"Trouble Comes" Ecclesiastes 12:1-8 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Well, good morning, Emmanuel.

Good morning.

Let me invite you to open your Bibles to Ecclesiastes in chapter 12.

Ecclesiastes, chapter 12 is our text for this morning.

Ecclesiastes 12 · chapter mention

As you're doing so, whether you're in the atrium or worshiping with us online or here in the worship center, let me extend you a very happy new year.

We'll be spending one more week together as a church in Ecclesiastes before Pastor Jesse returns next week.

What we're looking at this morning is a little bit of an obscure text, but sometimes those obscure texts are the ones the Lord uses in very powerful ways in our life.

And I trust this morning this text will be an encouragement to you as you reflect on the opportunities the Lord will give you this year to glorify Jesus Christ.

So let's begin our time by reading from God's Word.

Look down at your Bibles and follow with me.

I'm going to read Ecclesiastes chapter 12.

Ecclesiastes 12 · chapter mention

Ecclesiastes chapter 12, beginning in verse 1.

Ecclesiastes 12 · chapter mention

Look down and follow with me as I read God's Word.

Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth.

Before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, I have no pleasure in them.

Before the sun and the light and the moon and stars are darkened, and the clouds return after the rain.

In the day when the keepers of the house tremble and the strong men are bent, the grinders cease because they are few, and those who look through the windows are dimmed.

And the doors in the street are shut, when the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low.

They are afraid also of what is high, and terrors are in the way.

The almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along, and desire fails, because man is going to his eternal home, and the mourners go about in the streets.

Before the silver cord is snapped and the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher is shattered at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern, and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.

Vanity of vanities, says the preacher, all is vanity.

This is God's word.

I wonder how you would answer this question.

If I were to ask you, what is more important, what's more crucial in facing the new year?

Looking backwards or looking forward?

Is it more important to be retrospective or prospective in order to advance in your life?

And if you think about it, it's actually a little bit of a trick question, isn't it?

Because both are necessary.

I'm sure you will encounter people who will say flippantly, I never look back.

But if you think a little more deeply about your life, it's absolutely necessary to do both, isn't it?

And certainly when you look at the Bible, we find that a Christian, according to the Bible, lives in the tension, trapped in the tension of needing to look back and look forward simultaneously.

Christians live trapped between the past and the present.

But not all tension is bad.

Christian life is full of tension, and many tensions, even in the natural world, are good and necessary.

Some of you this morning got to church by crossing a bridge that was stable precisely because it was suspended under immense tension.

Were the tension to be relieved in that bridge, bad things would ensue.

So it is for a Christian.

We live in the tension between looking forward to the future and looking back upon the past.

And that's the place where we find solid footing to place our feet and advance in our life.

Ecclesiastes chapter 12, in this poetic section that we just read, is a passage perfectly suited to read at the beginning of a new year.

Ecclesiastes 12 · chapter mention

It teaches us if we're going to advance in our Christian life, if we're going to glorify Jesus Christ in the coming year, we have to learn both to look forward and to look back.

This morning we'll see in Ecclesiastes chapter 12 that to advance in our Christian life, you need to be able to look back on your creator and look forward to his future.

Ecclesiastes 12 · chapter mention

Let's begin by looking at this text, and the first thing that we see in Ecclesiastes in chapter 12 is that to live in this world you need to remember something.

Verse 1 says you need to remember your creator.

Look down at your Bibles.

In verse 1, we read, Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth.

Remember your creator.

It's the only imperative in this entire section.

It's the one command.

And everything that flows from this verse are reasons, our impetus, our motivation to remember your creator.

But this is the all-encompassing command.

This is the thing that if you do will radically benefit you and all spheres of life in the coming year.

Remember your creator.

It's a simple command.

Yet profound in its implications.

Because to remember something in the Bible is more than just a mere act of recalling some memory.

It's a whole personed action.

We see this both in the way that people are called to remember things and in the way that God acts when he remembers things.

For example, just think of a couple texts in the Bible where God remembers something.

In the book of Genesis and in the book of 1 Samuel, God remembers Rachel and He remembers Hannah.

And he doesn't just say, oh, those are interesting women.

But those texts say that he remembers them and gives them children.

He responds to them appropriately with his character.

The entire book of Exodus, the entire Exodus of the people of Israel out of Egypt into the promised land, the entire history of Israel is about God's remembrance.

It's all prefaced in the book of Exodus in chapter two, where God tells Moses, I have heard the cry of my people, and I have remembered the covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

His remembrance caused him to act, to save, to deliver, to redeem his people.

When God remembers something, he doesn't just recall it to mind and find it interesting, but he then acts in accord with his character.

For God to remember something entails action corresponding to who he is.

Just a couple more examples.

We see this everywhere in the Bible.

When God remembers sin, because of his holy nature, he hates all that is evil and he responds appropriately.

So Jeremiah 14, 10, God says that his people have wandered, and now he will remember their iniquity and punish their sins.

But because he's a covenant-keeping God and a savior by nature, who has provided a way of forgiveness and atonement, text like Isaiah 43, 5 says that he remembers not their sins.

He blots out their transgressions and he does this for his own sake.

When God remembers his covenants, when he remembers his people, when he remembers who he is and what he has promised, he acts in accord with his nature.

And so it is when God calls his people to remember things.

He asks us to respond appropriately.

There's a maybe just one little illustration, just on a secular level, you could say, on the kind of action that's entailed in remembering.

In Esther chapter 9, when Mordecai and Esther were establishing the custom of Purim, the celebration of Purim.

Esther 9 · chapter mention

Esther chapter 9 says the Jews firmly obligated themselves that these days should be remembered and kept throughout every generation.

Esther 9 · chapter mention

You don't even need to say kept.

Remember entails action corresponding to what you remember.

You remember something and you act.

So remembering God in Ecclesiastes chapter 12, verse 1 is the same.

Ecclesiastes 12:1

Remembering your creator means remembering all that God is, all of the implications of knowing this God, of being in relationship with this God, and responding appropriately.

For there to be a creator, in particular, this text doesn't just say remember God, which is usually the way the book of Ecclesiastes refers to God, is with that simple title.

He's the God, the God of the universe, the creator.

But particularly to hone in on this aspect of his being the creator entails some implications, doesn't it?

For God to be your creator means that he owns you, means that he has authority over you, means that there are standards by which he can hold you accountable, means that he will judge you, means that he alone can save you.

To say remember your creator means to remember all that God is and to respond appropriately.

You could just sum it up this way: to remember your creator is to have a whole-personed response to the wholeness of God.

A whole personed response to the wholeness of God.

One of my favorite verses that sums this up, uh, this sums up what it looks like to remember God is in Isaiah chapter 64.

Isaiah 64 · chapter mention

Isaiah chapter 64, verse 6 says that God meets those who joyfully work righteousness, who remember him in their ways.

Isaiah 64:6

Remembering God is to joyfully work righteousness.

They're the same.

To remember God is not just to remember facts, not just to know some things.

It is to joyfully work righteousness.

It is to walk with God, to walk in his paths, to follow after him closely, to conform your life before him, to walk humbly with him and to do it joyfully, knowing that this God is glorious and great and merciful and patient, abounding in steadfast love.

It is to joyfully walk in righteousness.

To remember your creator is calling you to a whole person response to all that God is.

It is to remember and to grow, increasing in your knowledge of all that God is, and to respond with all that you are.

As you recall his mercy and his compassion, his holiness and his justice, his wrath and his power, his steadfastness and his wisdom, his unchanging perfections, that ought to, as you grow in your knowledge and your intimate connection with the reality of who this God is, it ought to compel, it ought to demand a response from you.

A response of humility before him, of repentance from your sin, of joyfully embracing him by faith, of walking with him in holiness, of desiring to rid yourself of anything that would be displeasing to this glorious and perfect God.

It should compel you to live a life of joy and peace, free of worry and anxiety, a life of confidence, a life of power, a life of service, a life of meaning, as you remember your creator and respond with all that you are to all that he is.

That's what it is to remember your creator.

And do you know that if you are going to maximize 2021, this is the text.

It is to remember your creator.

That is the command, that's the banner that it has to fly over your ear.

To grow an increasing knowledge and intimate connection to all that God is, will draw out of you a whole person's response.

And by the way, you know, there is a primary way that you can do that.

There is a way that God has revealed his perfections.

There's a way that God has revealed his attributes to you.

And it's sitting in your lap.

So by the way, if you were wondering if this first sermon of 2021 was going to be a read your Bible more sermon, wonder no more.

If you will know God more at the end of 2021 than you know of him at the beginning of 2021, then you will be compelled to love him more, to be humble before him, to walk with him.

You'll be compelled to walk in righteousness joyfully when you remember all that your creator is, and you call it to mind, and you place him ever before you.

Remember your creator.

But what Solomon is going to do in the rest of this text is he's going to impel us to give us impetus to do this with urgency.

So what follows in the three sections that flow from the rest of this passage are three things to look forward to.

Remember all that God is, and we do that in light of the future.

What he does is in these texts is he gives us three things that are coming.

Three realities that are impending in your life that ought to lend urgency to your pursuit of God.

You see, in the end of verse 1, at the beginning of verse 2, and in verse 6, before, before, before.

There are three things that are coming to you in your life, and if you remember these three future realities, it will compel you with urgency to seek the Lord now.

So we're going to walk through these three realities, these reasons to remember God now.

You ought to remember your creator before, first, trouble comes.

Look down at the end of verse 1.

Solomon says, To remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near, of which you'll say, I have no pleasure in them.

There are days coming that you won't enjoy.

You notice that's the opposite of what we read last week in Ecclesiastes chapter 11, verse 9 says, Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth.

Ecclesiastes 11:9

But if you live long enough, there will be days that are not full of enjoyment.

That's just reality.

And so you may wonder why.

Specifically, is there a reason why I won't enjoy these future days?

Well, one of the possibilities is that age, if we live long enough, we will all experience the difficulties of age.

We'll experience lack of vigor, pains.

It's and of course, if you were to survey the folks in our congregation or the folks in our society, you would find all kinds of varying answers about the experiences of aging.

And yet, there are difficulties that if you live long enough, you will not escape.

But I don't think that Solomon is merely discussing age.

Because you'll notice that he uses, if you just look at the text, he says, these evil days are coming.

Well, what is an evil day?

Well, the evil day is a general word, Hebrew word rods.

Translated different ways in the Bible.

It's just the most generic word for something bad.

It could be pain, it could be suffering, it could be morally evil, it could be some trouble or disaster.

I think a good way to translate it would be trouble, before trouble comes, and trouble is coming.

It might be old age, but this trouble could come at any point in your life.

If you flip back in your Bible to Ecclesiastes 7, verse 14, Solomon says, In the day of prosperity, be joyful, and in the day of adversity or trouble, same same language of chapter 12, consider that God has made one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him.

Ecclesiastes 7:14

All people experience joy and trouble in life, and God is in control of it, and you aren't.

And so whether you are old or whether you are young, if you just keep living a little bit longer, you will find that trouble will come into your life.

In fact, this word trouble is used even in this particular phrase, a day of trouble is used to describe the exile when Babylon came and destroyed Jerusalem and took the people into exile.

That was a day of trouble.

And do you know that day was indiscriminate regarding anyone's age in that city?

You don't know when trouble will come into your life.

You don't know when pain will come into your life.

And so the point that the preacher is making to us in Ecclesiastes chapter 12 is that whether it comes in the distant future or whether it comes in the near future, right now, seize this day to pursue God.

Ecclesiastes 12 · chapter mention

Act now, remember him now, serve him now.

Take every opportunity available to you to grow your roots deeper into the reality of your creator.

Grow a deeper, more rock steady relationship with him.

Dig deep and build a foundation in your relationship with your God.

Get to know his attributes and his character, get to know his covenants and his promises.

There are books in your Bible this year that are just a vast wasteland in your mind.

Why wait?

The whole totality of Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for your instruction, so that you may be equipped for every good work, so that you may walk in his ways joyfully.

Why wait?

Why not make now the time that you pursue him?

Because you know that he is a greater rewarder than any pursuit in this world, because he made this world.

Remember your creator because the day of trouble is coming.

But Solomon continues to add urgency to this plea to us.

He says, not only remember because trouble is coming, but your world is going to end.

Remember your creator before trouble comes and your world ends.

What he does in verse 2 through 5 is he ups the ante.

He moves beyond the symbol of old age or individual trouble, and he describes a city under siege, and he gives us this picture of prophetic images that describe an eschatological end of a city, end of a world scenario to describe your world, your life ending.

We're going to dig into these verses for a couple minutes, but I want, as we go through it, a little bit of what we have to look at to understand this poem is semi-technical, but as we go through it, I want you in your mind to begin trying to build the scene of this vast city that is under siege and is coming down.

We begin in verse 2.

Look down in your Bibles at verse 2.

Solomon says, Remember your creator before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened, and the clouds return after the rain.

This combination of every form of light in the known world, sun and the moon and the stars, and the clouds are here, and the rain is coming, and there's a storm, is a kind of imagery that is used consistently through the Bible in eschatological passages to describe God's judgment, a great day of judgment.

For example, in Isaiah and chapter 13, we read, Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel with wrath and fierce anger, to make the land a desolation and to destroy its sinners from it.

For the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light, and the sun will be dark at its rising, and the moon will not shed its light.

It's a kind of imagery that's being used here to describe your life.

There is a day of the end that will come upon you.

If your life is a city, if your life is an industry, if your life is a town, there is a day coming when darkness will fall upon it, and judgment will come.

And he continues now in verse three.

Look down at your text in verse three, and we describe all of the people and the inhabitants of this city.

Verse three says, In the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those who look through the windows are dimmed.

The keepers of the house are the watchmen on the wall, the strong ones who are meant to sound the alarm.

But they are terrified.

They are the first to see the disaster that is coming, and they can't do anything because they're paralyzed with sheer terror.

The next individuals that are described are the strongmen, the men of valor, the heroes, the who are meant to protect this city, and yet they're bent, they're crushed, they're crooked, they're stooped over.

The same position into which they were dragged into exile in Babylon.

No defenses, nothing is left.

And so the text continues by saying the grinders cease because they are few.

Grinders are those who are working at the mill to grind grain.

Usually these would be women, and this is a common scene.

It's part of everyday life all over the ancient Near East.

You would find women grinding at a mill in individual homes, at stalls and marketplaces, in the king's storehouses.

It was absolutely necessary for everyday life to continue.

You had to grind grain to eat bread.

But now that has stopped.

There are no people to feed.

The grinders themselves are dying.

The grain is gone.

Life is ending.

And then verse 3 says, And those who look through the windows are dimmed.

And those who look through the window, it's a common literary motif throughout the Old Testament, of a woman looking through a window, waiting for a last hope.

So a good illustration of this is in Judges in chapter 5, when Sisera, the enemy of Israel, had been conquered by Yael, and Deborah and Barak had won a victory for Israel.

Judges in chapter 5, Deborah and Barak sing a song of victory.

And Deborah portrays Sisera's mother looking through the window, longing for her son to come home.

When will he come?

When will he come?

So it's a picture of someone looking for a last hope, a last resort.

And in Ecclesiastes 12, those who are looking for a last hope grow dim because there is none.

There is nothing but despair.

Because all hope has been extinguished.

You see the city in your mind.

It's utter chaos and terror.

And yet it just continues.

In verse 4, Solomon begins to describe life in the city and the sounds in the city.

So verse 4 says the doors on the street are shut, and the doors are the double doors that open into the city, and there is a street.

That street itself is the marketplace where commerce, where social life, where there are stalls, where there's business, where there are people meeting and singing.

All of normal human life and interaction is kind of centered around the marketplace in the center of the city.

And it's shut.

Commerce has ceased, business has ended, hopes for any kind of gain or profit terminated.

And now we begin to hear the sounds echoing through this city, and they are not the kind that you would expect.

In a city that is at all thriving, look at the middle of verse 4.

There are two sounds that go down and one that goes up.

When the sound of grinding is low, and the end of the verse, and all the daughters of song are brought low.

So the sound of grinding is, again, grinding grain.

That's normal life.

That's normal everyday life.

The normal everyday buzz of things that you do just to sustain everyday life, gone.

And the daughters of song is an idiom to describe singing, singing and laughing, and kids playing and people rejoicing in the weddings and the celebrations and the normal course of life and the joys that are part of it are gone.

And there's just silence.

Ominous, eerie silence.

In the middle of the city that was once busy.

The only thing that you can hear is in the middle of this text.

One rises up at the sound of a bird.

The only sound rising in this city is just a few birds that would ordinarily be entirely imperceptible now rain out through the city.

The only thing audible in this scene.

This is a picture of ominous disaster, pain, suffering, sorrow.

And in fact, Solomon only wants to amplify it a little more.

So look at verse 5.

He says, They're afraid also of what is high, and terrors are on the way.

And he begins to expand this even more in the end of chapter 5, the end of verse 5, where he begins to describe all of nature coming undone.

Notice at the end of verse 5.

The almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along, and desire fails.

And so nature is coming undone now.

Now, these three images are three images of three kinds of nature, three kinds of plants being destroyed.

The almond tree blossoms, and this is an interesting text because this word that's translated blossom in most English translations can also be translated despised.

And it's a wordplay.

As the almond tree is blossoming, it's despised because you won't get any of its fruits.

You won't enjoy because destruction is coming into your city.

That's why the locust is dragging itself along, because the locusts have destroyed everything and they're so fat that they can't even move anymore.

And now the cape that says desire fails, or your text might say the caperberry tree fails.

The caperberry was a fruit in the ancient world that was synonymous with an aphrodisiac or desire.

But this text is speaking not just about the desire that the aphrodisiac stood for, that the berry stood for.

It's talking about the tree itself as being destroyed, fails.

There are no more crops, there's no more nature.

Nature's being undone, the city is being destroyed.

It's a picture of cosmic destruction.

Just to sum this up, I want to just parallel this with the book of Revelation, which of course we know is a book that describes eschatological judgment.

So one of those texts in the book of Revelation mirrors some of the imagery that we see in the book of Ecclesiastes.

Revelation 18, 21 says, So will Babylon, the great city, be thrown down with violence and will be found no more.

The sounds of harpists and musicians, flute players, and trumpets will be heard in you no more.

A craftsman of any craft will be found in you no more, and the sound of the mill will be heard in you no more.

You see the parallel in the language?

The same way that the book of Revelation describes judgment on the world when Christ returns, so the writer of Ecclesiastes is describing judgment of a city in the scene.

But all of this grand imagery is smashed now at the end of verse 5 into one human life.

At the end of verse 5.

Because man is going to his eternal home, and the mourners go about the streets.

So you see, all this imagery is meant to depict the end of the world.

No, the end of your world.

Because when you die, a world ends.

Yours.

And more than that, it's meant to end, it's meant to symbolize the end of all of your significance.

Anywhere that your work might have found some ramifications, anywhere your work might have found some repercussions, all of it will be terminated at an end.

There will be an end to your world.

Not just your life, but the lives of those around you, the life of those you impact, the significance that you think that your work and your labors might resound into the future, all of it will come crashing down.

Your world will end.

That kind of contemplating about the future is not popular, certainly in our society.

We live in a society where it's frequently said that the afterlife is merely wish thinking.

All that can be known is that well, nothing can really be known, but you can surely be optimistic that if we work hard and work together, we can build a better tomorrow.

But isn't tomorrow just wish thinking?

You don't know what is coming tomorrow.

And and isn't the hope that progress will entail some utopian view of the future, isn't that wish thinking?

If this world is all there is, what is more natural in this world than violence and death and disappointment?

Solomon is sobering us up as we contemplate our lives.

What he's saying is that there is weight and significance in your life.

He is right to compare your life not just to a mere celebration, but to the grand life of a grand international city.

That's what he's doing.

He's comparing your individual life to a grand international city.

Because that's what you are.

You are a human being made in the image of God.

You are not merely a collocation of accidental atoms arranged for a moment that came from nowhere and are going nowhere.

No, you are created in the image of God.

You have a creator.

He has stamped his image on your soul, and you know that you long for eternity.

That's what you were made for.

But if you live merely for this world, all of that will come crashing down.

And everywhere you look, you might find significance.

All of that will be snuffed out.

You were made to live for more than this world.

That's what Solomon is pleading with you to come to grips with.

You were made for more.

And only when you live in light of the reality that you were made for more than this world will you maximize this present.

You know, C.S.

Lewis who said that living in light of this reality, well, he painted a beautiful picture of what it looks like to live in light of the reality that you are a human being in the image of God with a soul that will live forever.

And every human being that you come in contact with is of infinitely more significance than the trade of some international city.

You are coming into contact with human beings with souls that will live forever.

He said it's a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship.

Or else a horror and a corruption, such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.

There are no ordinary people.

You are a human being made in the image of God.

You will live forever.

And if you know Jesus Christ, your future is not merely to store up treasures in this earth, but treasures in heaven, and you will be resurrected in the likeness of Jesus Christ.

You will be of such infinitely greater glory than you can possibly imagine.

The scripture says that you will reign with Jesus Christ forever and ever.

You will judge angels, and only when you live in light of that reality will you live in this world in a way that matters.

Remember your creator, because trouble is coming, and if you merely live for this world, all of it will end.

Remember your creator.

But Solomon also says that trouble may come, in fact, it will come, your world will end, and it can do so suddenly and conclusively.

That's the last thing he warns us of in this text.

Remember your creator, before trouble comes, your world ends, and it could come suddenly and decisively.

Look down in verse 6.

In verse 6, Solomon says, Before the silver cord is snapped, or the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher is shattered at the fountain, and the wheel is broken at the cistern.

So you have four images of a piece of pottery shattering, conclusively, finally, never to be undone.

And what he's symbolizing is your life.

The first line of the verse is speaking of a lamp.

The silver cord and the golden bowl are the base and the stand of a lamp.

And a lamp is a common image of a person's life.

In the book of Job, Job says, Why don't the wicked have their lamp snuffed out?

Lamp with its light is a symbol of life.

And here Solomon is describing this sudden, crushing blow that shatters the lamp, never to be undone.

So it is with our lives.

We don't know when it will end.

We don't know when trouble will come.

And when it comes, there will be no undoing it.

There's a finality, a deadly finality to death.

So then he describes at the end of the verse a pitcher being shattered, a will being broken, and he's describing a funerary custom in which in the ancient Near East pots would be shattered and they would be tossed into the grave of the deceased as a symbol of the reality that this is the life we all live.

Our lives are like clay.

God holds them in his hand.

One day they will be shattered.

You do not know when, and you cannot undo it when it comes.

When that happens, verse 7, the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.

What a summary of your life.

Your body will return to the earth whence it came, your spirit will return to God.

There will be an ultimate finality to your death.

Now, what is he saying about spirit?

Is he well remember?

When Solomon describes the spirit in this text, he's a little bit elusive.

He doesn't describe it in any kind of detail.

We get far more revelation about the destiny of the spirit in other texts of the Bible, particularly in the New Testament.

But he does allude one other point in the book to the destiny of the spirit after this life.

In chapter 3 and verse 21, he says, Who knows in the sense of who takes it to heart?

Who considers that the spirit of man goes upwards and the spirit of the animal returns to the earth?

That is, there's a difference between you and your dog.

You have a soul that will live forever.

Why don't you remember it and live in light of it?

He's saying the same thing here.

Because you'll notice at the end of verse 8 how he sums this up: Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

And that word vanity means breath.

Breath, breath, all of life is a breath.

It's here for a moment, and as soon as you try and bundle it up, bottle it up, taste it, savor it, it slips through your fingers faster than you can possibly enjoy it.

So it is with your life.

All of your dreams and your plans for this future, all of the implications that you want your life to have, all of the significance and the meaning that you're hoping to have in your life, in your world, all of it is like a breath.

Suddenly and quickly that breath slips through your fingers, never to be regained.

That ought to radically affect the way we live our lives in the present.

Just a note before we move any further, because you'll probably recall, if you have read the book of Ecclesiastes before, that Solomon has said this exact expression before: vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

That's the way he began the book.

Do you remember?

In chapter one and verse two, he begins his book with this declaration: Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

And there he described the circular nature of life.

A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.

The sun rises and the sun sets, and on its course it goes around and it rises again.

The wind blows to the north and to the south and around its circuits, and there it blows again.

The streams flow to the ocean and they flow back and there they flow again.

The heart of man is never satisfied, his eyes are never tired of seeing, his ears are never tired of hearing.

So the all of human life is circular, round and round, nothing changes, nothing lasts, nothing has ultimate significance.

He's making the point that if this world is all there is, then life is a breath in the sense that it doesn't matter.

But now he has gotten to the end of the book, and as he has gone through this book, he has reminded us that there is a God who will bring us to judgment, and that judgment lends weight, eternal significance to every moment in this breath-like life.

So now he gets to the end and he says, Life is a breath, it's slipping through your fingers.

Why don't you maximize it for eternity?

Why don't you live like 2021 won't be your last year?

Like you are a soul that will live 10 million times 10 million more years.

And everything that you do for Christ in this life will echo through the corridors of that eternity.

Remember your creator.

Remember who he is and live in light of the reality that you have a God of infinite glory who made you to know him, enjoy him, and serve him.

And do it now.

Because you don't know when trouble comes, your world will end, and when it does, it will happen suddenly and finally.

Remember your creator and live like he's real, because he is.

This is the we'll call it the penultimate conclusion to the book of Ecclesiastes because he has a final word that we won't look at this morning.

His penultimate conclusion is remember your creator.

That's how you live a life of significance, live a life that matters.

But do you know, and you do know, that the Bible gives us more revelation about living a life that matters.

There is so much futility in life that's been highlighted in the book of Ecclesiastes.

There are disappointments and that things go wrong.

And then there is this inescapable reality that life is fleeting and we will die and we will perish, and everything that happened in this world, this world will pass away.

There is a futility, an uncontrollable, ununderstandable reality about this world.

As long as you live under the sun, you need to know how to live a life of meaning in a futile world.

And there are, I think, one or two other passages that would be helpful to conclude that teach us how to live a life of meaning in a world of futility.

I want to turn to Psalm chapter 89, but I think Psalm chapter 89 is going to teach us that we could expand on this idea of remembering our creator to live a life of meaning.

Psalms 89 · chapter mention Psalms 89 · chapter mention

The Bible teaches us not just to remember our creator, but to remember our Savior.

And we see this in Psalm chapter 89.

Psalms 89 · chapter mention

What do I mean?

Well, Psalm 89, perhaps even before you get distracted by reading it on the screen, let me tell you what Psalm 89 is.

It's a very long psalm.

I highly encourage you, if you're going to know your creator, begin by this afternoon, reading Psalm 89.

It's a long psalm.

It's an exposition of the Davidic covenant, the promise that God made to King David that for one of King David's descendants would be a king who would rule over God's kingdom, and it would have no end.

So God promised a descendant to David who would be a king ruling over God's kingdom with no end, an eternal kingdom.

That's what we want.

That would undo the futility of this life.

It would be the end of death, the end of sorrow, the end of loss, a kingdom with no end, with God at its head and his ruler on the throne.

And all of Psalm 89 is an exposition, a contemplation, a meditation on this Davidic covenant that hasn't come to fruition yet.

There is no king on that throne yet.

And he comes to the end of the psalm and he says, How long, O Lord, remember my short time?

For what vanity you have created all the children of man.

What futility is life in this world?

What man can live and never see death?

Who can deliver his soul from the power of Sheol?

See how he's meditating meditating on the same themes that the author of Ecclesiastes brings to our mind?

The shortness and the futility and the fleetingness of life.

And he's saying, God, I want that king to come who will undo the futility and the disappointments of this world.

That king has come.

The Apostle Paul writes, Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel.

It's a letter that he wrote to his disciple Timothy, and in this verse, it captures everything that the psalmist was longing for.

He tells Timothy to remember Jesus Christ, who is the offspring of David.

He's the promised son of David, and he's risen from the dead.

He has met the two requirements necessary to reverse the futility of this world.

He is the offspring of David who's going to rule over a kingdom with no end.

He will undo death, he will undo sorrow, he will undo tears, and he has risen from the dead, passing through the gates of death and blasting a hole out the other side to make it sure.

And Paul is looking at Timothy, and through him looking at us to say, if you would live a life in this world of significance and power, you must remember Jesus Christ, the offspring of David, who will reign over a throne, reign over a kingdom with no end, because he has risen from the dead.

You want to live in 2021 in a way that matters.

This is it.

This is the summation of biblical wisdom.

This is God's word for us.

Remember your creator who has sent his Son Jesus Christ, who has risen from the dead.

To say that he's risen from the dead obviously implies that he had to die.

And the Bible proclaims that the death that Jesus died was as a representative.

A representative for us, nonetheless, for us who have sinned against our creator, who do deserve to be judged by this God who owns us and has authority over us.

And this Jesus, our champion, our representative, stood in our place, and in his death he bore all the judgment that we deserve for our sins against our Creator.

He died the death we deserved.

His body went into the grave, his soul returned to God.

Jesus experienced every bit of it.

He licked the dregs of the wrath of God, turned that cup over, and said, It's finished.

And three days later, he resurrected from that unalterable death.

He altered it.

He reversed the reality of death, burst out of the grave, ascended into heaven, sat down at the right hand of God, and is now ready to come and judge the living and the dead.

And before he comes, he's calling all people everywhere to recognize that Jesus Christ is who he says he is, repent of your sins and believe in him.

And if you do that, your sins will be forgiven.

You'll be brought into relationship with your Creator, the God who made you.

And you will live a life in this world of expectant hope, knowing that this God who resurrected from the dead will one day come again.

You know, the book of Revelation says that Jesus is the living one who died and is alive forevermore, who has the keys to death and Hades, who sits on a throne, and all the creatures of heaven sing blessing and honor and glory and might to him forever and ever.

And because he has resurrected from the dead, he has given us the citizenship in heaven, and now he will return and give us bodies to be like his, so that when you die and your body is gone into the ground and your soul is returned to God, when Jesus returns, he will raise that body from the dead and he will recreate it like his, a body with no pain and no sin, a spiritual body that is a body not that is ephereal, but a body that is filled with the spirit, that loves God, and there are no barriers between you and your Creator forevermore.

You will be with him where he is to see him face to face in Revelation chapter 22.

Revelation 22 · chapter mention

We've been looking at a text that describes end-time judgment, like the book of Revelation.

And if you believe in Jesus Christ who passed through this death, then the imagery over your life passes through the book of Revelation to the end, the conclusion in chapter 22 that says, His people will see his face and reign with him forever and ever.

The offspring of David has overcome, and his people will reign with him forever and ever.

Remember Jesus Christ.

Looking back at his death and his resurrection and forward to your resurrection.

That is the place when you live in the tension between Jesus' past and his future, between your past and your future, that's the place where you will find solid footing to advance in your life this year.

Remembering your Creator and remembering Jesus Christ.

When you are tempted, remember that Jesus is so worthy of your obedience.

When you are despairing, remember that Jesus, like you, experienced every suffering and temptation that is common to man, yet without sin, and is willing and able to help you and to help you to overcome.

Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, with whom you will reign forever and ever and ever.

And do it before trouble comes, before your world ends, suddenly, without warning, remember Jesus Christ.

And when you remember Jesus Christ, none of your labor for him will be in vain.

Amen.

Father, we worship you because of who you are, and we thank you because you have sent Jesus Christ.

Thank you that you are a creator worthy of our worship, worthy of all of us.

Lord, we ask this year that you would open our eyes to more of your glory.

As a congregation, Lord, we ask that you would grow us in the maturity that is ours in Jesus Christ, that you would unite us with Him, that you would open the eyes of our hearts to more of His attributes, His perfections, and that you would cause us to respond by the power of your Spirit in a manner worthy of Jesus Christ, worthy of our calling, worthy of the gospel, that we would walk in unity, that we would walk in love, that we would walk in joy and in humility before our God.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to meet you personally at Emmanuel Bible Church.

Our service times and other church information is on our website at ibc.church.

If you want information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been an encouragement to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.