“Remember Your Creator”

The writer of the book of Ecclesiastes encourages readers to enjoy vibrant, adventurous, generous life. However, there's something we need to keep in the forefront of our minds in order to celebrate life in the here and now find out what that is today country for life as Alister Ben continues our study in Ecclesiastes becomes Ecclesiastes 12 were almost at the end of our studies that we've been engaging in these mornings and although we won't finish it this morning. At least we can make a good start as it there is in the transition from one year to another and almost inevitable emphasis on the nature of time itself and I'm sure that many of you will have noticed as I have done that. There have been in the press. A significant number of articles relating to the issue of time, whether it is simply the question of our calendar and the accuracy of it or whether it should contain more days or last days. Various theories have been propounded Western culture more than African or Asian culture is virtually preoccupied with time dominated by considerations of time, so much so that probably the clock is rivaled only by the printing press as the most influential invention in the whole of the last millennium. Think how many times this morning you inquired about the issue of time invite you can imagine, this morning without thinking about time try and think about no time try and think of a life without the passage of seconds, and moments virtually impossible for us to do. Augustine in his confessions admits the same. He says what then is tying if no one asks me, I know. But if I wish to explain it to one who asks. I know not solo instinctively know what time is.

And we can sense that it is passing. We actually have extreme difficulty in defining the Bible addresses this issue from start to finish.

Our purpose this morning is not to do something magical study on the issue of time, but suffice it to say to make clear and you are on investigation will either confirm or deny this.

The Bible declares that tying as we experience it does not automatically exist but as with the rest of creation, tying was dependent upon God's creative act for its beginning. In other words, God who exists in eternity created tying when he began to create the universe, then and only then time was initiated and the succession of moments and the passing of events commenced, and indeed, if our wristwatches speak to our creaturely nests than the fact that God exists outside of time speaks to the fact of his creation in the Bible says that he exists eternally. He exists beyond the bounds of time before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God from eternity to eternity.

God is therefore by definition, the familiar speculation about what came before God is actually futile.

God is from everlasting to everlasting.

Therefore, to ask and seek to delve into the question will gain before God is a completely futile exercise doesn't stop people from doing earth that seems a little rarefied for our tasteless just allowed the late-term abortion back to give us a little help tying says bomb bag. It hangs heavy for the board eludes the busy fly is by for the young and runs out for the agent.

We understand that don't the brevity of life is to be faced. We don't like to face it by the Scriptures call us to face it, not in the posture of morbidity not in order to manipulate us or to create undue alarm, but in order that we might might just be sensible there something within the biological clock of man that addresses this and understand this.

Although we cannot fully define it and declared, and it is for this reason that the Scriptures speak, always in the now read your Bibles and check now is the accepted time.

Behold, now is the day of salvation.

Now is the time to think this out now is the time to be reconciled to God. Now is the time to take care of these things. Not tomorrow because of not deliver the regrets of yesterday or with the anxieties of tomorrow but to face the fact that the future comes in at the rate of 60 seconds a minute and so it's no surprise that the writer who is been going up and down the corridors of life to solve the riddle of life itself should end. In this way.

Remember you are the creator in the days of your youth now when he says remember is not calling us to some kind of perfunctory mental exercise phraseology which is used here to remember in this way is to draw every sense of self-sufficiency and to cast ourselves unreservedly on God as our Creator and sustainer. It is if you like to offer to God the same kind of passionate and intense loyalty that the psalmist felt towards Jerusalem, towards his homeland. In Psalm 137, it written during the period of the exile, the psalmist says by the rivers of Babylon. We sat down and we went and we hung our hearts on the willow trees because after all, how could we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land and then speaking of the passionate commitment to Jerusalem. He says made my tongue, clinging to the roof of my mouth. If I do not remember you if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.

Note he is explaining the nature of remember by the phrase which follow.

Is it what would it mean children member you he says it is to know you as my highest joy. Okay remember your creator know him, love him, stair him as your highest joy that is the call that the exhortation the timeframe is explicit.

You will notice when should we do this what we should do it in the days of our youth, which are no longer youth on his or two things. First of all, the Bible is far more flexible concerning youthfulness in the 21st century is and therefore many of us to think were passed and are not as fast as we think we are reminded to remember your creator while you got the chance. While you have the opportunity, and particularly if you are young. Beware of same well out into the serious stuff, you know, when the serious time comes, don't be silly. This is the serious time and it is now.

Beware of allowing the best years of your life to pass while you're waiting for them to begin, I'll get around to that you have just this moment to tackle this issue. You dare not presume upon the future you didn't get tangled up in your past. Remember your creator in the days of your youth, because I may remind you.

He says that as you proceed going to encounter the fact of life's frailty and death. Sgt., how gracious of God, to exhort as in this way, to issue such an invitation. Remember your creator while you have the opportunity notice before the days of trouble come in the years approach when you will say I find no pleasure in them and I was when the springtime of life is swallowed up by winter as a kind of chilly here in verse two that settles over life when the rain in the clouds of turn daylight into bloom somber picture describing for is the winter scene where you long, at least in the sun for a moment or two to penetrate the cloud depicting not only the fading of our physical powers but also of our mental faculties is a picture if you like of the general desolation of old age.

The general desolation of all they are not everybody ages in the same way some people are sprightly well on into their chronology summer old people before their time. Sun possess at their healing to the end they can hear anyone whispering in the room there's her death before they should be and so the process goes, but United have to be a genius or a particular inquirer to discover that things run down as life goes by and the lights go out, the lights are withdrawn. Our senses are faculties.

Remember your creator while you have the opportunity, not in a perfunctory mental way, but in a way that gives up myself dependence and trusts. Only in God. For the days of trouble come better to remember now, and to spend eternity with regret. Now he explains these days of trouble in poetic fashion. In verses three and four and five doesn't a picture of decay of a house in the care of a life and decay a foretaste of our future. As I read these verses again this week. It made me think of the drug store aisles particular drug store aisles engage the passage of time. Actually, by the way in which you approach a drugstore is a small child. You go to the drugstore you broke through the comic section. The candy section what it whatever it is you are no interested in learning is little razor blades hold no appeal dealer in Oldsmobile. There is nothing really room a remote interest to you at all except given the candy or give me that the toy section. Whatever else it is you move into your teenage years. All of a sudden Acme has become not simply a word but a reality and so you're going down corridors. You never looked at before your finding things that were of no concern to before, and as life progresses.

Still, always two or three aisles out there that I like. No man's land.

General you see people out there readers see them while I wonder why they go up there. What is up there, you look but you don't really want to go because you're going to have to go through don't want to go before your time summer you're already up there and see you. We were up there together hundred hours of our lives is breaking down the make sounds in the night forces in the day. The keepers of the house, tremble, RR, and she suddenly carrying Dunkin' Donuts coffee, a briefcase in the newspaper and become an exercise of gargantuan proportion present before you can handle it all. Now for some reason the coffee is good jumping beans and is decided to go places no your shaky your strong men are stooping your legs are going. Or you can pretend, but they are stooping every visit to the doctor now. He's knocking off in shifts is in his scales are wrong is that little wooden thing they drop down the double your head is is is been no it's not your stooping your grinder, cease you have inadequate occlusion. According to the dentist. The few that you have left on the top of our meeting, the group that are right down on the bottom.

Suddenly your shot in in a way that you were in before the doors to the street are close.

The limitations of mobility. The dimness of site. You don't have to sleep as much as you use to is that the good news of the bad news man rise up at the sound of birds there always up in time for the dawn chorus. Trouble is there so deftly can hear the dawn chorus. The rise of the sound of birds, but all the songs will fade hear the words not only guide while you're up weren't you yes I was up but I didn't hear them. I think I saw them.

Why is that the answers there.

The almond tree blossoms.

Suddenly, her hair is a different color from what it once wants know some of you ready to give that in a variety of ways chosen your own particular color, but if you just let things go under this normal process that I mention it either falls out or turns white. If you think you look particularly good when you're standing in the mirror on stand there too long because you look like a grasshopper Dragon itself along a very nice visit. Not only that suddenly the latter seems a lot taller than it was. Suddenly the street seemed far fuller than they were and desire. No longer is stirred. I see that translates as a dynamic equivalence to translate the caper Barry feels the caper. Barry was highly regarded stimulus for appetite and also as an aphrodisiac, so as remarkable as it may be to us.

Eventually Aaron shuts down recent and makes it even more specific. Doesn't before the mourners move around the streets.

Verse six. Remember in before the silver cord is severed or the golden bowl is broken and I was remember him before you die and the pointer here is descriptive of the beauty and of the fragility of life. I shattered Lamb is a result of just one little piece of the cord fracturing. Our lives are held between time and eternity by very very tender mechanisms on the physicians here this morning. Can testify to that is a remarkable thing that we are all still pompous mentors and functional and only takes one very very small shift in tiny mechanism the cord to sever for the bowl. Schachter for the picture to fall into the spring and be rendered useless for the wheel that is been used, to bring the bucket out from the well to find yourself propped up against the well. The rope is gone. The bucket has departed and extends there is a silent testimony to the fragility of our life's an eloquent description of the transients of the most basic things that we do reminding us that there's going to be a last time for every journey last time. For every routine task.

So verse eight.

No surprise. His refrain remains doesn't meaningless meaningless as the teacher everything is meaningless.

We shouldn't see in verse seven some testimony of hope and the dust returns to the ground it came from and the spirit returns to God who gave it were not at the conclusion yet that comes in verse 940 simply seeing here is that as sin entered into the world. In Genesis 2, God comes and he says on account of sin from DOS to KM and to dust you will return the writers already mentioned this, he says, God has made everything perfect and man has made crooked and cannot straighten what he has made a mess and therefore when you view life from the framework of futility than the conclusion is reasonable. Now that my friends is what makes the exhortation with which the chapter begins so wonderful.

Death has not yet reached out to us. So let it rattle its chains and stores interaction were not in the final stage of man, yet most of us, as described by Shakespeare in as you like it.

The childishness to which we return the oblivion without teeth without eyes, without taste, without anything so it is a day of opportunity some of your listen for a month of Sundays and four months of Sunday's about the claims of the Bible and the work of God on our behalf in the sending of Jesus as the Savior is the one who would bring life into our death and light into our darkness. Still, you do not believe psalmist in Psalm 90 with which we began this morning for teachers to number our days are right so that we might gain a heart of wisdom. Teach us to number our days are right.

Think of all of the abilities mathematically that as part of our existence. Some of you return tomorrow to the world of insurance and actuarial tables which are which are a process involving calculus and discovery that is of vital importance and is used strategically every day. Somebody return to the world of investment, some to engineering some delays or technology.

Some of you go back into the world of research.

Think about the distance between ourselves and the moon. The speed of light.

The issues of quantum physics and so on, and are able by means of computer programming to to put together all kinds of calculations, but many of you have never calculated your life. You spend all your time working out these puzzles and you haven't dealt with the puzzle of your life is a picture to assist. It's a can clear confession of the fact that without divine grace. We are utterly foolish people concerning the plaintiffs. Thanks for there's more. Of course we're going to come to it in verses 9 to 14. Not only was a teacher wise.

He also imparted knowledge the people he pondered he search these things out. Look for the right words he wrote what was upright and true and use them as little goals like state, with sharp points on the end to fraud in the same way that farmer would produce capital to protect them from taking a wrong turn and to urge them to go in the right way. It matters little really in the great scheme of things, where any of you that are listening to me now.

Remember that I said what I said or I urged you is now. I seek to do but it is of immense importance that you realize that God by his word didn't ask you to do something particularly difficult didn't ask you to start a charity organization didn't ask you to walk the length of killer Maņana denies you to run around the block 47 times and say manifold prayers the word of God came to the congregation Parkside saying remember me while you still have the opportunity, not the perfunctory recollection of irregular French verbs but the setting aside of myself and the giving all of my life and all of my future and all of my opportunities to go. Have you ever gone will you do that will you do that now. Now all was now is the accepted time today salvation like this burial is certain now is the time to trust in God alone for salvation listening to Alistair Begg Truth for Life studying the book of Ecclesiastes makes it increasingly clear just how important it is for us to understand and apply God's word to our lives every day. That's why our mission here at Truth for Life is to teach the Bible with clarity and relevance every single day. We do this trusting that God will use the teaching of his word to convert unbelievers to help believers continue to grow in their faith and to encourage pastors and strengthen local churches. That's why Alister's teaching is free to download and fear. It's our desire to make clear relevant Bible teaching available to everyone. We don't want cost to be a barrier were able to do this because of the generosity of listeners like you. When you donate to Truth for Life.

This is the mission supporting one of the ways we say thank you. Giving is by inviting you to request books we make available, you probably heard me mention today's book recommendation to book titled beating the bad guys scores what it looks like to live for Jesus in a world that is increasingly telling us we shouldn't. You can request your copy of the book being the bad guys you give a donation@truthforlife.org/donate about Lapine teacher in Ecclesiastes searched exhaustively for satisfaction, but ultimately declared each person was meaningless.

So what is his futile exploration teach us join us tomorrow for the surprising conclusion and some parting words of wisdom Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by truth with the Learning is for Living