I don’t know where it comes from, but apparently 80% of people come to Christ before they are 18. It makes sense. I don’t know about you, but when you start hitting your 30s, 40s, and 50s, you are pretty much set in your ways. Is this a surprise that older people don’t like change? How many of you older people are saying I want some change this week? I really want to do something crazy. No. You don’t. It becomes very difficult as you get older in life to accept change or accept anything new, including a new faith. That is why when the people are bringing around the little children because they wanted Jesus to pray over them and the disciples started shooing the children away saying get away from Jesus. Don’t bother Jesus. Jesus’ reply was “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” What does he mean by that? He means that children are naturally receptive to God things where adults aren’t. Adults have so much junk in their brains that they can’t think about God things. You have kids downstairs right now that are sucking up the word of God like a sponge and some of you are having a hard time staying awake. That isn’t funny. It’s sad. Your kids care more about God than you do. Your kids can trump you. Your kids could tell you the stories about God that you don’t even know. That is why we put such an emphasis on children’s ministry around here. We know if we can somehow get the little kids to hear the basic stories and capitalize on that receptivity to God before the world gets ahold of them, then when they grow up and get older, they are going to stay with God. They are going to have Jesus as a lifelong companion. You know that scripture that speaks of this. It says “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not turn from it.” This is not a guarantee. It is called a wisdom Proverb. It is generally true that if you raise up a child, he won’t depart from it. If he departs, there is a good chance he is going to come back.
Again, that is what he is talking about here. Remember your Creator while you are young. He is not just referring to remembering your Creator while you are a little child. He is also referring to that strange, weird generation or demographic of the 20-somethings. The age range of the 20-somethings is 18-32 or something like that. They are a hard generation to figure out. I have three of them in my family, and I don’t understand any of them. I leave it up to Austin to figure out and teach about it. One thing I know for sure is that the later teens and 20s really continue to be a developmental period of their life. Their spirit is being formed and shaped either by the church or by the world. Unfortunately, these students get out of high school and begin to be released. They are stretching their bounds and all of a sudden they get off to college and you get that phone call and you are talking to your kid some night. You say did you find a good church home yet. The kid grew up in the church their whole life and they say I am just not interested in it anymore. Church isn’t for me anymore. What do you do? You panic. What is going on here? You don’t have to panic. Because if you have allowed those seeds to be sown in your child when they were young and in their teens through youth group and everything else, you can pretty much be certain that those seeds will someday sprout. They will someday come out. But they are going to come out on their terms, not yours. I don’t know a 20-something around that would sit and listen to a felt board presentation about Jesus passively and just take it all in like a sponge. They are not going to. You have to change your methods. The 20-somethings are basically taught to question everything, including God. If we create a safe place where the kids that are interested in coming back to God can ask all the questions they want in a way that we are not going to slam them if they sound like a hint of disbelief, then they may come back to faith. When they come back to faith whether it is at 20, 30, 40, or 50, their faith is probably going to be stronger because it is going to be their faith. Not their parents’ faith. Not their family’s faith. Not the church’s faith. But their faith. They have those seeds sown in them. They know that even though they rejected traditional church, for the most part they have not rejected God. When they are out there expanding their wings and really trying to experience life and all of a sudden they start getting hit by all the realities of life, there is a good chance that they are going to actually seek the church back because they seek stability and the stability that comes from a solid church family. That is what they want. As they come into our environment and we welcome the questions and pair them up with an older mentor or two, what happens? A person willing to answer the tough questions or just say I don’t know. The person is to help them develop what we would call craft a rule of life where they can figure out the disciplines that they need to survive college. If they have those good tools when they leave, when they go back to college the character begins to develop. Those character traits become hardwired into them and they get carried on all through the rest of life. Does that make sense? Give me an Amen. Amen.
He shifts from remembering the Creator before the trouble sets in to begin to actually speak about the trouble that is often associated with the aging process. He goes on to say “Remember your Creator…before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark, and the clouds return after the rain;” When you get older, you have a storm cloud come into your life and it isn’t always followed by a sunny day. Another cloud comes in. Another period of rain over and over and over again. Then he goes on and does some very creative imagery. He uses about 10 or 11 images to describe the aging process that really are similar to a decaying house. As you go through these, keep a mental track of how many of these you can relate to. Try to figure out what he is talking about here. Most of these relate to the body. He says “Remember your Creator before the days of trouble come…when the keepers of the house tremble.” What part of your body is the keeper of the house? What part of your body maintains your house? What part of your body builds the house? The hands. Anybody try to build a house or maintain a house when your hands are trembling? Do anybody’s hands get shaky as you get older? “And the strong men stoop.” What does this have to do with? Bad backs and your body and legs not being able to carry the weight of your body anymore. “When the grinders cease because they are few.” Teeth. Anybody missing a few teeth out there? I have three I need implants on right now. If anything, this is a very good case for flossing while you are young. Trust me. If I was to do anything over again, I would probably start flossing in my 20s. “And those looking through the windows grow dim.” Eyes. Instead of being able to find those glasses off the shelf at Walmart, you have to pay $400 for a pair of bifocals or progressive lenses. Then he goes on to say “when the doors to the street are closed.” What are the doors to the street? Think about your body. Your ears. The doors to the street because that is where you hear the noise from the outside. Pretty soon you can’t hear much noise and that is when you have to buy the hearing aide. “The sound of the grinding fades.” This one I’m not sure, but I think it has to do with the fact that old people tend to chew very loudly and everybody hears it but them. “When men rise up at the sound of birds.” Any of you light sleepers out there? You may not hear all the noises outside, but a bird ends up on your windowsill and starts chirping and you are wide awake. “But all their songs grow faint.” This suggests what happens when you age your vocal cords tend to stretch out so you can’t hit the high notes and it accounts for the raspy voice of some of the aging rockers out there. Then he goes on to say “when men are afraid of heights and of dangers in the streets.” Anybody afraid to climb stairs? Because you might fall. Or dangers in the streets. Back then they had to worry about not only bandits, but they had to walk down the streets that weren’t paved and trip over something and never be able to get up. As I thought about this, it really sounds a lot like Bellevue. A lot of stairs. Maybe not bandits but purse snatchers or something like that and really just badly kept sidewalks and roads.
This is where you guys look a little bored, so I am going to tell you a funny story where I am the butt of the joke. Debbie and I like to walk. We try to walk from the church down to the Bellevue Bridge. A few months ago we were walking down Bellevue at a pretty good clip. We got down by Classic Chevrolet. We were cruising right along. I don’t know what I hit. It was like a crack in the sidewalk, but it caught my ankle and I was down just like that. I was down. Debbie asked what happened. I am right on the corner of Balph and Lincoln. There is a lady behind me who is panicking. Can I help you sir? Can I help you sir? There was a car sitting at the light and came around and said I saw everything. I will be your witness in case you want to sue the borough. I will do that for you. You laugh. It is tough getting old. The funny thing is on the way back I tripped again, but it wasn’t over the same crack. It has to do with aging, but it doesn’t have a lot to do with aging. Sometimes it is the person. When I was about 5 years old and my mommy used to walk me back and forth to school, I would always trip on a crack or something and fall down. I did it so many times that she decided to take me to the doctor to find out what is wrong with me. He looked at my feet and legs and said there is nothing wrong with this kid. He just has to learn to pick up his feet. I still don’t pick up my feet to this day. Anyway. Let’s move on.
“When the almond tree blossoms.” This is an easy one. Grey hair. The almond tree from a distance would look like a man with a white head of hair. “And the grasshopper drags himself along.” That has to do with the energy level. You don’t have that excitement to life anymore and the vitality. The last one I probably can’t spend too much time on. It is a little weird. It says “and desire no longer is stirred.” I don’t know why they translate it like this. The underlying word for desire is actually caper berry. Some translations say it this way “and the caper berry is no longer effective.” If you did research on the caper berry, the caper berry was supposed to stimulate desire. That is all I can say about it other than it is the reason you see so many Viagra commercials with the evening news. How many did you relate to? Anybody at least five? I related to at least five and it wasn’t about the caper berry, trust me!
He closes by saying “Then man goes to their eternal home and mourners go about the streets.” Obviously that person dies. Back in the day, they would actually pay people to go out in the streets and wail, especially if they didn’t have enough friends or relatives to do that sort of thing. You think he is done and then he begins to wrap the whole thing up, this whole idea of remembering, by going on to say “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, and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.” A lot of imagery. What he is doing is equating life to an expensive lamp. An expensive gold bowl that would be filled with oil and hung from the ceiling by a silver cord. If the cord broke, the bowl would fall to the ground and break the bowl and the oil would be spilled out, which is basically the source of their light. He is equating that to death. The other imagery is this whole idea of a pitcher. You are going to your well and before you get there or on the way back home you drop the pitcher and it breaks. You have lost another source of life. Or you go to the well and you are trying to use the wheel and the wheel is broken. You can’t draw up that living water. What is interesting is this last little bit about dust. It says “The dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.” He is basically suggesting that death reverses creation. In Genesis man was formed out of dust. The spirit of God was breathed into the person. At death, the man returns to dust and the spirit goes back up to God. It is a vivid picture of the sadness of death. It demonstrates a reversal of the created order. As Solomon does, he presents a pretty depressing case. His idea here was not to depress us but really to motivate us and encourage us. Especially to encourage us to remember the Creator while we are young. He ends this passage really the same way he began it back in chapter 1. He says “‘Meaningless! Meaningless!’ says the Teacher. ‘Everything is meaningless!’” If you look back to chapter 1, verse 2, you would see that the words are almost identical with the exception I think it speaks of things being “utterly meaningless.”
So Solomon had a very melancholy view on life and death. But as bad as death was, we get the sense all through the book that he still thought life was better. He still wanted to hang on if he could to this particular life. He didn’t understand God the way we understood him. He saw the afterlife as this shadowy strange no-man’s land type of existence. You just kind of hung around. He didn’t see it as a paradise. He didn’t have the advantage and the view in mind that we have when we think about aging and dying. He didn’t have the benefit of the cross. People in this room or people you know that are Christians and are aging and experiencing all of these things, yes there are a lot of painful things to go through, but you know what is on the other side. You know what it is leading to. That is why the really strong Christians don’t sit there and bemoan the aging process. They become like Paul. Paul, in Philippians 1:21, writes “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” Those are hard words to say when you are aging. But I suspect if Paul was here today and we were able to interview him and say okay you have had two lives. You have lived life under the sun and over the sun. Which do you prefer? He would say definitely life over the sun with Christ, and you know what, I really don’t remember much of that old life. I may have a faint memory of a mission trip or two or some of the people, I just really don’t remember. I think, like Paul, what is going to happen to a lot of us is we are going to get to the other side some day and we are going to have a very limited memory of this time of life. I don’t think that is totally a bad thing. If Solomon was alive today, and he was here and he had the advantage of seeing things from the perspective of the cross, I suspect he might end his book a little bit differently. I suspect that he might add a little P.S. to it that is taken exactly from the song that Glen Campbell wrote. “‘Meaningless! Meaningless!’ says the Teacher. ‘Everything is meaningless! P.S. I’m not gonna to miss you.’” What is there to miss from this life? We get to the other side and there will be nothing to miss because we will be in the complete presence of God. This is pure speculation, but I actually think it is part of the reason that as we age in life we forget things and our memory fades. Part of me thinks it is intentional. The only memory that we need to carry into eternity is the memory of God. The remembrance of God. Again “Remember your Creator in the days of your youth.” Let us pray.
