The Last Word

We're here today at the end of this 11-week series through the book of Ecclesiastes. I don't know what this journey has been like for you—bewildering, interesting, encouraging? 10 minutes after the service today we're having a Q&A session where you get to ask any questions that might still be lingering after these weeks and I can't wait to hear what's on your mind.

But for now we come to our final passage in Ecclesiastes which sums up the message that we've heard from this book all along, but drives it home in a powerful and unforgettable way.

1. Enjoy Life While You Can… (11:7-10)

The first major part of the conclusion is found in 11:7-10. We can sum the message of this section as "enjoy life while you can."

That's been one of the repeated messages of this book, hasn't it been? That's what chapter 11 has told us up until this point. Do what you can today, because you have no idea what's coming. And that idea just continues, even stronger, into verses 7-8:

“7 Light is sweet, and it is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun. 8 So if a person lives many years, let him rejoice in them all; but let him remember that the days of darkness will be many. All that comes is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 11:7–8).

Have any of you ever looked at light and thought it was sweet? That might be a strange idea unless you know that days of darkness were coming. There's something about knowing that there's no sunlight in the grave that makes you appreciate how good it is to see the sun today.

So enjoy the sun as you live under it, because all that's coming is darkness and vanity—mere breath.

And as you enjoy life under the sun, especially enjoy being young. Verse 9: “Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes” (Ecclesiastes 11:9).

There's nothing quite like being young, is there? The young have the greatest levels of health and energy and optimism and enjoyment and wonder. The world is big and exciting and they have their whole lives ahead of them and it seems like there's nothing they can't do if they decide to to it.

And just physically, there's nothing like being young. I heard a joke once that when people are in their 20s, they can fall asleep backwards on a coffee table and get up and run a marathon, but when we get to our 30s, if you use the wrong pillow at night you'll need to visit the emergency department the next day.

There might be some slight exaggerations there, but the truth is that you will never feel as good as you do when you're young. Qoheleth knows this, and he encourages the young to enjoy it while they can. He goes on to say, in verse 9, "Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes." In verse 10 he says, "Remove vexation [or grief] from your heart, and put away pain from your body, for youth and the dawn of life are vanity."

In other words, enjoy being young, because it's so short-lived. Your youth is going to be like a puff of breath. Gone before you know it, and you'll never get the chance to be young again. So don't waste it.

But—but—as you enjoy your youth, don't forget what's coming. As the end of verse 9: "know that for all these things God will bring you into judgement."

Enjoy being young, but don't forget God's judgement. Sinful pleasures might feel great for a moment, like we heard a few weeks ago, but judgement is coming.

It's a little bit like going to a sit-down restaurant. You get the menu, and you can order whatever you want, but you have to pay for it all before you leave.

So enjoy being young—but know that God will bring you into judgement for everything you do. Which is why, as 12:1 tells us, you must "Remember your Creator in the days of your youth." That's the most important thing to do and to focus on when you're young. Remember God. Remember your Creator while you're young.

2. …Because One Day, That Won't Be An Option (12:1-8)

And not just because you'll be judged by God for everything you do in your youth, but because youth itself is not going to last as long as you think it will.

“Remember also your 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'” (Ecclesiastes 12:1).

And with this verse Qoheleth transitions us into his final section in this book, which is almost a poem that runs from verse 1 to the end of verse 8. The big idea here is to enjoy life while you can, because one day, that won't be an option.

Because one day, young person, if you live long enough, you're going to get old.

Evil days are coming, not "evil" in the sense of moral evil, but bad in the sense of the physical breakdown of getting old and aging and being unable to enjoy what you used the enjoy as a young person.

Those days are coming, and no teenage dream, no imaginary fountain of youth, no cosmetic surgery, no health supplement, no exercise regimen is going to stop it. We might slow it down for a bit, and we should be as healthy as we can, but ready or not, you're going to get old and you're going to die.

And the way that Qoheleth tells us about this is by comparing the process of aging to the process of a house, or a city, or even the whole creation, decaying and crumbling to ruins.

It's an appropriate picture because, ever since God's curse on Adam's sin, the fate of our bodies and the fate of the world around us are tied together. Death and decay are at work in us and in the world around us in much the same way.

So we shouldn't be surprised to see the language of de-creation here in verse 2: "before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return after the rain."

The hosts of heaven failing to give their light is de-creation language, often used in by the Old Testament prophets as language of judgement against cities and nations. Here, it's a picture for the aging process and eventual death of a person. And it's putting it on the level of a catastrophe, a disaster, an apocalypse.

Verse 3 talks about the keepers of the house trembling and the strong man being bent, language that describes well what happens to a body as it gets older and older. When verse 3 talks about the grinders ceasing because they are few, that could be a metaphor for not being able to chew because you'd lost your teeth, which was much more of a reality before modern dental practices.

But it also speaks to an abandoned house or a city which production has ceased. That's also the idea when we read about "those who look through the windows" being dimmed, which could be a picture for failing eyesight, but also evokes a desolate city in which nobody is looking out to see what's happening because nothing is happening anymore.

And then verse 4 speaks of the doors on the street being shut. Imagine an old house that's boarded up, nobody coming or going—that's the idea here. Things are shutting down. The sound of grinding—of food production—fades away, as does the singing of young people. We read in the middle of verse 4 that "one rises up at the sound of a bird." Verse 5 goes on to describe being "afraid also of what is high, and terrors are in the way."

This seems to be describing a city that's been devastated by disaster and all of the inhabitants are traumatized, just waiting for what's next. And perhaps it parallels the experience of some older people who lose their nerve and become terrified of things that they once faced with bravery.

And often that's because they've experienced a lot of horrible things by then, and and can almost be waiting for the next tragedy to strike.

The picture of the almost tree blossoming there in verse 5 sounds out of place, but could be a reference to Jeremiah 1 where a blossoming almond branch is a picture of judgement on Jerusalem. There's no need to explain the grasshopper dragging itself along and desire failing.

The rest of verse 5 gives us a picture of a funeral procession: man going to his eternal home, which Qoheleth would have seen as the grave, while mourners go about in the streets. Verse 6 gives us several more pictures of breakage and ruin: a silver cord being snapped, a golden bowl being broken, a pitcher shattered at the fountain, a wheel broken at the cistern.

And then, in Genesis 3 language, it speaks of the dust returning to the earth as it was, and the spirit returning to God who gave it.

Friends, Qoheleth's words here in chapter 12 remind us that death is not an event but a process. What we call "aging" is simply the process of de-creation, and death is simply the final and inevitable step in that process.

And this process of death starts really young. Do you know that cellular aging begins in the womb, before birth? And that most people peak biologically in their 20s? From then on it's all decline.

Sometimes when people get really sick, or get a bad diagnosis, they ask, "am I dying?" And here's the truth: the answer is yes. It's always yes. Every single one of us in this room is currently dying. Right now your cells, your DNA, your body—we're all dying. Slowly poisoned by the same oxygen we breathe, our bodies unable to repair itself fast enough to keep up with the damage.

God made us out of dust, and because of our sin we are all in the process of returning to the dust. Life in reverse.

Here's the hard part though—on the inside, in our thinking, in our ability to regulate our emotions and make wise decisions, we keep maturing long after our bodies peak. We keep growing on the inside well into our 40s and 50s and beyond.

And this is why getting old is so hard. This is why so many men my age struggle so greatly. I just turned 40 this year and I feel like just in the last year I'm figuring out some important things in life. It feels like I'm just ready to get started.

But my body is telling me otherwise. I'm going grey and it takes me longer and longer to heal from injuries and this year I will cross the half-way point of life expectancy for males in Canada. I'm already five years past the half-way point for how long you're expected to remain in good health.

And it doesn't seem fair, and this is one of the things that can launch men into mid-life crisis, where they do stupid things like trade in their truck for a sports car or trade in their wife for a younger woman because they don't want to believe that they're getting old and hurtling towards death.

And when I talk to people older than me, I hear the same thing. They don't feel any older on the inside. It's still just them. But their bodies are crumbling like a city in ruins.

Young people in this room, teenagers especially, I want to encourage you as strongly as I can to plan a time, maybe this Christmas, to go walk through a senior's home, and see the people unable to do anything but sit in a chair all day and stare, and remember this: every one of them was once as young as you, and for them it doesn't feel very long ago. And on the inside, they're not that different from you.

And if a car accident or cancer doesn't take you sooner, one day—a lot sooner than you know it— you will once be as old as them. Some of you will spend your last years unable to feed yourself, unable to go to the bathroom by yourself. Unable to experience any kind of physical pleasure or comfort.

And Ecclesiastes chapter 12 helps us face this honestly and talk about how awful it us. Chapter 12 does not describe the aging process in the flowery language of Hallmark card. It describes aging like a disaster scene in some post-apocalyptic movie. Silent streets, boarded up windows, smashed jars everywhere.

Aging is a catastrophe. It's a horrible thing to have a perfectly healthy body fall apart like this, and to realize that none of us are getting out of here alive.

So, remember your Creator in the days of your youth before those days come. Because, as verse 8 tells us, “Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher; all is vanity.”

These are the words that Qoheleth opened up with. These are the words he concludes with. In many ways, the whole book of Ecclesiastes has simply been explaining what this phrase means.

And nowhere do we see it more clearly than in the process of aging and death. Youth, pleasure, life itself is breath, fading away like a puff of vapour.

3. The Last Word (12:9-14)

a. Listen to Qoheleth! (vv. 8-12)

And with that, Qoheleth's words are finished.

But the book of Ecclesiastes is not done, because from verses 9-14 the Narrator, or the Editor, of Ecclesiastes gives his summary and conclusion to the book.

Here in verse 9, it's not Qoheleth talking, but the narrator or compiler or editor of Ecclesiastes telling us about Qoheleth. “9 Besides being wise, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care. 10 The Preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth” (Ecclesiastes 12:9–10).

What he's telling us here in the last word of Ecclesiastes is to listen to Qoheleth! Listen to Qoheleth. He's affirming and endorsing everything that Qoheleth has written here. Ecclesiastes has been upright words of truth.

You can imagine someone asking, "If that's true, why was so much of this book hard to hear?" and perhaps in response to this question, in verse 11 he says that the words of the wise—including Qoheleth's words—are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed.

Goads are what you use to prod along a stubborn oxen. Like firmly fixed nails, they poke. They hurt. But that's the point. These words he says are given by one Shepherd—who is probably a reference to the Lord. These words come from God, in other words!

In verse 12 he addresses his son and tells him to beware of anything beyond these words. Trust what's here, and treat anything else with suspicion. “Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh” (Ecclesiastes 12:12). Can I get an amen from any past or current students?

But what's the point here? The point is, pay attention to Ecclesiastes! Listen to Qoheleth!That's the point here.

b. Fear God and Keep His Commands, Because Judgement Is Coming (vv. 13-14)

And now, finally, in verses 13-14, the narrator sums up Ecclesiastes and gives us his conclusion to the whole thing. “13 The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. 14 For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil” (Ecclesiastes 12:13–14).

Now this is really interesting. Because if you or I were to sum up Ecclesiastes thus far, my guess is that this wouldn't be how we'd do it.

We'd probably say something like, "It's all vanity." Which we know the narrator doesn't disagree with, given what he's just said. So what's going on?

What's going on, as I understand it, is that the narrator is answering the question: if it's all just vanity, then what should we do about that? And his answer is, fear God and keep his commandments, because God is going to bring every deed into judgement.

It's not like Qoheleth has never said anything like this. He's told us 4 or 5 times that there's a living God we must fear (3:14, 5:7, 7:18, 8:12-13).

And likewise, we have heard the value of keeping his commandments, even just in today's passage, because of the coming judgement.

And even though, many times, Qoheleth has reflected on the fact that even if you do fear God and keep his commandments, you're going to die just like everybody else, he never says, "go live however you want to live. Forget about God. You do you."

Even though he can't exactly see the reason why, Qoheleth still believes it's better for people to fear God and keep His commandments. And that's because, as best as I can figure out, deep down inside Qoheleth knows that there must be more than mere breath.

We saw this already today in 11:9. “Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes. But know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment” (Ecclesiastes 11:9).

Why would God's judgement matter if all that's coming is death, and everybody gets the exact same experience of death? The fact that he says, "live with judgement in view," suggests a nagging suspicion that there must be more.

We saw this again in verse 7 of chapter 12, when he talked about how “…the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it” (Ecclesiastes 12:7).

Similarly, in 3:21, he had mused, “Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth?” "Who knows?" was a real question! The options were open, as far as he knew.

All Qoheleth can see under the sun is mere breath. But a few times like this this little bit of hope pops through, this little glimpse that maybe there's something on the other side of this great wall we call death.

And so it's not too big of a surprise that the narrator says, "Fear God and keep his commandments, because God's going to bring everything in to judgement." Even if they didn't know for sure whether there was any meaningful existence death, they suspected there might be.

More than just suspected, they had faith. Eternity was in their hearts, like we read back in chapter 3. Just like Abraham and his sons who were looking for a heavenly country even though God hadn't told them about that yet, just like so many Old Covenant saints' hearts burned with hope for something they didn't know about yet, so Qoheleth and especially the narrator here end son a note of faith.

There must be more than what we can see under the sun. So fear God and keep His commandments. We are going to be judged for everything we've done, in public or in secret, good or bad.

4. …And the One After

And that's it. That's the last word.

And if we lived back when Qoheleth lived, that would be the last word. That would be all we know.

Because that's all that God had told His people at that point in the story. Because he was telling a story, with a main character named Jesus, and good stories set up their main character with unanswered questions. Because it makes the answers all the better.

When I watch movies with certain members of my family, I often get asked questions like, "Who is that? Why did he just do that? Why did that bad thing just happen to the main character?" And my answer is, "The movie makers want you to ask that question, and you're going to find your answer if you keep watching."

Qoheleth is kind of like a person asking questions in the middle of the movie. "Okay, what's going on here? We live, we die, and that's it?" And we need those questions. They help us see what's going on in the story and how good the story actually is.

And if we keep watching, the story gets better. Slowly, God drops hints. They're there in the Psalms. They're there in the prophets. They get really clear in Daniel, 12 where, for the first time, we hear a clear word about resurrection and eternal life.

And then, of course, all over the New Testament is the promise of eternal life which, we we've seen over and over throughout this series, is the answer to the questions Qoheleth is asking.

And, as we've seen over and over, the answer of eternal life is better and sweeter because of Qoheleth's questions. We wouldn't know how sweet Jesus and his gift of resurrection is if Ecclesiastes didn't help us taste the bitterness of how bad things would be without Him.

But let's not just end on that general note. As good as it is. Let's press in a little bit closer to ask what does Qoheleth's perspective on youth and aging that we saw today have to say to us living today with a knowledge of Jesus?

I believe that we need to hear what Qoheleth has to say. Christians need to think deeply about our own mortality and our own aging and our own death.

Perhaps, especially, Christians in 2025. Let me share a bit of my own personal perspective on this. When I was a child, I spent a lot of time in senior's homes, visiting my mom at work or tagging along as she visited people on Sunday afternoons. In my teens my family did a lot of singing at senior's homes. I spent a lot of time with people who were advanced in years.

And this week I did some math. When I was 5, in 1990, a person who was 80 would have been born in 1910. They would have lived through the first world war as a young child, the Great Depression in their teen years, and experienced the Second World War as a young adult.

That generation had suffered a lot. They had known poverty and hardship. They had seen wealth evaporate. They had seen lots of their friends go off across the ocean and never come back. They knew how fleeting life was.

And the Christians of that generation, as a result of this, loved to talk and sing about heaven. That's a legacy that's still preserved in the Southern Gospel music of that era. So much of it was about heaven. They knew from hard experience that this life might not get any better. They wanted to leave this hard place and go be with Jesus.

And one of the critiques that sometimes came against that generation was that they could be so heavenly minded that they were no earthly good. All they wanted to do was be in heaven.

But the world has changed a lot since 1945. In the years after the war, affluence and luxuries and technology and medical breakthroughs exploded. Life expectancy surged. Doctors seemed to be able to fix anything.

And it's changed us. If that generation could get so heavenly minded that they weren't much earthly good, my great concern is that many of the Christians alive today, whatever age they are, are so earthly minded that they aren't much heavenly good.

And one of the ways that this shows up is in the way that people age. It seems to me that more and more of us have bought into the idea that doctors can fix anything, and so when people do begin to experience the pain and suffering of aging, it comes as a shock and a surprise instead of something expected.

Perhaps the saddest thing to me—and I want to be so respectful as I say this—is that, in general, I don't hear my fathers and mothers in the faith talking about heaven near as much as they did when I was a child. Instead, in the last 20 years especially, it's far more common for me to see people who are very clearly in the last years of their life panicking and begging God to heal them from things that are very clearly a part of the aging process.

I want to show so much compassion here, because I've never been any older than I am right now. And I'm not saying that God stops healing people when they turn 65. Of course He can heal what He wants, when He wants. But until Jesus returns, we have to face the fact that we're dying and going to heaven. And isn't that good news that can and should sustain us through the hardship of aging and death?

Here at Emmanuel we have seen some good examples of how to do this. I'll never forget talking to George Sholter after he was diagnosed with cancer. He quoted Ecclesiastes 3:2 to me: "There's a time to live, and a time to die," and in the next months he embraced what was happening and he faced his death like a man and like a Christian. And watching him die in faith did much to grow my faith and kill my own fear of death.

You know who else had that same perspective on aging and death? The apostle Paul. Paul was relentlessly realistic about the toll that suffering and age was taking on his body. But he didn't stop there.

Listen to these words from 2 Corinthians 4 in light of what we're heard from Ecclesiastes this morning:

“7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. 8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. 11 For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. 12 So death is at work in us, but life in you. 13 Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, ‘I believed, and so I spoke,’ we also believe, and so we also speak, 14 knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. 15 For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God. 16 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self [man] is wasting away, our inner self [man] is being renewed day by day. 17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:7–18).

Brothers and sisters, that's the perspective we need to have in light of our time in Ecclesiastes, especially today's passage. Relentlessly realistic about the death that is already at work in us as we suffer and age. But relentlessly hopeful that the best is yet to come.

And if you are still young, don't waste it. You will never be more free, more healthy, more strong, more able to use your body to serve others in Jesus' name than you are when you are young. Youth is a vapour—so remember your Creator while you're young.

Don't think that you can get serious about God when you're older. Give God your youth. Give Him your energy, your ambition, your yes.

Remember your Creator in the days of your youth.