Okay, Ecclesiastes chapter 12. Christ, the hope of young and
old. Now we've already established
that all through the book of Ecclesiastes how Solomon, the
preacher, King Solomon, the preacher, the wise man, has set forth the
vanity, the worthlessness, of all life here on earth without
knowing and worshiping and serving God as he's revealed in the glorious
person and the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's
what the vanity of vanities is all about. Life on this earth,
the best life we could have on this earth without Christ, without
God's grace, without truth is vanity. The best life. And as I mentioned last week
how Solomon probably was a man that we could say who had everything
that a human being could possibly have and want on this earth in
this life. And yet it's called vanity, again,
without the gospel, without truth, without Christ. So life without
Christ, his grace, his truth ends in eternal damnation and
death. And so no matter how good we
have it here on this earth, without a God-given understanding of
how God justifies the ungodly, how God saves sinners, it's going
to end in damnation and death. Now, the last two verses I've
got in your lesson here, I made a little mistake. We're going
to read Ecclesiastes 11, 9, and 10, right up above. Excuse me. Right up above chapter
12. And I put down there, read Ecclesiastes
11, 8 through 10. Well, it's okay to go ahead and
read verse 8. But we're going to look at verses 9 and 10 because
it sort of sets the stage for the words in Ecclesiastes 12.
And listen to this. The lesson is Christ the hope
of young and old. And he says in verse nine, rejoice,
oh young man, in thy youth. And let thy heart cheer thee
in the days of thy youth. And walk in the ways of thine
heart. Now, that's not talking about
the evil of the natural heart. That's talking about the strength
of heart that you have when you're young. The joy that you have
when you're young. and in the sight of thine eyes,
but know thou that for all these things God will bring thee into
judgment. Now this is true of all human
beings without exception. There is a judgment. And we're
gonna learn later on, we already know this is true. The issue
at judgment is how do we stand in relation to Christ. That's
the issue at judgment. It's not how many works we've
done, or how little we've done, or even how much sin we've done.
Now those who stand in relation with Christ as his enemy, those
who stand before God without Christ on their own, they'll
be judged by their works. And their works will be found
iniquity. That's how it will be judged.
But those who stand in Christ, washed in His blood and clothed
in His righteousness. Excuse me, I'm not losing my
voice today, it's just where I'm dry. So, anyway. But those who stand in Christ,
before God in Christ, washed in His blood and clothed in His
righteousness, it'll be declared before the whole universe how
they are justified. They're the children of God.
They'll live forever with Him. And even the young need to know
that. Now you may not die yet, you may have a whole lot of decades
before you, but you need to understand, living this life on earth, that
there is a life to live, there's a death to die, there's a judgment
to face, and there's an eternity to spend. And our only hope of
salvation and to live forever is the righteousness of the Son
of God incarnate, His righteousness imputed, and the life that He
gives us, by the power of the spirit to look to him. And so
verse 10 says, therefore remove sorrow. Now some translations,
that word sorrow is anger. And I really believe that would
be a better translation. It's the sorrow that anger brings. And I always think about when
I read that, I think about, you know, we've got a saying about
angry young men, angry young women. It's the anger that I
think comes from somebody, a young person, who believes that the
world owes them something. And that's what he's saying.
Therefore, remove anger from thy heart, and put away the evil
from thy flesh, for childhood and youth are vanity. In other
words, even childhood and youth, without Christ, without God,
without grace, without truth, without a righteousness that
answers the demands of God's law and justice is vanity. And so in verse one of chapter
12, he says, remember now thy creator in the days of thy youth,
while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when
thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them. You can think of the
vitality and the energy of youth as opposed to the tiredness,
the fatigue of old age. And it's good, it's good for
a young person to remember that he's a creation of God. and to seek the Lord, and to
spend life looking to Christ. Here's the thing about the Creator,
the Godhead, Father, Son, and Spirit. One cannot remember,
worship, nor know one without the other, because the Father
reveals Himself through the Son, and the Father and Son send the
Spirit to reveal these things to us. And so the word remember
means to recognize, to think upon, to be mindful of God. Who is God? What is He like? What does He do? And the main
question is how can a holy God save sinners like us and still
remain holy? That's what it is to remember
your Creator. Not just recognize that God created
the world, that's true. But it's like it says in Hebrews
chapter 11. It says that we seek the Lord,
that we know that God is, believe that God is as he says he is. And that's the whole issue. And
I've got here in your lesson, we are mindful that there is
a God of great and glorious perfections. Think about all of his attributes. We don't have time to name them
all. But this God who will judge the world in righteousness by
the Lord Jesus Christ, and if we know and remember him, you
know what we'll do? We'll run to Christ. Christ said,
this is life eternal that they might know thee, the only true
God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. And that's how we
remember him. Now he says, while the evil days
come not. And what he's talking about is
old age. And it's not that they're evil days because we're more
evil than we were in our youth. You know, the natural man thinks
that they get better in old age. They think as you get, you know,
in youth you sowed your wild oats and you were real evil,
and then in old age you get better. But that's not the case. As we grow, and especially a
believer, as we grow in old age, physically, We come to see our
evilness, our sinfulness more. And obviously, if we're believers,
that drives us to Christ more. But they're evil days because
they're full of affliction, trouble, the body is getting worse, decaying
physically. And that's what he does, what
he does here in the next verses, from verse two to verse eight,
he uses metaphorical language to describe old age. I read that
and I said, that's like a self-portrait. That's me. And most biblical
scholars, they take each one of these things and they relate
it to some part of the physical body. But I always think about
this, Romans 8.10. This body, this physical body,
is dead because of sin. And what he describes here in
these metaphors, the reason that it's going downhill is because
of sin. This is the consequence of sin.
That's why we grow old and why we die. I always remember one
of the false religionists that I talked to years ago, who claimed that he no longer
sinned. And I said, I asked him, I said,
well, why are you getting old? Because it's all, listen, what
we're going through in old age is the consequence of sin. Now,
sin cannot condemn us because God will not charge us with our
sins. He charged them to Christ. Christ
died in our place. He suffered the death under the
wrath of his father for the sins of his people and he put sin
away so that in God's sight we have no sin as far as condemnation. Now we're sinners within. And
this dying body is the result of sin. So this body is dead
because of sin, but the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, gives life,
and our spirits, because of righteousness. And that's the righteousness
of Christ. So if you look at these things, let's just read
through them. It says, while the sun or the light, verse two,
or the moon or the stars be not darkened, nor the clouds return
after rain, And as I said, you know, biblical scholars kind
of look at each one of these things and relate it to some
aspect of our physical lives. For example, the sun, the light,
and the stars, that refers to our understanding, our mind,
and judgment, our memories. Have you said that? I've said
it all the time. My memory's not as good as it
used to be. That kind of thing. That's what
happens in old age. He says, nor the clouds return
after the rain. In youth, trouble comes, and
then there's sunshine and a clear day. But in old age, as soon
as one cloud arises and departs, another follows. It just seems
like there's no end. We were talking about this last
week. It's always something. in old age. If it's not my heart,
I've got diabetes, they say. If it's not diabetes, I've got
arthritis. Everybody looks at me and says,
you're walking funny. Well, that's the way it goes. Anyway, look at verse three.
He says, in the days when the keepers of the house shall tremble,
that's probably referring to our arms, our hands, and which
become weaker in old age. He says that the keepers of the
house shall tremble and the strong men shall bow themselves or bow
themselves and the grinders cease because they are few. The grinders,
that's the teeth. He says and those that look out
of the windows be darkened, the eyes. That's why we have to wear
contacts and glasses and our eyesight gets dimmer. Verse four,
the doors shall be shut in the streets when the sound of the
grinding is low. That could refer to the lips,
the speaking, the eating. And they're more shut than open. And he shall rise up at the voice
of the bird, and all the daughters of the music shall be brought
low. The least little sound will wake us up. The least little
sound will bother us. I used to think around our house,
I've got all these birds that kind of attack my house. And
so when I hear those birds, it's not a pleasant sound to me. I
want to get up and run off. But all that, verse five, and
when they shall be afraid of that which is high and fear shall
be in the way. They say that one of the greatest
fears of older people is fear of falling, fear of heights. The almond tree shall flourish.
That's a reference to the whiteness of the hair, the gray hair. The
grasshopper shall be a burden and desire shall fail because
man goeth to his long home and the mourners go about the streets
reproaching the end of this life. It is appointed unto men once
to die. After that, the judgment. Verse
six, or ever the silver cord be loosed. The silver cord, they
say, is the is the bond between the soul and the body, or the
spirit and the body, however you want to look at it. The golden
bow, it says, that's the brain. It says, the golden bow be broken,
the pitcher be broken at the fountain, and the wheel broken
at the cistern. That could refer to the heart. This body, which is dust, shall
return to the earth, and the spirit and soul return to God
who gave it. And then verse seven, it says,
that's what it says, then shall the dust return to the earth
as it was, and the spirit who shall return unto God who gave
it. And verse eight concludes it,
vanity of vanity, saith the preacher, always vanity. Now, here's the
point. Our hope of eternal life and
glory is not in our physical bodies. When we die, when we fall asleep
in Christ, as Paul says it several times, and when Christ comes
again and we're taken out of the grave and be united with
a new body, a glorious body, and we'll inhabit the new earth
wherein dwelleth righteousness, and this body will be dissolved. It'll go back to the dust, and
this earth will be burned up, and the new heavens and the new
earth will be created, and we'll inhabit that. So our hope is
not in our physical bodies. Now, we can take vitamins, we
can exercise and all that, which we should. I don't know about
the vitamins, but in the exercise we should. We should eat right
and all that. But this body's gonna die. That's the way it is. I remember
back in, I think, the early 70s when when it seemed like at that
time that this thing of running and jogging gained popularity. And there was a fella named Jim
Fix, I think his name was. F-I-X or F-I-X-X, I think. And they called him, he was a
jogger, he was a runner. And they called him the running
doctor. And he wrote a book about running. And he, probably in
his 40s or maybe his 50s, I don't remember, but he was running
along a beach and he dropped dead with a heart attack. We're not to be fatalists and
just throw caution to the wind with these bodies. We're to take
care. We're to be good stewards. over everything that God's given
us. If he's given us physical health, we're to be a good steward
of that. If he's given us spiritual health, we're to be good stewards
of that, all of that. But we're to realize all the
time that God has appointed a day that this body is gonna go back
to the dust and I'm gonna go to sleep in Christ and be resurrected
again. Well, look at these last verses,
verse nine. He says, and moreover, because
the preacher was wise, now this is the wisdom that God gave him
in Christ, he still taught the people knowledge. He didn't throw
caution to the wind. He didn't say, eat, drink, and
be merry, for tomorrow you die. He didn't say it. He taught the
people knowledge. How do we teach the people knowledge?
How does God teach us knowledge? Well, look over at John chapter
six. And I love this passage. This
is where Christ talked about, all that the Father giveth me
shall come to me, and him that cometh to me I will in no wise
cast out. And he said, this is the will
of him that sent me, that of all which he hath given me I
should lose nothing, but raise it up again at the last day.
And look over at verse 44 of John chapter 6. It says, no man can come to me. This is the Lord speaking. No
man can, has the ability come to him. Now why is that? Because
we're by nature spiritually dead and depraved. That's where our
inability lies. We, by nature, we don't want
Christ. We don't want salvation God's
way. And so no man can come to me
except the Father which has sent me, draw him. Now that word draw
is the same word that Christ used in the parable of the dragnet. Throwing the net in and gathering
the fishes. He didn't stand up there and
say, now you fish, Do you want to accept me as your catcher? Like preachers do, you know,
they say, do you want to accept Jesus as your Savior? No, the
Father draws us by the power of the Spirit under the preaching
of the Gospel, drags us to Christ, drags us because He makes us
willing. Somebody said, are you saying
that God brings us against our will? He brings us against our
natural will, but he gives us a new will. And he makes us willing
in the day of his power. And he said, I will raise him
up at the last day. Now, how does the Father do this?
Through Christ by the Spirit. Look at verse 45. It is written
in the prophets, and they shall be all taught of God. When Solomon,
the preacher, taught the people knowledge, those who listened
and heard and were made willing to come to Christ, it was the
Father who actually taught, it was God who actually taught them.
Now God uses preachers. It pleased God by the foolishness
of preaching to save them that believe. Faith cometh by hearing
and hearing by the word of God. But if you believe the gospel
that the preacher preaches, it's God who taught you. It's God
who made you willing. It's God who gave you spiritual
life by the Spirit. It's God who gave you a new heart
and brought you to Christ. And so they shall be all taught
of God. Every man therefore that hath
heard the hearing ear, the spiritual ear that God gives to his people
in the new birth, and heard what? And hath learned of the Father.
There's some teaching here, doctrinal teaching. How do we learn of
the Father? Well, this involves how God can
be both a just judge and a loving father. How he can be both just
and justifier. You learn that. And it's based
upon, it's by his grace through the blood and righteousness of
Christ. Based upon Christ's righteousness imputed to us. And if you learn
that from the Father, you know what you're gonna do? He says,
you cometh unto me. You're gonna run to Christ. Nobody
will be able to stop you. You're going to run to Him and
hold on to Him for dear life. Because you see that in the glory
of His person and the power of His finished work, His blood
to wash away my sins. There's no other way of forgiveness
of sins for me but the blood of Christ. There's no other way
of justification for me but the righteousness of Christ, His
obedience unto death as my surety, my substitute, my redeemer. There's
no hope of final glory for me except that Christ is my preserver,
my keeper, my mediator, my intercessor. I've got no hope but Him. Everything
else is vanity. There's no hope in this life
as far as the physical properties that we have. So he says he taught
the people knowledge. And it says in verse nine of
Ecclesiastes 12, yea, he gave good heed. What does that mean? It means he obeyed. And sought
out and set in order many proverbs. Remember in the book of Proverbs,
How often it says to set our minds and our hearts to understanding
a proverb, yet understanding, that's the gift of God. Verse
10, the preacher sought to find out acceptable words. That's what I do when I study
for a message, to preach to you. I want acceptable words. Acceptable to what? Acceptable
to man? Not necessarily. Because the
natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God,
neither can he know them. Acceptable to who? Acceptable
to the Lord. That which describes the true
and living God. That which identifies the true
Christ as opposed to false Christ. That which describes salvation
by God's grace through the Lord Jesus Christ as opposed to any
other way of salvation concocted by man. And that which is acceptable
to God's people. Because you know the gospel.
You know how God justifies sinners. Because you know how God justified
you. So we seek to find out acceptable words. Not acceptable to the
natural man. Not acceptable to the world.
The world hates it, the light. The world hates it because it
exposes their deeds as being evil. And it says, give good
heed and sought out many proverbs. The preacher sought to find out
acceptable words and that which was written was upright, even
words of truth. The word of God in the scriptures. Isaiah said, in Isaiah chapter
eight, to the law and to the testimony, if they speak not
according to this word, there's no light in them. I told you that in self-examination,
there's basically two things that we ought to be concerned
with. If we claim to be Christian, And that's who the command of
self-examination in 2 Corinthians 13, 5, that's who it's given
to, people who claim to believe in Christ, which we all do here. We claim that we're Christians,
we believe in Christ, we're saved. And so it says, look into that
and identify that and examine yourself, whether you be in the
faith. And there's two concerns that
we should have in that self-examination. The first one is this, the Christ
who I trust, in whom I believe, in whom I rest my eternal soul,
is he the Christ of this book? Or is he a counterfeit? And that
is so important because there's so many people today who claim
to believe in Christ, but the Christ they believe in is a counterfeit. So what does this book say about
the true Christ? Who is He in the glory of His
person? He's God manifest in the flesh. God-man, the Word made flesh. And then what did he accomplish
when he died? Why did he come? What did he
do? Where is he now? Why did he do
it all when he died on that cross? Did he die to make salvation
just a mere possibility for everybody? Well, that's not the Christ of
the Bible now. You understand what I'm saying?
The true Christ of the Bible accomplished the redemption of
his people and ensured their salvation, having their sins
imputed, charged to him to where they cannot be charged to them. They're called God's elect and
they have his righteousness charged to them. They shall be saved. Not one person for whom he died
will perish. They will all be glorified. That's
what Christ said. I'll raise them up again at the
last day. Sin demands death, but righteousness
demands life. That's the true Christ of the
Bible. So that's what we need to be concerned with. Is the
Christ I'm trusting the Christ of this book or is he a counterfeit?
The second thing we need to be concerned with is do I really
believe in him or not? Am I just claiming to be a Christian? Am I just fooling myself? And there you have to go back
to the scriptures to see what are the evidences of the new
birth. Faith in Christ, repentance of
dead works and idolatry, perseverance in the faith. all by the grace
of God. You know, there's so many people
that I've met in the years that I've been preaching and witnessing
the gospel who claim to believe the doctrine of grace, but they've
never been brought to repentance. They think they were saved under
a false gospel and just come into a certain knowledge. Well,
they haven't repented. And I'll never forget when I
first heard the gospel, I knew this. I knew that the God that
the man who preached the gospel to me was preaching was not the
God I was worshiping at the time. I knew that. I didn't come to
repentance then because I hated the gospel. But that's what it
is. That's why the Bible says that
God's not willing that any of his chosen people should perish,
but that all should come to repentance. Turn away from that false religion. Turn away from that counterfeit
Christ. Don't hold on to that. Don't
mingle it together with the truth because it won't work. And that's
self-examination. Now look on Ecclesiastes 12.
He says in verse 11, the words of the wise are as goads and
as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies which are given
from one shepherd. What is a goad? It's like a prod. You ever seen them in the old
west when they would run cattle through a trail, bring them into
a pen, they'd have rods, like cattle prods. And that's what
he's talking about. The word of God keeps us in line
and then it fastens us to Christ. like a nail fastened. And it's
given from one shepherd. And who is that shepherd? That's
Christ, the good shepherd, the great shepherd, the chief shepherd.
And now verse 12, he says, and further by these, my son be admonished,
be corrected, be encouraged of making many books, there's no
end. That's the books of men. Men's philosophies, men's ideas,
all their programs, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
You can study those human books till you're blue in the face.
But all it's gonna do is make you weary. So, verse 13, let
us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear God, there's
two things. Fear God and keep His commandments.
What is it to fear God? To fear God is to know God. To fear God is to believe God. To fear God is to worship God. To fear God is to rest in the
revelation of himself in Christ. It's not a legal fear that stirs
people up to trying to work their way into God's favor. It's a
godly fear, reverence and respect of God that brings us to rest
completely in Christ. And that's how we worship God.
Keep his commandments. Now think about, well what are
his commandments? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and thou shalt be saved. Repent or perish. Follow me. He's not talking about
keeping the Ten Commandments. And whatever we do, we don't
keep it perfectly. But we follow him and that's
the whole duty of man. That's the whole of man. The
whole heart of man. Then look at verse 14. For God
shall bring every work into judgment with every secret thing, whether
it be good or whether it be evil. Now, you can turn to 2 Corinthians
5 on this and study that. But understand, this is not a
judgment for believers wherein God judges believers by their
works or based on their works. If God were to judge us that
way, where would we be? Because if that's the judgment
of God based on our works, our works would have to equal the
perfection of righteousness that can only be found in Christ.
Because God has appointed a day in which he will judge the world
in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained and that
he hath given assurance unto all men. It's not a judgment
by our works or based on our works. It's the judgment of our
works. And what he's talking about is
this, whatever works he's talking about, as far as we're concerned, are they the product of the grace
of God? Are they the fruit of His grace
that evidence our union with Christ, which means they are
fruit unto God? Or are they works motivated by
self-righteousness, legalism? Those preachers in Matthew 7,
21 through 23, he said, depart from me, I never knew you, you
that work iniquity. All your works were iniquitous.
They were dead works. They were fruit unto death. And
so that's what he's talking about. The works of whatever, he's not
gonna flash up a list of works or anything like this. And here's
the key. What is a believer? He's the
creation of God. For we are his workmanship, created
in Christ Jesus unto good works, not because of, which God hath
before ordained that we should walk in them. God's gonna bring
it all into judgment. And the issue of judgment is
how do I stand with Christ? Am I standing there on my own,
pleading my own works as my righteousness? Well, that's eternal damnation.
Or am I standing there in Christ, washed in his blood, clothed
in his righteousness, imputed? That's eternal life and glory.
Okay.