Wisdom to Remember | Ecclesiastes 12:1b-8

Now, the outline we've been working on, I'm going

to put up on the screen for you. You see the

title of our sermon today, Wisdom to Remember.

That's the outline we've been working with. You

can take a snapshot if you want for your own

study, but I want you to do something with me

before we dig in. I want you to close your eyes

for a moment. Humor me, please. Don't fall asleep.

Close your eyes. I promise it won't take long.

As your eyes are closed, picture yourself 20

years from now. 20 years from now, focus on your

hands. Are they steady? Do they tremble when

you try to hold a cup of coffee? Picture your

eyes. Can you still read the fine print? Has

the world gone soft and blurry at the edges?

Picture your strength. The strength you maybe

take for granted right now to climb stairs, to

carry your own groceries, to get up out of a

chair without groaning. Is it still there? Or

has your strength quietly slipped away while

you weren't looking? Now, 20 years isn't far

enough in the future. Picture 30 or 40. Maybe

you need only picture 10. You can open your eyes.

The question I actually want to ask you, the

one underneath all of that imagining of the future,

is this. What would you want to have already

settled with God before you get there? Don't

let go of that question. Because that question,

that's what Ecclesiastes is going to force us

to ask in this final chapter. Solomon, he's the

man who had more wisdom. More wealth, more pleasure,

more accomplishment than perhaps any other human

being in history. And he spent 11 chapters so

far testing every avenue of life. Wisdom, pleasure,

work, legacy, wealth. And over and over again,

he comes back to that haunting refrain. In Hebrew,

habel. In our Bibles, often rendered vanity.

That Hebrew word paints a picture of vapor, a

fleeting mist that you can't hold it in your

hand. And then in chapter 12 here, with the wisdom

of a man who has seen it all and lost a lot of

it, he turns to the young and honestly, really

to all of us, because here's the thing, no matter

your age, you're younger today than you will

be tomorrow. And he says this, don't wait. Don't

wait until your body has already betrayed you

to figure out what matters. Settle it now. So

before we go any further, I want us to hear the

whole of God's word together, not in pieces,

but one continuous appeal. So would you stand

with me as I read from Ecclesiastes chapter 12?

Ecclesiastes 12 · chapter mention

And forgive me if I hold my Bible too close and

muffle my microphone on account of my eyes. Beginning

in verse 1, remember also your creator in the

days of your youth, before the evil days happen

and the years draw near in which you'll say,

I have no delight in them. Before the sun and

the light, the moon and the stars are darkened

and clouds return after the rain. And the day

that the watchmen of the house tremble and valiant

men bend down and grinding ones stand idle because

they're few and those who look through windows

grow dark. The doors on the street are shut as

the sound of the grinding mill is low, and one

will arise at the sound of the bird, and all

the daughters of song will sing softly. Furthermore,

men are afraid of a high place and of terrors

on the road. The almond tree blooms, the grasshopper

drags itself along, and the caperberry is ineffective.

For man goes to his eternal home, but the mourners

go about in the street. Remember him. Before

the silver cord is snapped and the golden bowl

is crushed, the pitcher by the spring is broken

and the wheel at the cistern is crushed, then

the dust will return to the earth as it was and

the spirit will return to God who gave it. Vanity

of vanities, says the preacher. All is vanity.

You may be seated. As Grant said earlier, we

want to thank you for standing to honor God's

word because we want that to be the posture of

our heart. When we stand, we recognize God's

word carries weight. We want to listen. We want

to learn. Now, in what you just heard, I want

you to notice something. In the Hebrew, that

entire passage that I read, all of those eight

verses is actually one sentence grammatically.

There's a single command there. It's the very

first word in most of your Bibles. Remember,

zakar. It's given in verse 1 and everything that

follows all the way to verse 8. Every image of

darkening skies, trembling hands, dimming eyes,

snapping cords. All of that is a before clause

hanging off of that one imperative. Solomon isn't

giving us a slideshow of separate pictures to

admire one at a time. He's building an unbroken

wave of urgency. All of it is crashing towards

one appeal. Remember your creator before all

of this comes to pass. So we're going to walk

through this passage together, verse by verse,

image by image, because Solomon is about to paint

one of the most vivid, unflinching pictures of

human aging and death found anywhere in scripture.

By the end of today, I believe we'll discover

that this passage, for all of its bleakness,

actually is not meant to depress us. It's meant

to wake us up. So let's begin reading verses

one and two. Remember your creator, the days

of your youth, before the evil days happen and

the years drawn near in which you say, I have

no delight in them. Before the sun and the light,

the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds

return after the rain. Notice the first word

there in terms of remembrance, creator, not God.

Not just some vague higher power for you to believe

in. Solomon uses a word that reaches all the

way back to Genesis, to our call to worship actually,

right? The one who made you, the one who formed

you, the one who breathed life into you in the

first place. And that matters because Ecclesiastes,

really Solomon has spent 11 chapters exploring

and exposing the emptiness of everything that

we try to put in place of God. Solomon tried

wisdom, habel, vanity. He tried pleasure, habel,

vanity. He tried work and legacy and wealth and

achievement and knowledge, habel, habel, habel,

all of it, vanity. Now he's standing at the end

of that long road and he points us back to the

beginning, the creator, our creator. The one

who made you is the only foundation. strong enough

to build a life on, especially a life that is

going to weaken and a life that will eventually

end. Before we go further, I want you to notice

something else about how this passage is built.

It's going to help you feel the weight of everything

still to come. So in the Hebrew, I mentioned

it. There's one imperative verb, one command.

Remember, right there in verse one. Everything

that follows all the way to verse 7, it's subordinate.

It falls underneath that command. There's a bunch

of before clauses. Remember before the evil days

come. Remember before the sun and the light are

darkened. Remember before the keepers of the

house tremble. Remember before the silver cord

is broken. Structurally, this whole passage deals

with decline and fear and death and dust and

spirit returning to God. It's one long sentence

hanging off of that command. So again, it's not

a bunch of snapshots. It's one continuous, urgent

appeal. Everything we're going to walk through

is going to unpack what it means to obey that

single word, remember. Keep that in mind as we

go. It's going to help you feel this passage

as one breath rather than that slideshow. So

look at the timing of the remembering in the

days of your youth. Now, why youth? Why not wait

until you're older, wiser, more settled? Because

Solomon knows something about the human heart

that we all know too. If we're honest, it's far

easier to remember your creator when your hands

are steady, when your eyes are sharp. It's far

easier then than when your body has begun to

fail you. It's far easier to cultivate a habit

of trusting God like we heard from the testimony

of Polycarp during decades, during the days of

strength, rather than trying to manufacture that

trust for the first time during the final days

of weakness. Think of it like building a house.

You don't wait for the storm to begin pouring

concrete for the foundation. That's foolish.

You pour that foundation on a calm, sunny day

precisely so that it will hold when the storm

eventually comes. Solomon is saying this, pour

your foundation now. Now. Remember your creator

now while you have the strength and clarity to

do it well so that when those evil days come,

and notice he doesn't say if, he says before.

So when the evil days come, you will be anchored.

Then he describes what those evil days will feel

like. The years draw near when you will say,

I have no delight in them. Now there's something

almost tender and honest really about that phrase.

Solomon is not scolding old age. He's not saying

that growing old is shameful or that suffering

is a moral failure. He's simply telling the truth.

There's a season that comes in life when pleasure

becomes harder to access. When the good things

that used to delight you, you know, good company,

good food, good work, they start to lose their

savor. And anyone who's walked with an aging

parent or felt their own body start to slow down

knows exactly what he means. And then verse 2

gives us the first of several extended metaphors

that Solomon's going to use before the sun and

the light, the moon and the stars. are darkened

before the clouds return after the rain. Many

scholars, and I think rightly so, read this as

the dimming of eyesight and the general darkening

of life's vitality when you get older. Now think

about it. The sun, the moon, the stars, these

are the great lights that God has set in the

sky for day four of creation to mark time, to

bring order, to illuminate the world. When Solomon

says they grow dark, he's describing a world

that used to be bright and clear. becoming increasingly

shadowed, blurred, and dim. Then that final image,

the clouds return after the rain. Just when you

think the storm has passed, the sky might clear

up, but then clouds roll back in. That's what

aging can feel like. Recovery becomes harder

and harder. The gray weather that keeps returning

comes back after the last round. before it's

even cleared. And it's really what Solomon's

encouraging us with. He wants you to hear it,

not as a threat, but as an invitation. These

hard days are going to come, so remember your

creator. Not someday, not when you get around

to it, but now. While the body is still bright,

and the sun is still bright in your sky, your

body's still active, the days you still can delight

in, now, Zakar, remember. before the clouds roll

back in. Now Solomon does something wild here

for these next couple of verses. He gets very

specific. You might have been confused reading

it because we don't speak like this today, but

verses 3 and 4 are actually an anatomical poem.

Solomon is describing an aging human body, and

he uses the picture of an old household falling

into disrepair. And that imagery maps almost

perfectly onto the human frame itself. I'll read

it again. And the day that the watchmen of the

house tremble and valiant men bend down and the

grinding ones stand idle because they're few

and those who look through windows grow dark

and the doors in the street are shut as the sound

of the grinding mill is low and one will arise

at the sound of the bird and all the daughters

of song will sing softly. So let's slow down.

Let's take each of those. Image by image, verse

by verse, the watchmen of the house tremble.

Picture an old house with guards or watchmen

that are stationed to protect it. On the human

body, most interpreters will see this as the

hands or the arms, the parts of your body that

once held steady. They gripped tools. They carried

loads. They steadied us when we stumbled. And

now what do they do? They tremble and they shake.

If you've ever watched an elderly loved one try

to lift a spoon to their mouth, try to sign their

name with a pen that won't cooperate, you've

seen this verse fulfilled in real time. The valiant

men bend down. Those strong legs that once were

able to carry weight, they once were able to

stand tall for hours, now they bend and stoop.

The posture that used to be upright and confident

now curves under gravity and time. The grinding

ones stand idle because they're few. This one

is almost humorous in its bluntness. The teeth.

The grinders that chew our food become few in

number. Anyone who has watched a grandparent

struggle with dentures or simply lost teeth over

the decades knows exactly. what Solomon is talking

about. Those who look through windows grow dark.

You know, the eyes, the windows of the house,

the windows of the soul, we sometimes call them,

they grow cloudy, cataract covered, and dim.

What used to be sharp and clear now strains to

make out even familiar faces. The doors on the

street are shut as the sound of the grinding

mill is low. Think about this. The access to

the outside world is diminished because your

activity is diminished. The mill isn't active,

so people walk by. They don't pay attention to

it. They stop checking in. They stop remembering.

The ability to engage with others, it grows quieter

and harder over the years. Older folks might

recognize this next one. One will arise at the

sound of the bird, and all the daughters of song

will sing softly. Those who age often wake at

the slightest sound. The first chirp of a bird

at dawn interrupts the sleep that used to be

deep and undisturbed. Even the joy of music,

the daughters of song, it grows faint, either

because the hearing has dimmed or because the

capacity to sing along, to fully engage in the

joy of it. Friends, I don't think Solomon is

trying to depress us with this list. I think

he's trying to be honest with us. And here's

the thing, in a culture like his and ours, we

desperately want to pretend that this isn't coming.

We live in a world of anti -aging creams and

youth -obsessed marketing and a medical system

that can do extraordinary things. to extend life,

and all of that has a place, but none of it changes

the fundamental trajectory that Solomon is describing

here. The keepers of the house are going to tremble.

The mighty men will bow. The grinders will cease.

The windows will grow dim. I want us to be honest

about how much... more intrinsic our denial is

than even maybe in Solomon's day. He had no cosmetic

surgery. He had no assisted living facilities

tucked quietly off the main road. No algorithms

feeding him a constant stream of anti -aging

content to reassure him that decline was only

optional. And yet here's the thing. Even in his

far more exposed, far less medicated world, he

still had to write this unflinching poem because

the human heart's capacity for denial is ancient,

not modern. We've simply built entire industries

to do our denying for us. Funeral cosmetology

that makes a corpse look as if it might sit up

and speak. Retirement marketing that sells us

decades of golf carts and beach sunsets instead

of ever mentioning the cord that will eventually

snap. Euphemisms like past let us avoid saying

died. Solomon forces the picture on us in these

verses. We've engineered whole systems to keep

the picture at a comfortable distance. So let

me ask you plainly. Where have you outsourced

the work of facing your own mortality to an institution,

a euphemism, or a product, rather than addressing

the reality that Solomon is commanding here,

remembering your creator with open eyes? It's

not a passage about being pessimistic. It's a

passage about being honest, honest enough to

plan. Honest enough to prepare. Honest enough

to remember your creator now, today. Precisely

because you know where you're headed. That was

a strange kind of freedom in that honesty. When

you stop pretending that decline isn't coming,

you stop wasting your strength defending against

the inevitable. And you start investing in what

actually lasts. Solomon is going to continue

here into verse 5. It says, men are afraid of

a high place and of terrors on the road. Think

about that elderly person. They used to climb

ladders without a second thought. They used to

walk city streets confidently at any hour. And

now they hesitate at a single step. Afraid of

falling. Afraid of what might happen on even

a short walk to the mailbox. The fear here isn't

cowardice. It's the appropriate caution of a

body that knows it's fragile, that has felt gravity

turn from friend to enemy. The next one's less

common for us. The almond tree blooms. Now, this

is a beautiful and slightly mysterious image.

Now, the almond tree in that region blooms with

white flowers that from a distance look almost

like snow covering branches. So many see this

as picturing the white hair, the crown of years,

as Proverbs calls it. The blossoming across the

head, the way the flowers cover the almond branches

in early spring. But there's another fascinating

wordplay lurking underneath this image, and I

don't want you to miss it. I'll put it on the

screen for you to see some Hebrew here. There's

a Hebrew word for almond, shakade. Don't correct

me on the pronunciation. It's very similar to

another Hebrew word, shakad. Now, the first one,

ed, means almond. The second one there, ad, is

to watch or to waken. Now, the Lord God uses

that wordplay deliberately in Jeremiah chapter

Jeremiah 1:11

1, verses 11 and 12, for this exact connection.

Here's what happens. I'm just going to explain

it to you. Yahweh shows Jeremiah a vision, and

he asks Jeremiah what he sees. And Jeremiah responds

that he sees a rod or a branch of an almond tree,

shakad. And God replies, you have seen well,

for I am, did he say I'm an almond? No. He said,

I am watching, watching, shakad, over my word.

Jeremiah sees an almond tree. God says, you're

right. I am watching. So that almond tree, it

blooms the earliest of all the trees every year.

And it was a natural symbol of watchfulness,

paying attention, being alert before anything

else stirs. So even in this small detail, the

almond tree blossoming, the whitening hair of

old age, it's a quiet invitation. to watchfulness.

As the body grows old and the hair turns white

like almond blossoms, we are called to stay awake,

spiritually alert, watching for what God is doing

according to his word rather than drifting into

passive resignation. If I were to give this sermon

a subtitle, it would be this, Aging Bodies, Watchful

Hearts. We continue in verse 5. The grasshopper

drags himself along. What a picture there. You've

seen a grasshopper. Do they drag? They jump,

and they jump high. My kids get scared when they

jump on them. It's designed to leap, to be light

and springy and energetic. And then Solomon says,

this one, not anymore. They can't leap. It's

just dragging itself forward with great effort.

That's what it feels like when the body that

once moved with ease now only moves with labor.

What used to be effortless motion becomes slow,

deliberate dragging from one place to the next.

The caperberry is ineffective. In the ancient

world, a caperberry was something of an appetite.

stimulant, modifier associated with desire to

help things taste better. Solomon says even that

has stopped working. Even the appetites, the

desires that once drove us, they grow dull and

unresponsive. Finally now, Solomon says the quiet

part out loud. The thing all of this imagery

has been building toward. For man goes to his

eternal home. but mourners go about in the street.

All of this decline, trembling hands, dimming

eyes, fearful steps, dragging grasshoppers, appetites

gone flat, all of it is heading somewhere toward

what Solomon calls the eternal home. Death. The

mourners walking the streets, the funeral procession,

the grief that follows. every human life eventually.

I want to pause here and say something important.

Solomon isn't being morbid for morbidity's sake.

He's being loving. He's refusing to let us live

in denial about where the road leads, precisely

so that we'll take seriously the command that's

back in verse 1 to remember your creator. Not

remember him someday, once you've figured out

death is real. Remember him now. Well, you can

still feel the fear of a high place. Well, you

know exactly why you feel it, because your body

is proof that you're not permanent, that you're

heading toward that eternal home. The only question

that matters is whether you'll arrive there having

already remembered, already trusted, already

settled your life on the one who made you. Solomon

now brings us to the moment of death itself,

and he does it with two of the most beautiful

and haunting images in the entire book, verses

6 and 7. Now here, some of your versions may

say, remember, before verse 6. It might be italicized,

because in the Hebrew, it's not repeated. but

the translators often add it to make sense of

the consistency because it is one long sentence

and it draws us back to that single imperative.

It points us back to the creator and so we hold

the whole thing together. Let me read it here.

Remember him before the silver cord is snapped

and the golden bowl is crushed. The pitcher by

the spring is broken and the wheel of the cistern

is crushed. Then the dust will return to the

earth as it was in the spirit. will return to

God who gave it. I want you to picture with me

an old -fashioned oil lamp. And it's going to

be hanging. So you have a lamp, and it has a

cord that draws up to the ceiling. Silver cord,

gold lamp. Maybe the kind of ornate fixture you

find in a wealthy Victorian home. More likely

in Solomon's day, a wealthy home. Now if that's

hard for you, maybe picture a chandelier. Picture

a chandelier with a silver cord hanging in a

great hall. Now the golden bowl, it's going to

hold the oil that is lit and that silver cord

suspends the whole fixture from above. As long

as that cord is holding, the lamp is going to

burn bright and everyone is going to be experiencing

a room filled with light. But if that cord breaks,

If it snaps, even just one small fray gives way,

that golden bowl is going to come crashing to

the floor. The oil is going to spill, and instantly

the light that filled the room goes dark. Now,

if oil lamps and chandeliers feel like a world

away from your own experience, I have another

analogy for you. A hospital monitor, beeping

steadily hour after hour, Day after day, a rhythm

so constant the family in the room almost stops

hearing it. And then, without warning, that steady

beep flattens into one long tone. You can picture

an old rope bridge. It's been fraying strand

by strand for years, but safe to cross a thousand

times. Until one day... That last fiber gives

way, and the whole thing drops in an instant.

That's the shape of Solomon's image here. Something

structurally sound, something valuable, useful,

precious, holding steady for a lifetime, and

then in an instant, in a moment, gone. That is

Solomon's picture of death. It's not a gradual

dimming this time. It's a sudden severing. All

of that slow decline that we just walked through

in verses three through five, the trembling hands,

the dimming eyes, the dragging grasshopper, all

of that decline happens gradually over years,

over decades even. But death itself, when it

finally comes, it comes suddenly. The cord snaps.

The bowl crashes. The light that filled a life

goes dark in an instant and everyone in the room

feels the sudden absence of what used to shine

there. Solomon layers on a second image here.

The pitcher by the spring is broken and the wheel

at the cistern crushed. I want you to picture

a well, the ones that you maybe saw in the kids'

coloring books, a stone one, with a rope and

a pulley. In the ancient world, the women would

come daily to draw water. We know the story of

Jesus and the woman at the well. That pitcher

is lowered by a rope, is it not? Then to get

it back up, if they had a wheel, they'd crank

the wheel to bring the rope back up, full of

water for the household. This was the daily rhythm

of sustaining life itself, and in some parts

of the world still is. They don't get it out

of the tap. Water is life. And such a mechanism

brings it up from the depths day after day after

day. As Solomon says, in death, the pitcher shatters.

The wheel breaks. The mechanism that sustained

life stops working. No more water comes up from

that well. The rhythm that kept a household alive,

it just simply ceases. These metaphors of death,

they picture the same reality from different

angles. Something that used to function, used

to sustain, used to give light or water or life,

it suddenly stops. That's death. Sudden. Final.

The mechanism of this body simply ceases to work.

And then Solomon gives us in verse 7 one of the

most theologically loaded sentences in the entire

book. Then the dust will return to the earth

as it was and the spirit will return to God who

gave it. Do you hear the echo there? The dust

will return to the earth as it was. Do you remember

our call to worship? Genesis chapter 2, verse

Genesis 2:7

7. Then the Lord God formed man of the dust from

the ground and breathed into his nostrils the

breath of life, and so the man became a living

being. We were formed from dust, and to dust

we return. Genesis 3 .19 says almost the exact

same thing to Adam after the fall. Solomon, he's

not inventing a new theology here. He's simply

reminding us of the oldest truth in Scripture

about human nature. and human mortality. The

second half of the verse, I don't want us to

rush past it, says this, the spirit will return

to God who gave it. We've talked about this word

before for spirit in Ecclesiastes, that Hebrew

word ruach. Again, don't correct my pronunciation.

Spirit, breath, the same idea of the breath that

God breathed into Adam's nostrils in Genesis

2 -7. to make him a living being is the very

thing that returns to God when we die. Dust and

spirit. Material and immaterial. Physical and

spiritual. Two parts, one whole. Our bodies came

from dust and returned to dust, but our spirit,

the breath, the life, the very thing that makes

us more than dust, comes from God and returns

to God. This is not annihilation. This is not

the end of the story. The spirit returns to the

one who breathed it into existence in the first

place. And that ought to change entirely how

we hear this whole passage. Solomon has walked

us through eight verses of unflinching decline

and death. Trembling hands, dimming eyes, snapping

cords, shattering pictures. And then right at

the hinge point of this whole passage, he tells

us where the spirit goes. Back to God who gave

it. I want to pause here and point to a New Testament

passage that I think functions almost like a

commentary on this verse. Written by a man who

had read Ecclesiastes his whole life and then

met the risen Christ. If you want, you can turn

to 2 Corinthians 4. I'll also have it on the

screen for you to follow along. 2 Corinthians

2 Corinthians 4:16–18

4, verses 16 through 18. Therefore, we do not

lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying,

yet our inner man is being renewed day by day

for our momentary light affliction. is working

out for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond

all comparison. While we look not at the things

which are seen, but at the things which are not

seen. For the things which are seen are temporal,

but the things which are not seen are eternal.

Do you hear how directly Paul is describing the

same body Solomon just cataloged for us? The

trembling hands. the dimming eyes, the failing

strength. Paul uses the language of decay to

describe that. He's not contradicting Solomon.

He's standing exactly where Solomon stood, looking

at the same outer man wasting away. But Paul

can say something Solomon didn't have the vocabulary

yet to say. Solomon tells us honestly, without

embellishment, that the spirit returns to God

who gave it. Paul, writing on this side of the

resurrection, tells us why that return is not

merely a going home, but it's going toward an

eternal weight of glory. There's an ache that

Solomon seems to leave unresolved, a spirit departing

and dust returning. And the passage ends with

that vanity of vanities phrase, almost like a

sigh. Paul comes in to fill that with resurrection

hope. It doesn't erase Solomon's honesty about

decay. He simply shows us what lies on the other

side for a specific group of people, for those

whose hope is in Christ. So we hold both texts

together. Solomon gives us an unflinching diagnosis

in the earliest hope. The Spirit returns to God,

not annihilation. Paul gives us a fuller answer

and clarity. That return for those in Christ

is actually glory being prepared even now in

the very midst of that decay. So it means the

entire question of the passage, the weight of

that remember your creator comes down to this.

This is what you need to be mindful of every

single day. Will you know the God to whom your

spirit Will that meeting one day be a reunion

with the one that you've already remembered,

you've already trusted, already walked with through

those trembling and dimming and dragging years?

Because I pray it will not be the first time

that you've ever truly reckoned with him. Solomon

is going to close this section with his popular

phrase that confuses everyone. Vanity of vanities,

says the preacher. All is vanity. LSB uses Habel

as vanity. Some of you have different versions,

but I want you to feel the weight underneath

that word. It's a more vivid picture. Habel is

that vapor, that breath, that mist, that wind,

that soap bubbles. It's the fog that rolls off

your coffee cup on a cold morning and disappears

the moment you try to grab it. I know cold mornings

are a bit of ways away for us. When Solomon says

vanity of vanities, he's not making a moral judgment

that life is meaningless. And he's not talking

about pride. He's describing something fleeting,

something fragile. Here one moment and gone the

next. Vanity in the sense of vapor, not vanity

in the sense of pride. Habel is fleeting. It's

fragile. Here one moment and gone the next. That

is not the same as meaningless. A vapor is real

while it lasts. It's just brief. And I think

that is exactly Solomon's point after walking

us through this portrait of aging and death.

Your life is vanity. Habel, a vapor. But it's

real. It matters. It's just breathtakingly short.

The trembling hands, the dimming eyes, the snapping

cord, all of it is proof that your days are numbered.

You are right now in the process of becoming

a vapor. So what do you do with a life that is

vanity? With a life that is vapor? Well, you

don't waste it chasing more vanity. You don't

waste it chasing more pleasure and more wealth

and more achievement. All the things that Solomon

tested and found equally fleeting in the earlier

chapters. You anchor that vapor life to the one

thing that is not vanity. Your creator. This

is where I want to bring us back. to that first

word, the command from verse one, zakar, remember

your creator. Because remembering him is not

a one -time transaction. It's not a box that

you check off once in your youth and then you

move on from as you age. It's a covenantal remembering,

the kind of remembering that shapes how you live

every single day that you have left, however

many or few those days turn out to be. And here's

something beautiful I want you to carry with

you. That same word, zakar, it's not only describing

what we are to do to remember God, it describes

what God does toward us. If you want, you can

turn in Genesis chapter 8, one quick verse, or

Genesis 8 · chapter mention

you can just hear it. It's after the flood. It's

covered the earth. Judgment's fallen. No one

in his family, they've been shut up in that ark

for months. On end, surrounded by water, no sign

of when or if it would ever end. In Genesis chapter

Genesis 8:1

8, verse 1 says something very simply. Then God

remembered Noah. Remember, zakar, the same word.

God's remembering wasn't a passive mental note.

It moved him to act, to send the wind, to dry

up the waters. to bring Noah out onto dry ground

into a renewed world. God's remembering restored

and God's remembering rescued. So think about

what that means for us today. Looking at Solomon's

unflinching portrait of trembling hands and dimming

eyes and snap cords, we're commanded to remember

our creator. But our remembering is possible

and is sustained because his remembering came

first and it never fails. Just as God remembered

Noah in the middle of the flood and brought him

into new life, God remembers his people even

when their bodies fail. Even as the vapor of

our days evaporates before our eyes, he remembers

us. So our call to remember him, it's a response.

It's a response and a resting in his remembering

of us. A remembering that never breaks like a

cord, never crashes like a bowl. It endures forever.

So here's where I want to land this morning.

Solomon has given us this hard passage. I keep

listing these items because the next time you

ever read this, I don't want you to be confused

about the imagery. Trembling hands, lost teeth,

dimming eyes, fearful steps, dragging grasshoppers,

snapped cords, and shattered pitchers. He has

not softened a single image. He wants you to

feel exactly what is coming for this body of

yours, no matter how strong or young it feels

today. But he's also given us the encouragement

and the solution. Remember your creator. Remember

him. And that command is not a burden meant to

add anxiety to this sobering picture. Friends,

it's an invitation. It's an invitation to anchor

your brief, vapor -like life to the God whose

covenant faithfulness never evaporates, to the

God who remembered Noah in the flood, to the

God who breathed Ruach into Adam's dust and promises

that that same spirit will return to him safe

at the end of a faithful life. So here's my charge.

Practically, concretely, to remember your creator

now, not when your hands start trembling, not

when your eyesight starts to dim, not when the

doctor gives you news you didn't want to hear.

Now, today, this week, while you still have strength

and clarity to build the habit. So what does

that look like? Start your mornings before anything

else pulls at your attention with a deliberate

act of zakar, remembering. Open the word. Remind

yourself who God is to you. actively remember

his covenant faithfulness before the noise of

your day begins. And then you carry that remembering

with you as a posture, not as a morning ritual.

It's throughout the ordinary moments of life.

You actively return your mind, your thinking

to him. In your car, at your desk, folding laundry,

changing diapers, doing homework. sitting at

the dinner table. Let remembering become the

rhythm underneath every other rhythm of your

life so that by the time your own silver cord

phrase, and it will for every single one of us,

that you will not be scrambling to remember him

for the first time. This is a prayer for those

who trust in the Lord that when the cord snaps,

We'll simply be going home to the one we've been

walking with all along. And next time, in a few

weeks, we're going to finish this book together.

Ecclesiastes 12, verses 9 through 14. And Solomon's

Ecclesiastes 12:9–14

going to step back and give us a verdict on everything

that he's taught throughout this book. It's a

fitting conclusion. I don't want you to miss

it. But for now, I want you to carry this with

us. Our lives are vanity, vapor. A mist, brief

and fleeting, real but passing. But our creator's

faithfulness, it's not vanity. It endures. He

remembered Noah. He breathed into Adam. He can

remember you. Friends, let's posture our hearts

in prayer. Father, you know us better than we

know ourselves. You know these bodies of ours

formed from dust, breathed to life by your own

hand. And we know that we're heading one day

back to dust again. We thank you that even as

our hands may tremble, even when our eyes will

surely dim, you do not change. You do not forget.

As we sang earlier, your faithfulness surely

stands and endures forever. So we ask, teach

us, Lord. Teach us to remember you now. Not as

a duty that we grudgingly perform. But help us

to remember you as the very anchor of our lives,

the one solid thing we can do in a world full

of vanity. And just as you remembered Noah and

brought him through the flood into new life,

remember us. Hold us fast. In youth and in age,

remind us. that our very breath of life comes

from you and one day will return. Help us to

prepare for that day, unashamed, unflinching,

because of your faithfulness. We pray this in

your name.