12 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”—
2 before the sun and the light
and the moon and the stars grow dark,
and the clouds return after the rain;
3 when the keepers of the house tremble,
and the strong men stoop,
when the grinders cease because they are few,
and those looking through the windows grow dim;
4 when the doors to the street are closed
and the sound of grinding fades;
when men rise up at the sound of birds,
but all their songs grow faint;
5 when men are afraid of heights
and of dangers in the streets;
when the almond tree blossoms
and the grasshopper drags himself along
and desire no longer is stirred.
Then man goes to his eternal home
and mourners go about the streets.
Sorry for the late posts and that they've been mostly quote-filled instead of my own thoughts - we moved on Friday and it's been rather hectic around here!
Remember your Creator in the days of your youth,
God created the entire world just by using His voice. But He used His very hands to create humanity, and He breathed life into us - very personal. And then He gave us creation, to be enjoyed.
More from Mark Driscoll's sermon, Threading the Needle....
He is our Creator, and what he’s saying is this, that young people curiously are the most likely to forget God. They get so busy enjoying the majesty of this creation and the youthfulness of their spirit and their life that they forget God altogether, and it’s interesting, because if you forget your Creator in the days of your youth, what that leads to is misery down the road. When you are young, that’s when you decide: “Will I go to college? Will I not go to college? What will I do for a career? What will I not do for a career? Who will I marry or not marry?”
What you’re doing is you’re setting a life course at a young age, and if you forget your Creator at that time, wrong career choice; wrong educational tract; the wrong relationship. Sexual activity, alcohol abuse, drug abuse: all of these vexing problems of health and spirit that he mentioned. You start abusing your body. You start abusing your health. You start abusing your spirit. If you forget your Creator in the days of your youth, you’re destroying all of the days that are going to follow....
we live in a culture that doesn’t believe in truth. It doesn’t believe in God. It doesn’t believe that there is cause-and-effect between wisdom and joy...
If people remembered their Creator in the days of their youth, they wouldn’t need the number of police, the number of drug-rehabilitation counselors, the number of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, the number of Child Protective Agency coordinators. They wouldn’t need incarceration, threat of laws, because rather than just being managed, they would be redeemed. They’d be different people. Solomon’s lived this way. God gave him this insight of wisdom, and, in a great irony, he lived as a fool. Now he’s an old man that’s what? He forgot his Creator in the days of his youth. It started off very, very subtly. He loved the Lord. He walked with the Lord. God told him he could have anything that he wanted. He requested wisdom. God was so pleased that he gave him wisdom and power and wealth.
Next thing you know, he sees a few hot young ladies that don’t worship the same god. Starts chasing them. He’s no longer delighting in God, but he’s still pursuing the desires of his heart, and now they’re crooked and astray. Before you know it, he’s having sex with 1,000 women. Before you know it, he’s worshipping a false god. Some of the religions of the women that he marries go so far as to perform child sacrifice, and it is possible that a man who wrote a few books of the Bible and was the wisest man, next to Jesus, who has ever lived, ends up murdering children.
You say, “Well how in the world do you start as the son of David, writing the Bible, making the temple in which God comes down to dwell and be with his people? How do you get to the place where you’re having sex with 1,000 women and you’re killing babies and you’re worshipping false gods?” Well, it’s pretty easy. Somewhere in that journey – forget your Creator. Just forget him. Just live your life. Don’t pick up your Bible. Don’t pray. Don’t confess your sins. Don’t hang out with God’s people. Just forget him, and I’m sure that, for Solomon, this was a very gradual decline. It’s just slouching toward folly. That’s why it’s so important for you – particularly if you are young – to not just know God, but continually remember him, every day, ever circumstance.
Delighting in him. Enjoying him, so that as you live your life and pursue your passions, you’re doing so according to God’s will for you. ...
Søren Kierkegaard, the great philosopher, he says that, “We should live life forward, after we define it backward.” We should know that we’re going to God, and we should live in his direction.
If you’re young and you don’t read your Bible, if you’re young and you don’t confess your sin, if you’re young and you don’t pray to God, you are setting in pattern a habit that is going to continually draw you further from God, as it did Solomon. It’s going to destroy your life.
in the days of your youth
Start with your kids. Start with your kids when they’re really little. Paul tells Timothy that, “The Scriptures you have known from infancy have made you wise unto salvation.” Infancy: little kids. Teach kids not just to know God, but to love him. Not just to obey God, but to enjoy him, and if they enjoy God and they love God, they will obey God. Have them remember their Creator when they’re real little and encourage them to keep remembering their Creator.
before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, “I find no pleasure in them”— before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark, and the clouds return after the rain; when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men stoop, when the grinders cease because they are few,
and those looking through the windows grow dim; when the doors to the street are closed and the sound of grinding fades; when men rise up at the sound of birds, but all their songs grow faint; when men are afraid of heights and of dangers in the streets; when the almond tree blossoms and the grasshopper drags himself along and desire no longer is stirred.
The time will come, and it will come quickly, when we will be old. Our limbs will tremble, we will stoop, we will lose our teeth, we will lose our eyesight, our lips will purse up around our missing teeth, we'll start waking up really early in the morning, we'll be afraid of heights or falling, and the dangers of going out, our hair will grow white, we'll have a hard time getting around, and we're going to lose our sexual desire. We're going to get old.
And then?
Then man goes to his eternal home and mourners go about the streets.
And then we die and people mourn.
Remember our Creator in the days of our youth. Don't get so busy that we forget all about God and spend the rest of our lives wasting it away. Until we're old and gray and it's too late to go back and change anything.
Remember your Creator in the days of your youth.
Tomorrow's scripture focus: Ecclesiastes 12:6-8
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