Please turn in your Bibles to Ecclesiastes chapter 11 and our scripture reading will be from verse 7 through the first verse of chapter 12. Although in the sermon we'll go a little bit farther than that. So Ecclesiastes 11, 7 is where we'll begin. And following the reading of scripture we'll sing together the Gloria Patri. Please stand together for the reading of God's holy word. Light is sweet and it pleases the eyes to see the sun. However many years a man may live, let him enjoy them all. But let him remember the days of darkness, for they will be many. Everything to come is meaningless. Be happy, young man, while you are young and let your heart give you joy in the days of your youth. Follow the ways of your heart and whatever your eyes see, But know that for all these things, God will bring you to judgment. So then banish anxiety from your heart and cast off the troubles of your body, for youth and vigor are meaningless. Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come, and the years approach when you will say, I find no pleasure in them. Amen. The common conception of God in the minds of many is that he is the supreme killjoy, that if there's anything fun in life, he doesn't want you to enjoy it or experience it in any way. Kind of like the father who called from the other room to his wife and said, dear, find out what the baby is doing and make him stop. That's our view of how God is. Well, in the text we're looking at today, we're going to get a very different exhortation in view. There's going to be an exhortation to tell us to rejoice or to have joy in our lives. To being joyful is an important part of living a life that would bring glory and honor to God. It confronts us with being joyful and being godly and how we can accomplish that. And some exhortations here at It's really driving us toward the conclusion, so it gives us kind of an anticipation of the conclusion that we're going to get again next week, and that is, what is it that brings real meaning and purpose to life? Well, our Westminster Shorter Catechism gives us a great summary of that, and question number one is, what is the chief end of man? And the answer is, and you can all say it with me, the chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. See, you know it so well. It just rolls right off the tongue. The two things that are very important about living a life that pleases God, glorifying Him and enjoying Him. And we, in our sinfulness, want to separate those things, but they have to be held together. A life that is meaningful and purposeful has both. A life without joy doesn't glorify God. And a life without glorifying God can't really experience the fullness of joy that God has in store for us. They're both part of that. And we need to be joyful as well as being godly. And then the writer talks about, well, how can we accomplish that? So just to meditate for a minute on the exhortations to be joyful. Is your life filled with joy? What's the character of your household? Is there laughter in your household? Is there joyfulness? We tend to get weighed down by the seriousness of life, and there are many things that are very serious in our world, but we lose sight of the fact that joy and delight and rejoicing are a part of life. Sometimes we're waiting on something That relationship, that possession, that activity, that accomplishment, whatever it might be, sometimes we're waiting on something to give us joy. And that's the wrong way to approach things. We need to be joyful now in the life that we have now. We don't need to look to a possession, to any particular thing to give us joy. We need to rejoice in what we have in our hands right now. is encouraging us in that. So, you look back at chapter 11, verse 7, light is sweet and it pleases the eyes to see the sun. However many years a man may live, let him enjoy them all. You and I are called on to enjoy our lives. The years that we have been given, we're called to enjoy them, to find joy in all of them, for as many as we have. And in verse nine, he particularly begins to address the young people. And so I want to take it aside here for a minute. I don't know if you young people and young adults ever think, well, the sermons are really for the adults and we just happen to be able to listen in. So if you've ever had that thought, I categorically tell you this is the this day that she was on the other foot. Today, the sermon is for all those who are young, age young. All you children, all you young people, all you young adults, this passage, this sermon is for you. And today, the adults just happen to be able to listen in. And so verse 9, 11 verse 9, he specifically addresses you that are young. And he says, young man, but just young people, be happy, young man. while you are young, and let your heart give you joy in the days of your youth. Follow the ways of your heart and whatever your eyes see." And he encourages you to enjoy the life, enjoy the vigor you have, the enthusiasm you have, enjoy the vigor and the vitality you have as you give yourself to all sorts of activities. And he encourages you to enjoy that, to experience that joy and that fulfillment, and be happy when you're young. And he's going to warn us about the problems of aging in a minute, but part of the reason is you should enjoy your life when you're young is not only because you're able to, but also you're trying to build good habits. Well, with Alzheimer's and dementia, sometimes people's personalities change. The general rule is still the general rule. If you're a friendly, joyful young person, you'll be a friendly, joyful old person. But if you're a bitter, cantankerous young person, then you will turn into a bitter, cantankerous old person. Most of us here know people, they've reached the elder years of their life and there's been some hard experience in their life that they've never let go of. And they've been bitter for 40 years. It's hard to let that go. And you don't want to do that. Learn to have joy and to rejoice when you're young. When you have the enthusiasm to be joyful and And to rejoice in this life, not when everything's always going your way, but always rejoicing. And rejoicing in the Lord and making the choice for it, having joy, is a choice that you can make. You can throw up any kind of objections you want to me. Well, I don't have a job, or I don't have this, or I don't have that. I don't care what you don't have. Look at what you have and rejoice in that. It's your choice. Circumstances aren't keeping you from rejoicing. A.W. Pink has his very appropriate comments. He says, joy is a matter of Christian duty. Perhaps the reader is ready to exclaim, my emotions of joy and sorrow are not under my control. I can't help being glad or sad as circumstances dictate. But we repeat, rejoicing in the Lord is a divine command. And to a large extent, obedience to it lies in your own power. I am responsible to control my emotions. True, I cannot help being sorrowful in the presence of sorrowful thoughts, but I can refuse to let my mind dwell on them. I can pour out my heart for relief unto the Lord and cast my burden on him. I can seek grace to meditate upon his goodness, his promises, and the glorious future awaiting me. I have to decide whether I will go and stand in the light or hide among the shadows. Not to rejoice in the Lord is more than a misfortune. It's a fault which needs to be confessed and forsaken. The exhortation you and I have really all of us of any age is we need to rejoice now. Be joyful now. Don't wait for tomorrow, be joyful now, be joyful today. Well, the problem with the way the world would take that, the world's advice would then to have you live selfishly and in all kinds of self-indulgence, and the world's idea of joy is very shallow, and it's very weak, and the writer here has cautions to put in there so that we understand we're not just living only for ourselves, that there's other factors to take in mind that help guide our joyfulness. And this is where the cynic and the unbeliever would say, aha, here's the fine print. I knew it. I knew God would take away the joy from our life. Like the dad who might say to his child, here are the keys to the car. Just don't use any gasoline. So, yeah, you can have a lot of fun sitting in the driveway, but you can't go anywhere. That's the way the unbeliever thinks of God, which is actually so far from the truth. It's an amazing distortion of who God really is. Any reflections on cautions that he have has nothing to do with taking away our joy, and it does not take away our joy. It allows us actually to experience joy in the far, in the richest way possible. And so he brings warnings in here to caution us, to have us reflect on these things. He's not taking away the exhortation to joy, but he's pushing us toward godliness in that joy. So if you go back to verse 8, where I ended with, however many years a man may live, let him enjoy them all. The verse continues, but let him remember the days of darkness, for they will be many. Everything to come is meaningless. There are days that will be difficult, but don't let that take away your joy. Don't quit being joyful because of the dark days, but be aware that they're going to come. And in his statement, everything is meaningless, or everything to come is meaningless, it does have the idea, as all of Ecclesiastes, of futility. But I think as he's gaining momentum into this last section of the letter, the book, it's getting, particularly this section here, I think he's beginning to drive home the idea that life is temporary. It moves fast. It's not the end. It's not meaningless in the sense that your life has no meaning, but it's meaningless in the sense that it's going to go fast. A lot of translations have meaningless in this context, translated as vapor. In other words, everything in life is going to move fast. And the older you get, the faster it's going to go. And so you don't want to hold too much stock on the treasures you hold on to now. Let that caution be yours as you are obeying the command to be joyful and to rejoice in the Lord. In verse 9, where I left off, follow the ways of your heart and whatever your eyes see. But know that for all these things, God will bring you to judgment. There is an accountability for how you use. The world doesn't ever give you that. The world says, experience sexual immorality to the nth degree and have a great time. And they never bring in accountability of a baby that may come. disease that may come, the responsibilities, the broken relationships, shame, guilt, and ultimately judgment. There's no cautions to temper or bring godliness into our joy. And God wants you to experience joy that is in no way diminished by these consequences, which is fully and wonderfully enjoyed I love the way Derek Kidner writes this. He says, joy was created to dance with goodness, but not alone. God created joy to dance with goodness, and that's where the dance becomes wonderful and exciting and fulfilling. The joy is never meant to dance the dance alone. And there's where verse 10 comes in. So then, banish anxiety from your heart and cast off the troubles of your body. You know, enter into this joyfulness vigorously, even though you have these cautions. Enter into it. Don't worry about anxiety. Don't worry about the troubles of your body that's going to come. But enjoy your life as a young person now. Enjoy the life you have now. And then he ends with that, for youth and vigor are meaningless. Again, it's a vapor. It's temporary. Our world idolizes youth in the sense that they want to preserve it and keep it. You have so many people doing plastic surgery and this, that, and the other thing, and I'm not making an evaluation of that one way or the other. But the point is, we try to stay young forever, and it's not going to happen, because we idolize youth. Youth is a wonderful time. But it will vanish like a vapor in its time. As we reflect back on earlier in Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiastes 3, it talks about God made everything beautiful in its time. And He made youth beautiful. And that's why He exhorts you young people, don't miss out on anything God has for you. Experience the joy and the delight of your life. Enjoy all the experiences that you can in a wonderful way, but don't leave out godliness. Don't give in to the selfish hedonism of society, but enjoy all the vigor of your youth in wonderful ways with walking with the Lord along the way. And so the question comes, well, how do we join these two things together? How can we join together being joyful and being godly. And the first verse of chapter 12 is where he begins to get into that answer. Well, how do we do that? How do we pull all that together? And it's in the first exhortation. He says, remember your creator in the days of your youth. That's how you can have joyfulness as a young person and yet godliness as a young person because you remember your creator. He could have given other names, remember your king, remember your redeemer, but he's putting in mind, remember your creator because he's wanting you to understand it's God that's created you and created this world that you're in and given you the abilities that you have. He's the one that began it all. He knows the scheme and you can trust in Him. You've got to keep your eyes on Him. Even as the preacher of Ecclesiastes has wrestled with that, reflects on different times that we can't know the end from the beginning of God's plan, but we can know the one who created the plan. And here he urges you to keep your mind on the Creator, and it doesn't mean remember in the sense of just calling it to mind in a superficially perfunctory kind of way, but it means to have passionate love for your Creator. To remember the fact that the Creator knit you together just the way you are in your mother's womb. Are yours too big? Are your nose too big? Your eyes too close together? Well, God knit you together exactly the way he wanted you to be knit together. You're fearfully and wonderfully made. All those things are irrelevant, irrelevant. You are the creature of your wonderful God. And he's put you together and he's put you in this world to love him and enjoy what he's given you all the days of your life. With that note of godliness, he's joining together in you joyfulness and godliness. And it's the unbelief that fights against remembering our creator. Here the writer is essentially saying, remember your creator now. And there are those who would say, well, why now? Let me have fun. Let me enjoy my life and do the things that I want to do. And then in 30 or 40 years when I can't enjoy them anymore, then I'll think about turning to God. Well, the reality is you don't know if you have 30 or 40 years. And in most cases, the people that have put off dealing with God when it comes to 30, 40 years down the road, well, they're not interested in dealing with God then either. There's always tomorrow. There's always the next thing. But God wants you to enjoy your life, live a godly life, and remember your Creator now. And it's urgent that you do that. Why the urgency? Well, He gives you the answer. Before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, I have no pleasure in them. The reality is, this is not to put a damper on anything, but the reality is that when you're young and vigorous, you think you're going to live forever, and you're not going to live forever, and one of the things that's going to happen is you're going to get old too. At least hopefully you'll get old too. And he goes on this, as he continues on in his passage, he gives a sort of an allegorical description of what aging is going to do to all of you. Not as a discouragement, But as a motivation that you remember your Creator. God doesn't want to discourage any of us from loving Him. But it gives a little bit of urgency. Well, I need to remember my Creator now because the day is going to come when I may not even have the mind to remember Him, at least consciously. And He'll never forget you. He'll never abandon you. And this passage is kind of painful to some of us because we're living it. We're experiencing it. But let's go through this little allegorical description of aging. And most of the statements, it's all poetic, and most of you will get, if you find another commentary that disagrees with some of these, that's all well and good. But it gives you some of the idea in the description of aging. So in verse 2, it says, Before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark, and clouds return after the rain. The process of aging, he's describing it as generally a darkening, the darkness that's going to come, the fading of energies, perhaps mental powers, is going to come when the light and the moon and the stars are growing dim. In verse 3, it gives us actually four things here, what's going to happen in aging. It says, when the keepers of the house tremble, most likely the hands, the hands that have kept the house good and clean and strong, well, they begin to tremble when you get older. When the strong men stoop, the legs that kept the man standing upright, they begin to shrink under the weight that they've borne all these years. When the grinders cease because they are few, well, you all can get that easily. That's the teeth begin to fall out and you're losing your teeth. And when those looking through those windows grow dim, there's your eyesight beginning to grow dim. And no personal testimonies here. Verse 4, when the doors to the street are closed, you don't hear as well. All the noise in the street, we can't make it out like you used to. And the sound of grinding fades again has something to do with the teeth most likely. You can only eat soft food as you get older because your teeth aren't as strong. No more of those kettle cooked hard potato chips. You got to quit those and start eating your oatmeal. When men rise up at the sound of birds, this I really relate to personally. I wake up in the morning, I can't sleep. I can't sleep hardly past 4 o'clock, sometimes for sure not 5. It's not my preference. In fact, when I hear you people, and you young people particularly, saying you can sleep in until 10 or 11, oh man, I wish I could do that. Just once. Just once. But they rise up to the sound of birds, but all their songs grow faint. Again, they're not hearing very well, or music. Maybe they can't sing very well anymore. It says in verse 5, when men are afraid of heights, Climbing ladders becomes a very scary venture as you grow older. I climb ladders much more slowly now than I did when I was younger. And of the dangers in the streets, you know, when you say goodbye to grandma, does she give you 10 or 12 warnings before you hit the door of things that could happen? I mean, there's all these dangers in the streets. When the almond tree blossoms, the hair gets white, the grasshopper drags himself along The body's not as agile and quick anymore, and desire no longer is stirred. Probably desire in general, but also desire appetite. Some translations actually keep the original Hebrew in there, which is when the caperberry fails. And the caperberry in ancient times was considered a stimulus to appetite. So, your appetite begins to fail, And then comes some descriptions of the end of life. Then the man goes to his eternal home and mourners go about the streets. It continues on in the next couple of verses. Remember him. I'll come back to that phrase in a minute. Remember God before the silver cord is severed or the golden bowl is broken before the pitcher is shattered at the spring or the wheel broken at the well. and dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. Ultimately, death is going to come to all of us. And the different descriptive aspects of that, a man goes to his eternal home and the mourners are there. The golden bowl held the oil, which would feed the lamp, the light of a man. was in that bowl and when the silver cord holding it up was severed, the bowl fell and the light turned off. Or the pitcher that shattered the water of life in a person ultimately is gone away and you return to dust and the spirit to the God who gave us. You have these reminders that life is going to end, and so the exhortation there in verse 6, in the middle of that, repeats from verse 1. Remember Him. That's your calling right now. You and I are to remember Him. So, all of us, for whatever age, we are to remember God and focus our attention upon Him. And that's the exhortation. Be joyful and be godly. And you do that by remembering your Creator. Remember Him. Keep Him in your mind. Keep Him in your view. Because when He's in your view, then you look at the things He's given to you, and you realize, He gave me this to enjoy. So let me enjoy it. And you remember Him and you realize, but I need to use His gift in a responsible way. And so I need to live a godly life and experience the real joy and the delights that He has in mind for me. And I remember him helps to put it all together. In telling us to remember him and remember our creator, the writer, as he's coming to conclusions, is pointing us again beyond the sun. Remember what he's been wrestling with through this whole book is the meaninglessness of life under the sun. That is with God involved at all. And so he's telling us, don't look at life under the sun. Look at life from the perspective of the one who's above the sun. Remember your creator. See your time in life right now as you are here right now as an opportunity. An opportunity to delight in the Lord and delight in what God's given you and to live in a way that pleases him. It's a reminder that even with aging, life is not meaningless. Life has a purpose. Life is tied to our eternal home. And our life here isn't worthless or meaningless. Our experiences are worthless or meaningless. It's all leading to our eternal dwelling with God in glory. So there's purpose in all of this. Perhaps one other thing I'll give you to remember and think about as we close is Especially as we draw into the New Testament, we are remembering our Redeemer. Jesus gave us the Lord's Supper and he specifically said that when you do this, you do this in remembrance of me. And Jesus gave us a specific promise that helps us to have joy and godliness. And when he said, surely I am with you always, even to the end of the age. And so you and I, as we remember our Creator, we also can remember our Redeemer, our Savior, and remember that regardless of what we experience in this life, the joys and the delights or even the process of aging, the fact is that Jesus Christ is with us every step of the way. Well, how can I not be joyful when my most precious friend is right there with me? How can I let circumstances overwhelm me when I have the presence of both my Creator and my Redeemer with me every step of the way? Yeah, there may be some difficult and dark days, no doubt. But there's always that root of joy and that root of hope when you have the Creator and the Redeemer as your companions along the way. May you and I heed the exhortation of the writer and remember our Creator, particularly in the days of our youth, but really in the days of all of our life. And we will walketh with Him in the glories forever. Amen. Let us pray. Father in heaven, we do thank you so much that you have given us your word and that it can guide us into your truth. We pray, oh Father, that we will enjoy, we will have joy in our lives. A joy that is, in a sense, knows no bounds. A joy that is accompanied in its beautiful dance by glorifying you by goodness. that we experience the true joy and the fulfilled joy. Help us to do that, Lord, by remembering You and keeping You in our view at all times. Remembering You as our Creator. Remembering Christ as our Redeemer. May these things strengthen and encourage us as we embark on the delights and the challenges of life. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.