Studies InEcclesiastes

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Remember Your Creator

Chapter 11v7-12v7Presentation 13

Introduction"Remember your Creator in the days of your youth." This verse is not only the key to our understanding of the passage before us but it forms part of the conclusion of the whole book. It is the preacher’s antidote to the unsatisfactory philosophies of life that produce secular man and his vain attempts to find meaning and satisfaction. Man has an inbuilt awareness of destiny, "God has placed eternity in the heart of man". His problem is recognising in which direction his destiny lies. And as long as he keeps God at a distance the purpose of his life will remain a puzzle of gigantic proportions. A beam of light shines into this darkened maze as we read, "Remember your Creator..."

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What Is Meant By Remembrance?What does the preacher mean when he tells us to remember our Creator? Is he merely encouraging a mental act on a par with remembering to buy a packet of cornflakes? No, not at all! The force of the original Hebrew word is very powerful. It is a remembrance that involves a passionate commitment and loyalty. Listen to the intensity of the Psalmist’s language:Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not set you above my highest joy. Ps 137.6:

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What Is Meant By Remembrance?Do you see the idea? It's one of wholehearted commitment. It involves binding ourselves to God and placing him at the top of the business agenda of our lives. It's inviting God to preside over all the decisions we make to ensure that they meet with his approval. It's taking God with us wherever we go, knowing that he would not be ashamed to be found in such a place. It's to live our lives in the consciousness of God’s watchful gaze.

There can be no half measures.

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What Is Meant By Remembrance?When should such commitment begin? "Remember your creator in the days of your youth." From our earliest days we are to guard against erecting signposts that tell God, "Private keep out!"

We cannot keep God at a distance and be committed to him at the same time. This remembrance involves dropping our cherished pretence of self-sufficiency. Of being the sort of person who thinks and acts as though they can live life without God.

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What Is Meant By Remembrance?And the sooner a person does this better because our mind-set and our wills become less malleable with age. They are like concrete. At the beginning of its’ life, when concrete is mixed it retains a plastic constituency. It can be poured and shaped in a variety of ways but once it begins to set it becomes less and less pliable. Giving the expression, “As hard as concrete”.

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The Background: Against Which The Call Is MadeIt is important to see the context against which this call is made. In 12.1-7 we find a poetic description of the fact of our mortality. It is one of the most beautiful sequences of word pictures in the whole of the book. The writer conjures up with great vividness different aspects of aging and dying. There is the chill of winter in the air in v2 as the thunderclouds turn the daylight into gloom and then night into pitch blackness. It is a sombre scene bringing home the fading physical and mental powers and the desolation of old age.

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The Background: Against Which The Call Is MadeThere are many lights that are liable to be withdrawn besides our senses and faculties as old friends are taken, familiar customs change and cherished hopes are abandoned. You see, in our youth the bulk of our troubles and illnesses are chiefly set-backs not disasters, not so in old age!

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The Background: Against Which The Call Is MadeIn v3-4 we find a moving picture of a great house in decline. Its former glories of power, style, liveliness and hospitality are contrasted with its present few pathetic relics even the old servant who opens the door is crippled. This house is a picture of our lives as we grow in years. In v4b-5 we find further characteristics of old age, deafness, early waking and a loss of confidence in going outdoors. The slow shuffle of the elderly is described by the incongruous picture of the grasshopper famed for its lightness and agility slowed down to a laboured crawl.

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The Background: Against Which The Call Is MadeThe final picture of life's frailty is given in v6, that of a delicate work of art, a golden vessel suspended on a fine silver chain, the chain snaps and the vessel falls and breaks.

Now these are all very vivid pictures of the inevitable consequences of old age. Why does the writer paint them? Does he want to depress us? No. But he is intent upon forcing the young to face the realism of old age and so choose to lay foundations that will carry them through life.

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The Background: Against Which The Call Is MadeThere is a danger of idolising our youth so that we dread to lose it and to face up to the fact that many of our powers are diminishing. But if, when young, we lay the correct foundation, we will find grace to cope with every passing phase of life, which will be, ‘seen to be beautiful in its time’.So then it is in our youth and not in our old age that these facts are best confronted, when they can drive us into action to that total response to God that is the subject of 12.1.

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The Background: Against Which The Call Is MadeThe writer is saying, “Don't put off forming a close relationship with God. Don't put off dismantling the barriers that keep God out of your life. You will not always be young and carefree. Now is the time to get out of the maze. Now is the time to give God first place in your life”.This exhortation contradicts a commonly held view that says, "They’re only young once let them do what they want". What foolish advice that is. It's the advice of the indifferent and complacent, not of the responsible and loving adult.

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The Background: Against Which The Call Is MadeThe longer a person takes to give God his rightful place in their lives the harder it becomes. The perimeter fence of their lives is increasingly reinforced against God and all his advances. I have heard countless people say, ‘when I am older then I will change’. But the years forge chains of habit that are not easily broken and such people often find that repentance eludes them. We need to tell our young people that life is not a game for often the choices we make cannot be withdrawn and the decisions we make have consequences which must be lived with for the rest of our lives.

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The Background: Against Which The Call Is MadeThe exhortation comes with force to those who think the best time to give God any thought is when they are dying. A colleague visited the home of an elderly lady who had been ill. Before he left, he suggested he should pray with her. She replied, "Oh I'm not as ill as that". What a tragedy to think that you only pray and speak with God when you think you are dying. Don't leave issues of faith and salvation until you are old. “Remember your Creator in the days of …”

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Incentives For Remembering HimThe verses at the end of Ch. 11 are designed to provide incentive for committing our lives to God sooner rather than later. The incentive given in v9 is that we might truly enjoy life. The reason many young folk don't want to get involved with God early on in life is that they reckon he's a spoilsport, a killjoy, out to prevent them from having a good time. That's far from the case. He wants them to enjoy the fullness of his creation, after all it was created for their good, but to do so in a way that will not destroy them.

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Incentives For Remembering HimWhen our hearts are rooted in God then our desires will be controlled by that relationship and true joy will result. This is the antidote to the vexation and fretfulness mentioned in 11.10. It is said that there is a freedom to enjoy yourself when you are young that you will never experience again for you do not have the constraints of time, responsibility or physical limitations of those who are older. But freedom must have a goal worth reaching, or triviality takes over and a playboy mentality developed. You don't need lots of money to be a playboy you only need behaviour that trivialises life. And when life is trivialised it seems meaningless even to the young. Remembering God robs life of nothing but its hollowness.

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Incentives For Remembering HimThe final incentive for remembering our Creator is the most sobering of all. It is the certainty of judgment cf v9. God will bring you to judgement. The true joy that he wants us to experience has to dance with goodness. To the young and carefree Judgment Day seems far off and unreal - it is the present that has to be seized and enjoyed. But the preacher will not allow his young hearers to sidestep the fact that they're accountable to God for their behaviour.

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Incentives For Remembering HimThis idea is reinforced in 12.7 "You are dust and to dust you shall return". The very words spoken by God to Adam when he asserted his independence. When by his disobedience he showed he wanted to live his life with God shut out. These words are quoted here to show that to remain independent from God in this life will ensure that we never escape from the maze of meaninglessness. For if we continue to close God out he will eventually close us out.

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ConclusionTrue joy and satisfaction in life will only come when God is given his rightful place and the writer is saying, ‘it is to your advantage to give him that place when you are young!’Perhaps your thinking, ‘even if I allow myself a fairly wide margin of exaggeration I cannot describe myself as young’. Has this passage therefore little application for you? Not at all! We’re all being urged to act now, opening our lives to God today, binding ourselves to him in loyal commitment.

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