True North, Part 10
Tonight
we come to the final chapters in our study of the book of Ecclesiastes.
A) The Theme of this final
section{ Life is a gift – ENJOY IT!
B) Solomon is going to lay out four instructions to help us enjoy life in
the Lord – living under the Sun!
C) Ch. 11:7-9 Rejoice /
Ch.11:10 Remove / Ch.12:1-8 Call to Remember / Ch.12:9-14 Reverence.
D) That is our outlines
tonight – so without further ado – begin
#1
Rejoice: 11:7-9
Truly the light is sweet, And it is pleasant for the eyes to
behold the sun;
8 But if a man lives many years, And rejoices in them all, {Let him enjoy them all}
Yet let him remember the days of darkness, For they will be many.
All that is coming is vanity.
9 Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, And let your heart cheer
you in the days of your youth; Walk in the ways of your heart,
And in the sight of your eyes; But know that for all these God
will bring you into judgment.
“Light is sweet and it pleases the eye
to see the Sun. However many years the man may live, let him enjoy them all.”
A) What he’s saying is this
— particularly to those of you that are young. You don’t know how many years
you have.
B) You can’t decide whether
or not you will be long or short on the Earth, because ultimately your days are
in the hand of God.
1)
What you do have
jurisdiction over however, is the quality of those days.
C) You’re days may be short,
but they can full. You’re days may be many and they can be full.
1)
But ultimately God knows the number of your days, but you have the possibility
of enjoying every one of those days that God would give you.
“But
let him remember the days of darkness.” Hey You’re
gonna get old.
A) The days of darkness are
coming!
B) Here he is simply making
a generalization that youth is a time for enjoyment – because Problems arise in
your old age.
C)
To some people the idea that God wants us to enjoy life – seems like a foreign
idea.
1)
God is the cosmic
kill Joy – the Cosmic cop – looking to bust you – the celestial judge
who is waiting to through the book at you.
D)
Nothing could be further from the truth.
What
we see in the Bible is that God has made our days for enjoyment. That is the
continual theme.
A)
That is the drumbeat that keeps rhythm through the book of Ecclesiastes. Enjoy
your life with God. Enjoy your days with
God.
B) Enjoy opportunities in every day of life that God would give you. Solomon learned this from
his father, David, who also wrote the book of Psalms, in Chapter 16, Verse 11,
he tells us that, “Joy comes from the right hand of God.”
C)
That’s where joy comes from. As well, he learned but ignored in Psalm chapter
37, Verse 4 from his father that we should, “Delight
ourselves in the Lord and that he will give us the desires of our heart.”
Psalm 37:4
D) That’s the goal of our
life. Now
some of you read that and you say, “Okay that means, if I love God, I get
everything I want.
1)
I’ll be attractive and tall. I’ll have a new car. I’ll be smart. Handsome.
Rich.”
2) No,
that’s not what it means.
E)What
it means is that as you delight in God, as you enjoy God, as you walk closely
with God through Jesus Christ,
1) God changes your desires. {Mold with Jesus
Often
times the reason that we lack joy is because we’re pursuing the wrong things,
A) Pursuing the wrong things
because we have the wrong desires, because we’ve been delighting in the wrong
things.
Aa) Ultimately, you become
like that which you worship.
1)
Whatever you enjoy most is going to be that which causes your desires to exist.
B) If you worship sexuality,
you will become perverted. Your desires will be crooked.
1)
If you worship money, you will be greedy —
an idolatress — and your desires will be pursuing of things rather than God
C)But
As you and I learn to delight in God, to be satisfied with God, to enjoy God, God gives us
desires, passions, profound convictions,
1)
And he compels us to live our lives freely and passionately in pursuit of those
things.
D) Augustine and Luther — two of the great church fathers —
they summarized this verse this way. They said, “Love
God and do whatever you please.”
E)
That’s exactly how God’s people are to live. We should do exactly what we want
do after we have been delighting in God.
1)
Those desires are from God!
So
first of all Solomon wants us to Rejoice – Enjoy this life that God has given
by delighting ourselves in Him!
A)_Enjoy
the Lord, and as you do, you will find that what births in you is passion, creativity, vision, joy and
excitement and a fear of God that keeps you from being an idiot.
B)
That keeps you from just running off and sinning like crazy,
So
here’s what we need to do first : enjoy God.
But
in order to do that there is something that needs to be removed!
#2
Remove V.10 Therefore
remove sorrow from your heart, And put away evil from your flesh, For childhood
and youth are vanity.
A)
The word sorrow in v.10 is translated Anxiety Verse 10, “So then, banish anxiety from your heart.”
Don’t be depressed.
B)
This is amazing to me – that Over two-and-a-half thousand years ago, God,
through Solomon, says, “Young people
are prone to depression.”
1)
Is that still true? “Banish anxiety from your heart.”
C) You’re anxious. One of
the most profound and pronounced problems with young people today is just that:
depression and anxiety.
D) Some of you struggle with
depression. You struggle with anxiety.
1)Now
I’m not discounting that for some people there is a legitimate medical cause
for certain problems, like depression,
2)
But for many people Solomon seems to be attributing a great number of people’s
problems to their relationship with God.
E)
Depression and Anxiety for many is not a Physical problem but a Spiritual
problem.
“Be
anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with
thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; 7 and the peace of God,
which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through
Christ Jesus.”
So in order to really enjoy
life in Christ – you need to put away
anxiety – give it to Jesus!
The
Third thing that is a part of enjoying our life in the Lord is to #3 Remember
v.1 Remember
now your Creator in the days of your youth, Before the difficult days come, And
the years draw near when you say,
"I have no
pleasure in them"{Getting old stinks}: 2 While the sun and the light, The moon and the stars,
Are not darkened, And the clouds do not return after the rain;
While
you are still young – and there is light left – Remember your creator –
remember why you are here.
Now
Verses 3–7 Solomon give us one of the
most imaginative descriptions of old age and death found anywhere in
literature.
A)Bible
Students don’t agree on all the details of interpretation, but most of them do
see here a picture of a house that is falling apart and finally turns to dust.
B)
A dwelling place is one biblical metaphor for the human body (Job 4:19; 2 Cor.
5:1–2 [a tent];
3 In the day when the keepers of the
house tremble, Your
arms and hands and legs tremble.
And the strong men bow down; Your legs, knees, and shoulders weaken and you walk
bent over.
When the grinders cease because they are few, You start to lose your
teeth /
And those that look through the windows grow dim; eyesight goes
4 When the doors are shut in the streets, And
the sound of grinding is low; hearing starts to fail
When one rises up at the sound of a bird, You wake up with the birds early each morning, and wish
you could sleep longer.
And all the daughters of music are brought low. Start to lose your voice and
you can’t carry a tune.
5 Also they are afraid of height, And of terrors in the way - Height freak you out –
lose equilibrium{ Swings -
When the almond tree blossoms, Almond tree blossoms are white- Gray hair
The grasshopper is a burden, You just drag yourself along, like a grasshopper at
the close of the summer season.
And desire fails. { You
lose sexual desire
For man goes to his eternal home, And the mourners go about the
streets.
You
go to your eternal [long] home and people mourn your death.
That is what all of us have
to look forward to – some are a little further along than others.
So again he
reminds us V6
Remember your Creator before the silver cord is loosed, Spinal cord
A) Or the golden
bowl is broken, - Brain The functioning of the
brain decreases in its efficiency as one gets older,
B) Or the pitcher shattered at the fountain. The pitcher is the lungs.
Harder to breath –
C) Or the wheel broken at the well. The wheel is the heart. It
is no longer pumping blood through the body.
D) All of this is a picture
of the deterioration of old age leading to death.
1) Life cannot be sustained without the functioning of these organs.
Reality
we are all going to get old and die!
A) Comes faster than you
think –
B) But REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENS
to the believer when He dies!
7
Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, And the spirit will return to
God who gave it.
A) There is no soul sleep. I
wish the people who try to use verses from this Book of Ecclesiastes to support
their idea of soul sleep would just read on until they get to this verse.
B)
The body sleeps, but the spirit, or the soul, returns unto God who gave it.
Let
me repeat that the New Testament assures us that to be absent from the body
means to be present with the Lord
A)
The soul immediately returns to God.
B)
This body is just a tabernacle, or a tent, that we live in.
1)
It is just the outer covering. The soul goes to be with God.
V.8
His favorite saying: "Vanity of vanities," says the Preacher, "All
is vanity."
Remember:
life is empty if you are just living for
the here and now.
A)
One day you will find that all you have in your hand is a fistful of ashes, and
you will have eternity ahead of you.
When
as a child, I laughed and wept, Time crept;
When
as a youth, I dreamed and talked, Time walked;
When
I became a full grown man, Time ran;
When
older still I daily grew, Time flew;
Soon
I shall find in traveling on, Time gone.
—Author unknown
The
psalmist writes: “So teach us to number our days,
that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom” (Psalm 90:12), and Wisdom is
the Lord Jesus Christ.
A) Wisdom is knowledge
applied – so wisdom comes through life experience – the application of
Knowledge.
B) Some people live their
life, but they never learn their lesson, and so their experiences, good and
bad, aren’t an enormous practical benefit to
them.
C)That’s why some people
continually make the same mistakes, or some people make mistakes, don’t redeem the understanding from the mistake, and
because of that, they’re a lesser person because of it.
Wisdom
comes through life; and as you obtain wisdom, your goal should be as it is for Solomon
A)to record what you have learned and
then to teach that carefully to others in a way that is upright and true, and this
is hard.
B) This truly is the hardest
part of being a teacher.
1) Some of you aspire to teach. But You can’t
effectively teach until you have lived something.
C) Otherwise, it’s
information, not transformation.
D)
It’s speculation, not revelation. It’s conjecture. It’s not very helpful.
E) Wisdom that is proven –
Knowledge – hey I have lived this and it works – I have been down this road –
applied the word – it is true – powerful.
11
The words of the wise are like goads, and the words of scholars are like
well-driven nails, given by one Shepherd.
A) That kind of wisdom is
like a goad – goad –sharp stick – prick the donkey or the ox –
B) Someone shares wisdom
with you from the word and from their experience – it pricks at your heart –
1) Rings in your ear – hard
to get away from it.
C) Stephen’s sermon to
Paul’s heart – hard for you to kick against the goads
V.12
And further, my son, be admonished by these. Of making many books there is no
end, and much study is wearisome to the flesh.
A) On the surface, verse 12
seems to be a negative view of learning; but such is not the case.
B) The statement is a
warning to the student not to go beyond what God has written in His Word.
1)
Indeed, there are many books; and studying them can be a wearisome chore. But don’t permit man’s books to rob you of
God’s wisdom.
C) Don’t test God’s truth by the “many books” written by men; {wearisome} test men’s books by the truth of God’s Word.
So a key to enjoying life is
to remember your creator – remember that wisdom is found in his word.
#4
Reverence V.13-14
13 Let us hear
the conclusion of the whole matter:
Fear God and
keep His commandments, For this is man's all.
14 For God will
bring every work into judgment,
Including every
secret thing, Whether good or evil.
If
we are going to live a life that counts we must fulfill three obligations –
Fear God , Keep his commandments, prepare for final Judgment
Reverence: Being concerned
about what God thinks – having a reverence. -
A) The idea of having Reverence for God includes –being in awe of Him
1) Captivated by his
holiness – majesty – his power.
B) Revere him – Fall down
prostrate – creates a humility in our hearts
C)
But love is also tied to the idea of reverence –
1) Respect a reverence that
is associated with a loving relationship
D) I remind you that Paul
tells us in
It
is that loving reverence that motivates us to keep his commandments
A) To walk in holiness –
B) Motivated by love – {Fear
of displeasing
C) All the while there is a
sobering reminder that I am going to stand before the Lord one day. – Judgment
D)Believers Judgment rewards
– not a judgment of punishment – Already punished Jesus – but my deeds – Gold
silver precious Jewels –or wood hay or stubble.
E) Don’t know Christ – Deeds – condemn you – lack of belief in Christ