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The End of the Matter | Ecclesiastes 12 (11-26-2023: Mark Evans)
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In the book of Ecclesiastes, the speaker emphasizes the importance of fearing God and keeping His commandments. He describes the deteriorating state of life in old age and highlights the vanity of worldly pursuits. The speaker encourages listeners to remember their Creator and live well in preparation for death. The wise words of Scripture are compared to goads, stimulating and guiding us. Overall, the main message is to prioritize our relationship with God and live in obedience to Him. Well, if you have your Bibles, do grab them and make your way to the book of Ecclesiastes as we've spent, oh, a number of months in this book and today we come to what is the end of the matter and so we will be in the final chapter, Ecclesiastes chapter 12. And so let us hear now the words of the true and the living God, Ecclesiastes 12. For also you're a 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 the 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 and the grinders cease because they are few. And those who look through the windows are dimmed and the doors on the street are shut when the sound of the grinding is low and one rises up at the sound of a bird and all the daughters of song are brought low. They are afraid also of what is high and tears 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 the streets before the silver cord is snapped, where the golden bowl is broken, where the pitcher is shattered at the fountain, where the wheel is 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 vanity, says the preacher, all is vanity. Besides being wise, the preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care. The preacher sought to find words of delight and uprightly he wrote words of truth. The words of the wise are like goads and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings. They are given by one shepherd. My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books, there is no end and much study is a weariness of the flesh. The end of the matter, all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil. And the grass withers and the flower fades. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we praise you for indeed you are to be feared and praised above all other gods. As we just heard, what is the whole duty of man is but to fear you and to obey you. And so we do pray, Lord, you would give us eyes to see, ears to hear once again, to behold the Lord Jesus Christ, the only one through whom and by whom it is possible that man might glorify you and enjoy you forever. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Amen. You may be seated. Well, one of the most popular TED Talks of all time carried the simple title of Start With Why. Start With Why. Some nearly 67 million people nodded along in agreement with this simple idea that before humans want to know the how or the when or the who, what humans most want to know is the why. What is the deeper purpose behind something? A quick example, if I come up to you and I say, meet me tomorrow at noon, your first thought is probably, well, why? What is the purpose? Humans know this reality all too well. There comes an age when children just start machine-gunning the question, why? Right? Mom, why this? Dad, why that? Indeed, we are made this way. We don't want to just know the what, the who, or the when. The most important question we usually have is why. Well, leave it to the wise Solomon to do the exact opposite of that TED Talk. Rather than starting with why, instead he finishes the book with the why. Because Solomon has now shown us for some 11 chapters that everything is vanity, that life under the sun is but a mist, a vapor, that even you and I are just a mist and a vapor. We're here today and we are gone tomorrow. And finally, today is the day that we arrive at the end of the matter. And we get to hear Solomon's why, which is quite simply, to fear God and to keep His commandments. And why? Because this is the whole duty of man. Begs the question, why do you have a pulse? Why do you have a beating heart? Why do you have breath in your lungs as an image bearer? It is this that Solomon has kept us waiting to hear, the end of the matter. And so we'll walk through this final chapter in three parts. We'll look at the days of darkness, then we'll look at the words of the wise, and then lastly we will look at the end of the matter. But all with a very simple point, which is this, is to fear God and to keep His commandments, for this is the sum of the Christian life. But before we reach that summit, for the last time we go down into one of Solomon's valleys, the deepest, darkest valley of them all, the valley of death. Because you can skim those first eight verses and you just hear how Solomon waxes poetically about what it is to be at death's door. He employs this metaphor that death is like a house, slowly deteriorating and crumbling. Verse three, the housekeepers fail. Once strong men can't even stand up straight now, they're hunched over. The grinders, which would be like teeth, no longer work. Windows signifying eyesight no longer works. Doors signifying ears or hearing no longer works. One rises up at the sound of a bird, a way of saying that we have trouble sleeping the older and older we get. And then comes the simple fear of falling down that could cause injury. These wheels that once turned vigorously are now broken. It's got these rich poetic images as to how our physical, our mental capabilities are slowly stripped away one by one. You see even with this image of the grasshopper in verse five, all right, grasshopper and normally sprightly, active, hopping around, but you see there this grasshopper, all he can manage to do is slowly drag himself, lurch and limp along the ground. These sober images as to how our outer man is wasting away. And so much so that even our ability to simply find pleasure fails in verse five. And then in verse six, items once valuable, like a golden bowl, are smashed. A once useful pitcher is now shattered. And so fiddly, Solomon concludes with this echo of Eden's curse in verse seven, that as we are dust, to the dust we return. And so you can see Solomon has saved the greatest vanity of them all for the end. It raises this question, how then should we face down death? Well, one option, of course, is to simply lie to ourselves. Woody Allen once said that death is the last taboo in society. It's no longer polite to speak of, think about, openly contemplate death's reality. Another option is to just jest and joke about death. Woody Allen once said, I'm not afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens. And so thirdly is to be ever bitter, maybe fearful, even angry at death's door, full of regret and remorse, remorse over the sins of one's youth, angry at the present suffering, perhaps even angry towards God. But Solomon's counsel is that the art of dying well begins with the art of living well. You see right away, verse one, he says, remember your Creator in the days of your youth. Whenever Scripture tells us to remember something, it doesn't simply mean memory recall. No, to remember something is to bring forth the fullness of a truth to its ultimate meaning. As 2 Timothy says, remember Jesus Christ risen from the dead. That doesn't mean don't forget that Christ is risen. No, to remember the risen Christ means bring to bear the full weight of his resurrection, the truth that through him you receive a resurrected body, that these bodies that are sown in dishonor will be raised in glory, bodies that can and will always be with the Lord. So why Paul says, if Christ is not raised, then we are of all people most to be pitied, that our hope is in vain. And that is the good news that's merely hinted at as verse seven continues, that while the body returns to the dust, the spirit returns to the God who gave it, that our souls wait to be reunited with the body in the final resurrection. And so just a word to our older members, as you face down this great vanity, this great enemy of death, there comes this good news that even as the body wastes away, the godly can still be like a vibrant tree, ever full of sap and green, as the psalmist says, that even though your earthly tent, your outer body is declining, is of great encouragement, a great testimony to our God to see your inner man being renewed day by day. Time would fail us to tell how many saints on their deathbed breathe their very last breath, praising God with all of their might, as the psalmist says, precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of his saints. So no, older members, you are ever setting that example before us, and it is of great encouragement. But in order to die well, we must first live well. And so we need wise words to do that, and that brings us to this second section in verse 11. It says there, the words of the wise are like goats, like nails firmly fixed, they are given by the one shepherd. We have here these three attributes, these three traits of wise words, which we can broaden out to mean all of Scripture. Probably Ecclesiastes is in view, but we can apply this to all of God's Word. And we can see how God's Word is stimulating, and secondly, it is stable, and thirdly, it is of the shepherd. Firstly, God's Word is stimulating. Verse 11 says, like goats. In case it's been a minute since you last used a goad, a goad is a long pointed stick that a shepherd would have used for prodding along animals. You can picture a shepherd behind a behemoth ox, and to get that beast moving, you poked him, not to injure it, but just stimulate the ox with just enough of a painful prod to produce forward motion. And God's Word does that for us. The difference being our special talent is that we are even more stubborn, more obstinate than an ox. There's another farm animal that's even more stubborn who will remain nameless that we often resemble. But God's Word comes along and it prods us, it pokes us, it awakens us to repentance and faith. You can nearly set your watch to it, that any time Israel was backsliding and falling away from our God, God would call out to His bullpen and He would send in a prophet, which at the time is identical to sending forth God's Word, calling for God's cattle prod to come and stir up Israel towards repentance and faith. That's no different for us today. The same is true. We must always be putting ourselves under, or perhaps we could say in front of, God's goad so that by word and spirit we are stimulated to walk in a manner that is pleasing to the Lord, trusting, believing that my Good Shepherd is leading me to still waters and to greener pastures. So His Word stimulates. Secondly, God's Word is stable. Verse 11 says, like nails firmly fixed. Now, if Ecclesiastes says that something is firm, our ears should perk up, because this is a book that says so often what is not firm and what is in vain. So it should jump out at us that Solomon says there is a stability to God's Word that is untouched by the vanity. We say it every Lord's Day, the grass withers, the flower fades. These traits of vanity. But God's Word endures forever. Now, kids, you might go home today and hang your coat on some kind of nail or some kind of post fixed to the wall. And why do you do that, kids? Well, because it's sturdy. It's strong. It can hold something up. Well, kids, you should know that God's Word is likewise firm and fixed. In fact, so firm that, kids, you could hang your whole life upon these truths and these promises. And so, kids, now is the time to be owning your Bible. By that, I don't mean do you have a Bible or do you keep a Bible in your room. No, kids, I mean you're reading it. You're studying it. You're treasuring up its truths. You are leaning on this firm foundation of God's Word. For the more and more we are rooted and grounded in Scripture, the more stable is the Christian. The more stable is a church. As Paul says, we're not to be like children tossed to and fro, blown about by every wind of doctrine. No, instead, here is these firm nails that we can build our life upon. So God's Word stimulates, it is stable, thirdly, perhaps best of all, it is of the shepherd. You see there, verse 11, it's given by one shepherd. As we are the sheep of his pasture, this speaks right to the authority of our great shepherd. For Ecclesiastes, I trust you know, these are not simply the words of Solomon, the words of some mere philosopher, the words of a mere mortal. No, these are the very words of God, breathed out by God Himself. And you see here, particularly, the good shepherd gives us his words. As Jesus said, Father, I have given them the words that you gave to me. That is what makes this Bible no mere book, not dead letter, but the living and active, deeply personal Word of God, that my good shepherd Himself speaks to us, leads us, guides us, protects us, feeds us all through His Word. As a Christian, you're meant to ask the question, right, how do I receive God's Word? What is my posture towards it, whether that be the preached Word, the written Word, the read Word? Could you say with a psalmist, oh, how I love your law. It is better to me than honey from the honeycomb. For the Christian, God's Word is not a burden, it is a blessing, it is not a grind but a gift. It is as Peter said to Jesus, Lord, you have the words of life, where else would I go? Well, the more we appreciate those three traits, stimulating, stable, of the shepherd, Solomon's warning makes immediate sense when he says in verse 12, my son, beware of anything beyond these. What is this warning, right? What would go beyond these goads? What are these flimsy alternatives to the fixed nails? Well, certainly we're to beware of the words of the world, the spirit of the age that is often antithetical to Scripture. The Christian is right to beware of and discerning of the various disciplines of our secular age that challenge the authority of Scripture. That could be things like psychology, psychiatry, sociology, philosophy, things that are intellectually respected in pop culture and yet often teach a worldview contrary to Scripture. If you want a truly depressing vanity, you turn to the theory of evolution, for instance, which teaches that you came from nothing, you are nothing and you are heading towards nothing. A contradiction to the things we looked at in verse 7. But secondly, the church is to beware. The New Testament repeatedly warns of false teachers with false words. Peter describes them as enticing, unsteady souls. It goes right to that point of being stable in God's Word with these nails firmly fixed. Thirdly, we're to beware of Satan himself. His first temptation is his frequent temptation. When he said, did God really say? And Satan has not retired that trick. He still spins it today with just as much craftiness as ever. And he would have you believe that this giver of these words is not so much a giver, he's more of a withholder. And fourthly, of course, to beware of our own flesh. In Sunday school this morning, we were talking much of legalism, right, this thing that we all do or we go beyond or subtract from God's Word. And we could go on and on. But Solomon's point is beware of this and instead hold firm to God's Word because in it we have everything that we need for a life of godliness. And not to mention, going beyond God's Word is also exhausting. You see, verse 12 says, of making many books there is no end and much studiness is a weariness of the flesh. Now reading is generally not an American problem. A recent survey found that 50% of Americans did not read a single book last year. My own personal opinion is that Americans today are not illiterate, we are anti-literate. We know how to read but we refuse to do so unless it's 280 characters or less. And despite the caricature, I've found that Christians tend to be avid readers, right? Christians tend to read far more than the average person and that's a good thing. But Solomon's simple point here is that if we're reading voraciously but we fail to read the book, then more reading is just weariness. It's to no profit. We'll be like the man always learning but never arriving at the truth. For Scripture is God's chosen sword to sanctify us. As Jesus prayed, Lord, sanctify my people by the truth. Thy Word is truth. So Christians just ask, how much do you prize this gift? How much am I nailed by these nails, doted by this towards godliness that is of the greatest value? All those words of the wise prepare us to hear the end of the matter, as verse 13 says, the end of the matter. It's all been heard, fear God and keep His commandments. Now what is this end? Well, let's just remember where we began. Opening lines of the book are vanity of vanities. Solomon has shown us that life under the sun is a life of vanity, that life and the things of life are fleeting, ephemeral, they are ungraspable. At home we have a very lovable but gullible golden retriever. And one of his favorite things to do is chase flashes of light. He'll spot a reflection of light bouncing off a window or maybe a swinging door and he springs into action and he tries to pounce on this light and the light may move and shift and he tries to pounce on it again and I don't have the heart to tell him, hey, you're just chasing reflections of light that you're never actually going to catch. And yet that is us, isn't it? That's what Solomon has said, that when we try to grasp at pleasure or power or wealth or self-fulfillment, these things will always elude our grasp. We will not be able to secure them or pin them down, no matter how hard we try to find lasting meaning in a career, in accomplishments, in appearances, these things will eventually be blown away by the wind. That is the long journey that Solomon has brought us on. And now in these very final verses comes this final word, that given the vanity, how then shall man live? And so he says, the end of the matter is this, fear God and keep His commandments. What is it to fear God? One of the things you see throughout Scripture is that when man gets just the slightest glance of who God is, his response is always that of fear. You might remember when John received his vision of the Lord Jesus in Revelation, he falls down as though dead. Or you might recall Isaiah's vision of the Lord of hosts, his immediate response is, woe is me, I am a man of unclean lips. That was something for Isaiah to say, because if anyone had clean lips in Israel, it would have been Isaiah. And yet before God, he can barely get out the words, woe is me, I am undone. That is what it is to fear God. At its most basic level, it is simply seeing God for who He is and man seeing himself rightly for who man is. And as I said before, the almighty, majestic, all-wise, all-knowing God, maker of heaven and earth, the one who is of purer eyes than can behold evil, man's only proper response is that of fear. It is the most fitting conclusion to a book that is a book about wisdom, for the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. For fear is an incredibly powerful thing, isn't it? We all know this when we fall into the fear of man. The fear of man makes us do things and say things that we wouldn't normally do or say. When we care, when we cower before people in a simple way, it starts to control us, it starts to compel us, it starts to constrain us to do the very things we don't want to do. That is how powerful fear can be. That's why Proverbs says, this fear of man, it's a deadly snare, it is a deadly trap. And so we want to put off the fear of man. We don't want to put off fear altogether. We don't want to go too far. We don't want to be fearless, but fearful with the right kind of fear. There's this great scene in The Lord of the Rings. Now I have a personal responsibility to say that the book is better than the movie in every way, but there's this great scene where the ranger is talking to the hobbit Frodo about the dangerous journey that lies ahead and he asks Frodo, are you frightened? And Frodo says, yes, and then the ranger responds, not nearly frightened enough. And friends, that is us. Perhaps we know something of the fear of the Lord, but not nearly frightened enough. So we're to always be cultivating this trembling trust, this deeper reverence of our God. If we ever need an example, we need only look to the Lord Jesus Christ. It was said of him that the fear of the Lord was his delight, that by the fear of the Lord he withstood Satan's temptations. By the fear of the Lord, he never once succumbed to the fear of man. By the fear of the Lord, he had such strength and love to go all the way to the cross and the obedience of death. And as our Lord God said to Moses, oh that my people had such a heart to always fear me. Now, lest we think that fear is just a feeling, Solomon goes on to say this fear will show up in our lives in a very real way. As verse 13 continues, fear God and keep his commandments. In broader evangelicalism, we're fond of posing a particular kind of question when we're sharing the gospel with someone. It might go something like this. If you die tonight in your sleep, where are you going? Right, you get hit by a bus on the way home. What is your final destiny? And that's a fine question to ask. But maybe an even more important question would be what if you don't die tonight? Where are you going? What is your purpose? For our great commission, of course, is not to go make converts, but to make disciples. As the Lord Jesus said, teach them to observe, to keep all of my commandments. That's what Solomon says here, that we will become practitioners of the fear of the Lord. You could almost put it as fear God by keeping his commandments, fear God in keeping his commandments. It's stated negatively that if we don't keep his commandments, then we lack the fear of the Lord. And unless we think that fear and love are surely opposites, right, the Christian could either have the fear of God or he can have the love of God, but he cannot have both. Just remember those words of the Lord Jesus, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. The Christian has that loving fear, that fearful love, the desires to please Christ and to obey him. Now maybe you think whatever a sincere Christian should think, oh yes, I want to keep God's commandments, but I'm so powerless to do so. I'm so weak to walk in God's ways. I so often fail to keep God's commandments. Well here the very next thing that Jesus said after that statement was his promise to send us a helper, to send the Holy Spirit himself. And that is the good news of the resurrected Christ, that he has sent this great helper, the Holy Spirit, to inflame our love for Jesus Christ and to empower us to do what we could never do of our own doing. Because on our own, as even Ecclesiastes says, the hearts of the children of man are evil. On our own, we have about as much power to keep God's commandments as we do to change the color of our skin. We are entirely powerless. But enter the Holy Spirit. Christ sends forth his Spirit to transform us to walk in God's ways. So we have godly fear in keeping God's commandments, but there's one more item from verse 13, because you might be asking yourself, if not ask yourself right now, this main question, well why should man fear God and keep his commandments? Let's end with why. Why should I do so? Verse 13, for this is the whole duty of man. This is why you have a heart that beats. This is why you have a pulse. This is why you have breath in your lungs and breath in your spirit and what it is to be the Imago Dei, because we've considered every other option to answer that question. Maybe we are meant to seek our own happiness, and maybe we're meant to find pleasure at the bottom of a barrel or at the top of the corporate ladder. Maybe we're meant to run the rat race and keep up an upper middle class lifestyle. Or maybe just stockpile wealth and eat, drink, and be merry, because tomorrow we die. We have traversed every option under the sun. And now comes the end of the matter, that as creatures of the Creator, our purpose is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Should we need just a little more persuasion? Solomon says in verse 14, for this God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil. Ecclesiastes sometimes gets bad press, as though this book teaches that nothing really matters because it's all vanity. I hope you see the exact opposite in verse 14, that in fact everything matters. So much so that even down to the secret things and thoughts of man will be summoned before God in a final judgment, that everything covered will be uncovered. God's judgment is as terrifying as it is strangely encouraging, or firstly terrifying, or a right to hear that and cry out. Who could stand before this great and awesome day of the Lord, when man is summoned before God's tribunal to give an account for the things done in the body, towards the God whose disposition towards justice is as pure as it is powerful? It's a sobering reality that my words, my deeds, my thoughts, my intentions, my motivations are all held accountable to this holy God. That biting remark that I made to a coworker, that angry outburst at home, those sins committed in the body, those sins unconfessed, unrepented of, those proud moments inside of my head, those proud moments inside of my heart. Indeed, if you're here this morning and not a Christian, hear that this final judgment is as real as it is terrifying. God's judgment is of such holy intensity that man cries out to the rocks and the mountains to fall upon Him, just to shield him from the reality of God's wrath and His punishment unto sin and sinners. This specter of final judgment is not always to bring us to our knees and to fly us to Jesus Christ, for He alone is the one who saves us from the wrath to come. It is only in Christ that this fear of judgment is removed. As 1 John says, perfect love casts out fear, this fear of punishment. That is the glory of the gospel. That this fear of punishment is cast out of us because God's wrath was cast upon Jesus Christ on the cross. That when Christ died, He died the death of judgment, dying as a shameful, condemned sinner, Himself having no sin. It was arson that held Him there. And that means for those who are in Christ, there truly is no punishment remaining. And all the penalties, all the wrath unto sin has been exhausted. It has been fully poured out upon the Lamb of God. And so God's judgment is both terrifying, but let's also see it's strangely encouraging, strangely motivating. You see, Solomon says, not only are the evil things brought into judgment, I don't know if you noticed there in verse 14, he says that the good things also come to judgment. Judgment often has this negative connotation. But remember, of course, you can also be judged to be in the right, right? And that's a good thing when God vindicates His people. And that means that if you are in Christ, we don't simply put off the evil, we also put on the doing of good, that God, our God, is pleased to look upon our works and accept our good works, though imperfect they may be. God is pleased to accept them through Christ. Every parent knows this, right? If you're kids, they bring you a drawing that they doodled, right? No parent scoffs and says, well, you call this art? You know, look at this coloring. It's outside the lines and the lighting's off and the shading's all wrong. This is terrible. Of course, a parent is pleased to accept such imperfect work. And friends, how much more so does God, our Father, that He looks through the lens of Jesus Christ at our otherwise blurry, blemished, imperfect works, and He says, well done, well done, good and faithful servant, that the same God who has the highest standards that are beyond all comprehension, that same God is easily pleased with His children. I wonder, do you have that view of God? I worry. I wonder for many if they have a picture of God always frowning, always cross, always displeased with them and at them, always telling them, not good enough, try it again, not good enough. But you see, when we fear God, when we keep His commandments, when we walk in the Spirit, our God graciously looks down, smiles, and says, well done, good and faithful servant. And so, church, this is the end of the matter. You've heard it now for twelve chapters. You have only one life to live under the sun, and it begs the question, how will you spend this vapor of yours? How will you live this mist of yours? Will it be a striving after the wind, drinking from cisterns that can never satisfy, chasing pleasures that will never fulfill, or will it be fearing the God in whose right hand are pleasures evermore? Let us pray. Our gracious God and heavenly Father, we praise You, for indeed You are the God who is to be feared above all other gods. How good and right it is for us to keep Your commandments, and yet we confess we so often do fall short, and yet as we confess, we praise You for the Lord Jesus Christ, living the life that we were meant to live, dying the death that we were meant to die, raising in our place that in Him we have already been raised up with Him and seated in the heavenly places. And so we do pray that we would go forth encouraged that life under the sun, though wrought with vanities, is a life full of meaning, full of joy, full of purpose, that we shall one day see the King in His beauty, a reality that is at work right now in our very hearts. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.
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