"REMEMBER THY CREATOR"
“REMEMBER THY CREATOR”
I have in mind to speak to young ones here, and I have read this part of the last chapter of Ecclesiastes in view of this. It addresses young people, but the contents are almost entirely about old people. I know young people are not particularly concerned or interested in old people. It is usual that they should seek to get out of the way of old people and get with their own kind, as they think, persons of their own age. They do not help each other morally. They had better stay with the old as much as possible. I say this particularly to young Christians, and there are many here. Your safety largely lies in keeping with the old, but, as I said, the chapter is addressed to young people, and they are asked to remember their Creator. The word ‘Creator’ is in the plural in the passage, as if God would stress His Creatorship, so as to warn the young ones here — “Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth”, and then it proceeds to speak of things before they happen, meaning before you become old, because the things mentioned are the things that belong to old people, and it is because most of us, if we remain here, shall become old. Every minute increases your age, and correspondingly increases your responsibility to your Creator. So that, to be as brief as possible, and yet not to omit anything that may be helpful, we have “before the evil days come, and the years draw nigh, of which thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them”. That is to say, you are reminded of something that you do not yet experience — the evil days and the years in which you have no pleasure. Of course, you say, in my young days I have pleasure, and if I have not I hope to have, and the world is bent on you having pleasure.
[p. 356] I am not speaking of that kind of pleasure. That kind is the pleasures of sin for a season and that is the time of it, but later, “thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them”. You are not saying that yet, and that is why it is put down here thus. Others are saying it. Perhaps in this room there are some who are saying, ‘I have little or no pleasure in my life; I am full of aches’, and I ask you, how old are you? Well, I remember asking an aboriginal in Australia the question, as he came down from the wilds, how old he was, and he said, ‘Many’. He meant that. He perhaps did not have language to say more, and so if I were to ask some people here, How old are you? they would answer, ‘Many’. Well, they have the experiences contemplated here. That is, the evil days have come, and the years have drawn nigh or have come when they say, “I have no pleasure in them”. And, of course, we look with a measure of compassion on our old people. I am speaking somewhat of what I know. I am not so young. I am older than most here. ‘Many’, as I have said, more than most here; but many are here that we would look on with compassion and our compassion is drawn out because they are old, decrepit, with, it may be, poor hearing, poor sight, poor taste, poor digestion, and many other such things, and I am speaking to you young people, because age is creeping on, too, in your case. You have not felt it yet, but it is coming. Presently it will be on you, and that is the point of the exhortation here, “Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth”, before these things come upon you, “before the evil days come”. And then the writer who, I would say, is Solomon (thank God for Solomon), is called the Preacher and, of course, I am endeavouring to preach, following his way. Hence what I am reading is his word as the Preacher: Solomon was a preacher. Nebuchadnezzar was a preacher, and Solomon was; not that he had much age. I should [p. 357] say he did not exceed sixty. He hardly came up to these years that he speaks of here. David did. He said, “I have been young, and now am old”, Psalm 37: 25. He could speak with experience; I am not saying that Solomon could not, for he may have grown old in youth. He had a strenuous life. You marvel at what he did, but then I am not stopping to speak much of Solomon in that sense. I am endeavouring to speak of what he said now as the Preacher. And he was a former of assemblies. In other words, anyone who preaches the gospel should have in mind to form the assembly, or if he does not form an assembly, certainly to add to the assembly. If he has a convert, that is what he has accomplished. The Lord says, “On this rock I will build my assembly”, and every preacher who adds one stone, adds a convert, is helping on the building. And Solomon was a builder, and the word implies that he was a former of assemblies, and I would not think of being here tonight save with a view either to help on souls in a knowledge of the assembly, or to convert one with a view to his being a member of the assembly.
Well now, the subject matter here, as I said, is to youth, but it is of old persons, so that these things have not yet come on you, or are supposed not to have come, for you young people really are understood by the old — a little understood by myself. I have sought at times to find out what all these things mean, and here we have, “before the sun, and the light, and the moon, and the stars, be darkened, and the clouds return after the rain”. You young people do not know anything about these things experimentally. You may know them objectively by hearing of them, but the time of the darkening for you of the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, has not come. It belongs to old people. The allusion is to what they experience. And then further, “in the day when the keepers of the house tremble”. You have not begun [p. 358] to tremble yet. You have not begun to tremble by the fear of death. If it does come you put it off. You say, ‘Forget that’. You do not want people to talk to you about death or about sickness or about sorrow. You want the world. You want pleasure and the preacher here is telling you to “Remember thy Creator” before these things happen to you. They have happened to millions before you. They have not happened to you, and hence the word to you is to remember your Creator now, and the word ‘Creator’ is in the plural as I said, in order to stress the idea of God’s rights over you as your Creator. Remember thy Creator. That is what we get here. It is not the Creator. People do not often refer to the Creator in that sense, but He is thy Creator. And then it is, let that memory be with you, remembrance of God as your Creator from the time you began to think. He has a right to you from the time you began to think and read and so forth. He has a right to you, and He would assert that right to you; and the devil would darken it, blot it out of your speakings and your readings and your writings, and your conversations. The devil would blot out the idea of the Creator, but the Spirit of God is bent on keeping (the word being in the plural here) that idea constantly in your mind. Presently you will begin to fear Him. Presently you will know more about Him than you do now. Presently you will understand that the Creator of the universe is Jesus, but then I am not speaking of that here because it is God that is alluded to here. The word ‘God’ in the first chapter of Genesis is in mind. That also is a plural word, for God would impress upon us His rights, and the use of the plural of Himself has in mind that He should be in your mind day and night, at all times in the days of your youth. God is seeking you now, and therefore these things are mentioned before they come. He is telling you they will come. To millions they [p. 359] have come. Millions have gone into the grave — some of them into everlasting loss — the Lord Jesus says, into everlasting punishment. Do not put that away from you — everlasting punishment. He has got a right to punish everlastingly when you die. “These shall go away”, the Lord Jesus says, “into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal”, Matthew 25: 46. Let that come into your soul. There are two roads — one leading to everlasting punishment and the other to life eternal. Let that come into your soul. You begin to love it, presently to glory in it, that you are secured eternally and that that is by God. He has found a way into everlasting life. He has ordained it, and He has found a way into it. And so He is warning you here that you may not miss it, that you may not be, as you grow old, in these experiences that are described, and you will grow old, and you will experience these things. He is warning you now while you are young, as you are sitting in those seats. It is for you, before these things come, and I go on to mention them.
I have already mentioned “while the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain: in the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble”. You say, whatever does that mean, “the keepers of the house”? Well, the house is you when you grow old. It is an old person, a very old person, that is in mind. The house is not brick or mortar, or wood, or stone, it is yourself. It is flesh and blood. It is you, and you are the keeper, and do you try to keep it? When you were young, you dressed it as well as you could, painted it, may be. Shame on anybody who does, endeavouring to improve the Creator’s skill of beautification. “By his spirit he hath garnished the heavens”, we are told; Job 26: 13. He beautified the heavens, and why should you endeavour to beautify yourself apart from the beauty which God [p. 360] has put upon you? It is a common thing now, but it is of the devil. The devil has his paint. Choose your paint, his emissaries would say, and make yourself attractive to the world. But what is in mind here is “in the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows are darkened”. Now that is a description of a human being, not a young person. No young person has such a description as this. “In the day when the keepers of the house tremble”. You are not trembling yet. You are vigorous. You play cricket well, and all the other things that young people do, you do well, or try to. It is an old person that is described, and it is described to tell you that you are getting on there. Although you think you are young and, of course, you are, and you do your best to figure in the community as a skilled person, but here, “the keepers of the house tremble”. Some day your cricket may mean your death, or your swimming, or many things that I could mention may bring your death, and then you tremble — not while you are cricketing, or playing ball, or shooting. You are not then afraid as the keeper of the house. You say, I am in good condition. My doctor says I am tip-top. You think you are, but one day you begin to tremble. You will begin to groan because of the pains of old age. Do not forget that. They are coming rapidly. Every minute is bringing them forward in your case and presently you begin to shake and fear and so you begin to count your years. You pass sixty, you pass, maybe, sixty-five; and people hear about it. You pass seventy, and Moses would tell you, if he were here, but he tells you in the unfailing writing, Psalm 90, “the days of our years are threescore years and ten” (verse 10). You may as well begin to fear, to tremble, you can tell yourself. We are told to count our days, so that we may acquire a wise [p. 361] heart. But then the preacher here, Solomon, says, one day you are going to tremble, not because you are in the front rank in battle; that is not the point, although, of course, you may tremble there, but this is a reference to a person who is sitting in his own house — it may be smoking, endeavouring to gratify himself with that thing, and many other things like it, but you are trembling. That is what the wise man says. “The keepers of the house shall tremble”and the strong man, that is you — you cricketer — pardon me for alluding to these things. You might imagine I am speaking to a lot of unconverted people. I do not think I am, but I think it well to tell you these things, because young people need to know the trembling time is coming.
And all the other things I ought to touch on here”The strong men bow themselves” — many are regarded as this. “The grinders cease because they are few” — that is to say, the teeth. The doctors make a living on your body, the dentists on your teeth. Otherwise, I know it is the same man, and I do not forget it. I am made to feel it, too, and you will be made to feel it presently. And therefore my point is that you may be converted, and I believe most of you are, and get on in the truth, get on into everlasting life, and go in for it fully when you are not afraid of these matters, when you are not trembling when death draws near. When you will enter the Jordan you will not be afraid of it. The prophet says, “how wilt thou then do in the swelling of the Jordan?” “If thou hast run with footmen, and they have wearied thee, how wilt thou then contend with horses? And if in a land of peace thou thinkest thyself in security, how wilt thou then do in the swelling of the Jordan?” Jeremiah 12: 5. That is to say, death coming in and the doctor cannot help you. He gives you up — gives you perhaps a few months to live, and there is no hope. The waters of Jordan are [p. 362] coming in, and coming in, and presently they will overwhelm you. How will you do then? You ought to prepare for that. You young people here tonight, you need to be reminded that christianity is a real thing, that the gospel is a real thing, that it is the only thing by which you can meet these conditions which are described by the Preacher.
And I go on further and further. He says, “the grinders cease because they are few”. We all know something about that; not far away from that. You know a dentist’s name in your neighbourhood, and a doctor. And so it says, “those that look out of the windows”. You know the oculist, too. We need all these things, but what do they remind us of? They remind us of what is rapidly coming. These things are rapidly coming upon us, and it is a question of preparing in view of them, getting ready so that you lift up your head with a helmet of salvation upon it, and you have got no fear of these terrible things, that are terrible to others. And so he goes on to say; “and the doors are shut toward the street; when the sound of the grinding is subdued”. That is, there is not much in the food that you are eating; it is not satisfying you very much. And then it goes on further, “and they rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low”. Singing is no more a remedy — and the voice of the bird. Why do you get up so early? You know, old people need much less sleep than young people. Perhaps some of you do not think that, but it is the truth. They rise at the voice of the bird. Young people cling to sleep; they love it; it is hard to get them up in the morning, but not old people. It is a rare thing when an old person is hard to wake. I am speaking from experience; but the prophet, as I may call him here, is speaking prophetically to you, telling about things that are coming as sure as possible. Sometimes we say, ‘as sure as death’, but death is [p. 363] not sure, not to the christian. We look for something else than death. It is the triumph of christianity that it provides against death. But then I am going on to that, and I want to just touch on all the points mentioned. And it says here — we have spoken about rising at the voice of the bird, and that the daughters of music are brought low; then again in verse 5 it says, when “they are also afraid of what is high”.
You say, I am not afraid of that. I am able to clear any height. I can jump any height, that is, any reasonable height. Jumping, of course, is an important matter in athletics. Indeed, all these things that I am speaking of have their application to athletics; but now, they are afraid of what is high. A man of sixty or seventy is not very agile, nor does he wish to take any high jump. I know it well enough, and it is all ahead of you, with all your alacrity now and your skill in these matters. All these things are ahead of you. You will soon become decrepit when you cannot jump, nor can you do anything in athletics. You cannot compete with any and, of course, the point is to prepare against these things that you are not afraid of now, but you will soon be afraid of, because they point to one thing and that is death. The description here by Solomon, and it is a marvellous description — it is an inspired one intended for you young people, not intended for us old people. It is all for you young people. It is the young people that are in question in this chapter. They are addressed. They are the ones to remember their Creator in the days of their youth; and so it goes on to say, they shall be afraid of what is high, and “terrors are in the way, and the almond is despised”, which probably refers to grey hairs. The Spirit of God is not above that, to come down to the very thought of grey hairs in order to impress you in these things with the imminence of death and the terribleness of what is coming after death. The Spirit of God will Say, one sinner is [p. 364] worth right food, and it is certainly worth my time to preach to you on them. And, of course, young people do not like grey hairs, but when you are very old you do not mind. That is a small thing to you. You can point to that as giving you distinction. Some people do, and we are enjoined indeed to respect the grey hairs. “Rise up before the hoary head”, so that it is a distinction, but then that is nothing as compared with death and what they point to, the imminence of death because really and truly your grey hairs denote the absence of life. You are dying as soon as you begin to live. These grey hairs point to the state of death in the body, and it is going to overwhelm the body, as the passage says. And so it says, “the almond is despised, and the grasshopper is a burden”, which means you cannot carry much. If you ask an old person to do something, he is liable to put it on somebody else — rightly, too. “The grasshopper is a burden”. It is not very heavy, but the weight of it is a burden to an old person. It all points to the old person, and it points to the young person, too, because he is going to be old, and it is pointing to something else, namely death, and what is after death, which is the judgment. That is the point, and so it goes on, “the almond is despised, and the grasshopper is a burden, and the caper-berry is without effect”; or “desire hath failed”. That is another thing. Have you begun to lose your taste for certain things? You need more condiments to make your taste fit, to make your food enjoyable. I am not speaking of things for the sake of speaking merely, but as I said before, because they point to death, and what is after death, and as I am speaking to young christians that you may go in for the real thing; that these things, therefore, as they creep on you, may not annoy you or distress you; that you may lift up your head with the helmet of salvation upon it; that you may say, I am safe. That is the gospel, the gospel [p. 365] is for that purpose, to show how you can put on the helmet of salvation, and be victorious in meeting everything. I have settled all these matters. None of them move me. I am already secured for heaven through the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am secured for earth, too, ready to witness for Him here, but I am ready for heaven as well. The Lord Jesus is coming from heaven to take us to be there, and you want to be there according to His will and to His pleasure. And so I said, these things are to be noted, because they warn us to be ready for these matters that the gospel speaks of.
And so it says further, “the grasshopper is a burden, and the caper-berry is without effect” (or “desire shall fail” ), keen taste and the like, and other desires — you care little or nothing for them, when you used to run after them. You can all see, if you are accustomed to old people, how little they care for the things they used to crave for, and used to desire keenly, and spend their money on. That is what makes commerce — the desire of people — the desire for this, that and the other thing — fashions in hats, and in coats and in suits and in shops; all these things, youth loves them. They work to get them, and leave out the real thing, that is, what the gospel brings, and if they are really afraid, they find pleasure, and they fail to go in for the truth, so as to be in the enjoyment of the truth, to be in the fellowship, too, to find their companionship amongst the Lord’s people, and not in the world. That is the idea of these things being brought to our attention.
And so it goes on further to say that desire shall fail, and then it goes on to say, “for man goeth to his age-long home, and the mourners go about the streets”. That is the crux of the matter, and now I want to show you that in the New Translation you have a parenthesis there in the matter of death, that the Spirit of God is almost in a hurry to get to it, and [p. 366] He mentions it before He finishes the description of the old person. If you look at verse 5 you will see, if you have the New Translation, that it has brackets — a parenthesis. When this translation says “and desire shall fail” it says, “the caper-berry is without effect”. There is no power to stimulate desire. That is the mark of old age. It is not very serious in itself, but it is serious as pointing to the imminence of death and what is after death, and so the word is to stir us! up as christians to go in for things that are living, where these things do not affect us at all. It does not affect us at all in old age when we have the Spirit of God. Think of the Spirit of God operating in us! What does it matter whether desire fails or not? We have eternal life. We have all that satisfies the believer, and more. “Things which eye has not seen, and ear not heard, and which have not come into man’s heart, which God has prepared for them that love him”, 1 Corinthians 2: 9. What does it matter to me whether desire fails or not, whether the caper-berry is of no effect? But then, I wanted to speak of this bracket. It says in the end of verse 5 “(for man goeth to his age-long home, and the mourners go about the streets)”. That is after it says”desire fails”. It cannot be improved. If he is a christian it matters nothing to him. He has something else, something that is eternal, something that he will never lose, something that even if he dies he enters into in measure, for he departs to be with Christ which is far better than the best that you have. Therefore, the believer is never overcome by these things, and I want all you young believers to be victorious in the knowledge of these things and not depending on the rare fashions and things that minister to your pride and your taste, and your fancies, and your pleasure, and so on. I want to make you independent of all these things. But I was now pointing out the importance of this matter of death, how the Spirit of God reaches up [p. 367] before He finishes his description. That is, the bracket begins in the last clause of verse 5 after it says the caper-berry is without effect. It says “(for man goeth to his age-long home, and the mourners go about the streets)”. The mourners — that is your children — for an old person, your young children, your middle-aged children, your boys and your girls and the neighbours, they go about the streets as mourners. You are not sharing in it. The Spirit of God is in a hurry to tell you that, and therefore He tells you so in the bracket. He is going to say more about death, but He is in a hurry to tell you that death is the real issue, and to you death is the real issue, and you can only meet death through the gospel, that is through the death and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ who met death; He tasted death for every thing. He was made sin for us, so as to fit us for all these things and make us independent of any other; and hence this bracket is to touch you before the thing is finished, and the remaining part has set in, “before the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be shattered at the fountain, or the wheel be broken at the cistern”. I would say that that bracket means that the believer understands that if the undertaker is brought in, he just deals with this matter of death itself. The man goes to his age-long home, and the undertaker takes him up and puts him in the grave, puts the graveclothes upon him. The mourners are there — the weepers are there, but man goes to his age-long home, but there is more than that. He does not die like a dog. He does not die like a cow. He dies as a man, and a man has a golden bowl. That is to say, it is an allusion at least abstractly to what a man is. The Spirit of God would not let the opportunity pass in this remarkable scripture to tell us about what is said — the silver cord and the golden bowl. These belong to a man. They do not belong to an animal [p. 368] that is the lower animals. They die and their spirit goes down, but the spirit of a man goes upward and there is therefore in him something corresponding with the silver cord. So that we older persons here enjoy this thought “before the silver cord be loosed or the golden bowl be broken”. As believers, we understand that. We have holy conversations with our younger ones, before we breathe our last. We are not in dread of the Jordan. The brackets finish that part of it, but the continuance goes on to the silver cord and the golden bowl, and then further reference in the same strain, “and the dust” — to make it all clear — “the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit return unto God who gave it”. That is not a lower animal, a dog, or a pig, or a cow. It is the death of a man — a redeemed man, to whom the silver and the gold belong. They do not belong to the lower creatures. They belong to man, and we want to rise to the thought in view of death, and how all is met in the death and the resurrection of a Man. So that we are to be raised, and Scripture is full of it. You shall be raised up in the last day, the final day, and that is the point here. Although the dust return to the earth as it was, the spirit returns to God who gave it, but the dust shall be raised, too, so that resurrection may be introduced into these words, and therefore it is the point in the whole passage from the point of view of the Spirit of God. There is the silver and the gold, but there is the dust, but whilst the dust returns to the earth, there is something that returns to God, and God gave that, and in that sense my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour.
So that, dear friends, and dear brethren, what I am saying is the gospel for believers, and I believe the gospel for young believers, but I say to the old believers that these closing words are very precious, that although the dust returns to the earth, the spirit is going to God who gave it. The Lord Jesus would say, indeed, Paul would say, “to depart, and to be with Christ”, and so the Lord says to the thief on the cross, “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise”, Luke 23: 43.
May God bless these thoughts to us.