Ecclesiastes 12:1

Ecclesiastes chapter 12 verse 1 Remember now thy creator In the days of thy youth While the evil days come not Where the years draw nigh When thou shalt say I have no pleasure in them On Friday, April 13th, 1945 the Allied Army was spearheading a drive into Germany. Any day now, the U.S. forces would sweep into the village of Gardelated and liberate the prisoners, and actually they were slave laborers at that time, who were there, which the German SS had imprisoned. Hope spranged eternal in the hearts of the prisoners, they’re thinking, finally, we are going to be set free. However, the Germans were determined to destroy evidence of their crimes. So the SS troopers herded 1,000 of these men into a barn, soaked it with gasoline, and set it on fire. In an instance, the place went up in flames, like a furnace, screaming victims, tried to hurl themselves out at the doors or at windows or cracks in the walls. Some tried to tunnel under the walls, but got stuck and burned to death. Those who escaped were machine gun down by the SS troops standing outside. No one survived. When the U.S. GIs came upon the scene four days later, they were struck with horror. General Eisenhower imposed a solemn penance on the town. For every victim, the local U.S. commander assigned a villager who had to dig a grave in the village green. and had to put a headstone on it with the person’s name and their name as the grave digger too. Now, this was done so that they would never forget what had taken place and how they didn’t even lift a finger to do anything about it, unless these villagers forget. This is sort of a way to keep it before their minds. I suppose there are many things people would like to put out of their minds and forget. There’s a tendency to put out of our minds the things we don’t like. And there are no doubt many people who would like to block God out of their minds. If we reach this final chapter of Ecclesiastes, Solomon here calls for a rest of Recy’s. response and commitment. You’re called to remember God for who He is, your Creator, the one who made you made you, the one who placed you here on this earth. And you are called upon to see your true duty as a human being, which we’ll look at later, verse 13, let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter, fear God, and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. This is the challenge of the last chapter of the book of Ecclesiastes. But I want to speak tonight on the subject of remember your creator. Now, you have an obligation to remember the Lord. You must not have a obligation to remember the Lord. You must not have an attitude of forgetting God. Remembering things can be a real problem sometimes. Years ago, Gwen Campbell, the country Western singer, had a theme song that he sang before every concert that he did. But one night, before a particularly large audience, he got nervous and he forgot the words to the song that he sang every single time he had a great audience. concert. Forgot the words. In the middle of this theme song, you forgot. A momentary memory lapse can suddenly produce a blank and it just disappears in your mind. But the biblical idea of forgetting is not just like a momentary lapse that we have. I don’t know about you, but I’ve reached the point in my age that sometimes I walk into a room and say, know why did I come in this room? That’s, you know, and I have to think about, why did I come in this room? I came in here for a reason. It was a momentary lapse. And, you know, three minutes ago, I knew exactly why I went in the room, and now I don’t. That’s just the way we sometimes do things. But forgetting God is a great failure of God’s people in the Old Testament, period. Russell read that passage from Psalm 32, 9 to 18. Let me just read a couple of verses, verse 15, and verse 18. Jeshurun, which is the word used for Israel here, forsook God, which made him and lightly esteemed the rock of his salvation, of the rock that begat thee, thou art unmindable, and has forgotten God that formed thee. You forgot God. You know, the scripture says that all nations that forget God will be turned into hell in Psalm 917. So this is not just a mental lapse here. This is sort of a persistent attitude of the heart. It’s a commitment to forget the Lord. By laying aside his word, pursuing your own ends, in your own ideas with God, guarding worship and so forth. Forgetting the Lord is the other side of living for self. If you live for self, if you follow the under the sun life that Solomon has been talking about, you leave God out of the picture. And you do so on purpose. The Bible teaches that man has a natural hatred for God. The scripture tells us that, we have a natural compulsion, the love, the darkness of sin, and rather shut out the light that God brings to us, John 319. This rejection of God’s truth as a deliberate abandonment of God. And this is why the heathen, the unconverted, do not like to retain God in their knowledge. Romans 1A.28. heart revolts against the Lord God. Kane went out from the presence of the Lord, that he might not deal with God any longer. There’s a tendency to push God out of sight, and you see it’s so prevalent in our own society where God is purged from all of society’s activities. He used to go in a courthouse, and many times they would have the Ten Commandments out there on the front, the courthouse. Well, they’re taken down. I remember when I was in school in fourth grade, up to fourth grade, we read out of the Bible every morning. You know, some, one of the kids would read one of the Psalms. They’d pick out a, the teacher would pick out a psalm and we read a song every morning before school started. But now we teach evolution. get rid of God. We’ll get rid of the Word of God. Why, you can get in the trouble for just praying over your lunch in school. So this is the idea of biblical for getting this persistence of just getting God out of your life entirely. Now, you’re called upon here to remember the Lord. Remember now thy creator. Remember him. This is a good deal more than just sparing him of thought. now and then, like one hour on Sunday morning, you know, while you’re in church, I’ll focus on God that one hour. There’s more to it than that. When the Lord’s people were exiled in Babylon, they confessed their duty to remember the Lord in the Lord in the profound language of personal devotion. Look with me at Psalm 137, if you would. Psalm 137, verses 1 to 6 By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea we we we wept when we remembered Zion. They had been, they’re gone into captivity. The Babylonians have captured them. They’re hauling them away from the city of Jerusalem. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst of for there, they that carried us away captive required of us a song. They that wasted us, required of us mirth, saying, sing us, one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cutting. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth. If I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy. At the heart of this language is not just the idea of Jerusalem as a city, but the person of the living God who dwells there, whose temples there, and whom they were worshipped. When they sang the songs of Zion, they sang it before the great congregation, they sang it to the Lord God. In him, there is life. And apart from him, there is nothing. And as far as they were concerned, they had been separated from God by being separated from Zion or Jerusalem. To forget him, then, is to be placed in a state of spiritual death. To remember him is to have spiritual life and to have it abundantly. And so long, and to long for Jerusalem here was the long for what represented the salvation that was revealed by God in His Word and that God Jehovah granted to his people. Jerusalem was the place of redemption. It was a place of sacrifice. The place where you could come before the Lord God and bring your offering. The tide was brought there and so forth. Therefore, remembrance of God is connected. with a devotion to the Lord God. A worship of the Lord God. A recognition of him as the God of your salvation. I wonder if there’s a day that ever passes that we neglect the Bible, God’s Word. There’s a day that ever passes that we do not seek the Lord out in prayer and come before him. Or that we forget the Sabbath that. Or even worse, that we forsake the assembling of ourselves together with the people of God. Isn’t that forgetting God? Wherever God can be found, we should put forth our energy to seek him. Acknowledge him in his word by consulting it. Acknowledge him in his providence by realizing his hand is in all that takes place. No wonder the Bible declares, be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long. In Proverbs 2317. Not just once in a while, all the day long. So you have an obligation to remember the Lord. Now why you should remember the Lord. Verse 1A, you owe it to your creator. Remember your creator, he says. You have no right to forget the one who made you, who brought you into this world. God not only created the universe, he created you. God not only made Adam, he made you too. He made all people. Now we look at birth and sometimes we do this is just natural to have a birth. How did you get in your mother’s womb? How did you come into existence? Well, the Bible tells us that the Lord formed the spirit of man within him in Zechariah 12.1 And David recall said that we are fearfully and wonderfully made with regard to our bodies. So your body and your soul have been created by God. I will praise thee for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Psalm 139.14. The point is that God is that God is entitled to be remembered by those whom he has made. He has exclusive rights to you. To your worship, to your service, to your devotion. We read about the potter having power over the clay because he makes the clay and whatever he wants it to be. He has made us upon this earth. Not only can you not rightly talk back to God, but you are under an obligation to confess him as the Lord and creator of your life. In the late 1970s, biophysicist Harold J. Morowitz of Yale University reached some starting conclusions about what it would cost to make a human body. He took into consideration the proteins, the enzymes, the RNA, the DNA, the DNA, the amino acids and all their complex biochemicals that make up the stuff of the human body. Fashioning this chemical shopping list into human cells might cost, he says, six quadrillion dollars. Assembling the resulting heap of cells into tissue and the tissue to the organs and the organs into a warm body might drain all the treasures of the world, he says, with no guarantee. of success. Of course not. It’s an impossible task. Now as you think about this, you might be astounded at the wisdom and the creative power of God. Imagine. You are a marvelous piece of creation by the Lord God. Even the human eye, if you just took the human eye and studied it, it is amazing to think about the human eye and how God created and what it’s capable of doing. But you’re more than a physical body. You have a soul. And that’s a precious soul. What can a man give an exchange for his soul? Now we’re talking about more than wealth that the world has. Has the fact ever translated into the idea? then that you owe something to your creator, all possible worship. So you owe it to your creator. You owe it to yourself. In the days of your youth, you’ll remember your creator. Back in the days of depression, there was a Philadelphia woman who was of Scottish descent, had a Scottish name. And so everyone called her Mrs. Mack. She and her husband had a lovely home, a chauffeur. A gardener, a hot house, and all the things that go along with being wealthy, Mrs. Mack taught a Sunday school class of high school girls. And one day, her car drove up in front of one of the houses of the girls in her class, and the chauffeur hopped out and gave that girl a box of roses. But back in the car and drove away. When the girl opened the box, she saw that the roses were wilted and faded, and the petals were falling off of them. They were turning brown. Why did earthwood, Mrs. Mack, give me these roses? Maybe the chauffeur was told several days ago to bring these roses to him, and he forgot, and he only not remembered, and that’s why they’re in this condition. At least that’s what she thought. Later that day, she happened to run into Mrs. Mack on the street. And the girl said, I want to thank you for the roses you sent me this morning. Mrs. Mack said, oh, yes. They were so beautiful when I cut them last Monday. I had them in my bedroom, and I had been enjoying them all week. This morning I noticed that some of the petals were dropping. And they were beginning to get old and faded, and I thought of you. And I decided to say, to you. The young girl said that Mrs. Mack, I don’t understand. Mrs. Mack said this. Just the other evening, Mr. Mack and I stopped in front of the drugstore. Well, Mr. Mack went inside on an errand. I sat in the car in the dark. Some girls came down the street, and I heard you say that you would come to Christ someday, sometime, but not right now when you were young. you wanted to have a good time first. And the girl’s head dropped. She said, I remember saying that, but I didn’t know you were listening. Mrs. Mack said, Don’t you see what you’re really saying is, Lord, I’m young. I have my youth. I have my charm. I have my beauty. I want to enjoy myself. I want to live my life for myself. When I begin to get wrinkles, when I’m not as popular as I’m, I am right now. Why, I’m beginning to fade? Why, then, Lord, you can have what’s left. I thought of those roses and thought, boy, that would be a perfect illustration for you to realize this is what you’re saying God should be happy with. The leftovers of your life. Someone has said, youth for pleasure, middle age for business, and old age for religion. That’s not what the Bible teaches. The devil gets. the prime years of your life and God gets the leftovers. Some people think that youth is a time for, you know, indulging the flesh, sewing your wild oats, doing what you want to do. God says you should start seeking him when you’re young. Look at the barren sadness of many in middle age and old age. They’re reaping what they have sown. Your youth is the prime time in God. God’s eyes. That’s the time to seek him. A time for responsibility. A time for molding God honoring patterns in your life. For sowing righteousness. God wants you to serve him with the liveliness, the strength, the freshness, and the eager expectancy of youth. He doesn’t want wilded roses. You owe it to your love it. yourself. You owe it to your future because you’ll notice here in verse one. He ends the verse with, do this while the evil days come not, or the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them. And we’ll look at this in more detail later. He’ll be saying, do it now while you’re young, because the time is coming when trouble is going to be brewing for you and your health. Infirmity and old age. And my friend Solomon wishes you to be in a spiritual condition to face them head on and come out victorious. And you won’t be if you don’t seek the Lord in the days of your youth. Summer is the time to prepare for winter. The aunt gathers his food during the summer. he’s ready for winter. And winter is the old age of your life. It would be devastating if your heart is unprepared. The outward person begins to crumble away. Your inward person needs more than a party hat and a keg of beer. You need spiritual vitality. And this is what the believer is granted in Christ. Now, I want you to look with me at 1 Corinthians chapter, or excuse me, second Corinthians, chapter 4. Paul says this, and I think it’s well spoken here, chapter 4 beginning with verse 15. For all things are for your sakes, that the abundance, that the abundant grace might, through the thanksgiving of many, rebound to the glory of God. for which cause we faint not. But though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen, the things which are not seen, the things which are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. For we know that if our earthly house, meaning this body, earthly house of this tabernacle, were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands eternal in the heavens, for in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house, which is from heaven. Paul could see himself declining. He had this, understand that human beings decline outwardly, but he says that does not mean you have to decline spiritually. In fact, just the opposite, what’s happening to you physically, the very opposite should be happening to you spiritually. So as the body declines, the spirit should grow closer to the Lord and become stronger. There’s no use denying it because your body is a declining but the inward man can be renewed day by day. Your eyes have to be fixed upon the unseen eternal glory that awaits you in Jesus Christ. My friends, in this old body we grown, but there’s something glorious that awaits you. And we look forward to it. Eternity Awaits is a wonderful life that is coming. While Mr. General Eisenhower made the residents of the city of Gardelagin buried those slave laborers that were massacred by the SS troops and make a marker for them and put their names on it too as grave diggers, he didn’t want them to forget what happened. God command you here to always remember him. Seek him, worship him, worship him. him be devoted to him. You owe it to your Creator and you owe him the best years of your life, not the leftover years. It’s important to realize that you are preparing for the future now. Every grace that’s developed now is going to be beneficial to you in your old age. Death is just round the corner. Shouldn’t you be ready to enter into eternity? Shouldn’t you be prepared now that you can enjoy eternal bliss later? Let me just speak to you children just for a moment this morning. You know, you are in a home where your parents are trying to help you seek the Lord by having devotions with you, by encouraging you to read the word of God and to pray and to to be in church, you hear the word of God taught, and therefore you should take advantage of these things and be thankful that the Lord has placed you in a Christian home where you’re getting this training from your youth up because they’re trying to help you do what this command that says here to remember your creator in the days of your youth. Don’t forget him. Take advantage of the benefits that you have as young people. Let’s close with the word of prayer tonight.