Join us on a profound exploration of Ecclesiastes as we conclude our series with a focus on remembering our creator and understanding life’s true priorities. Solomon’s wisdom emphasizes the futility of worldly pursuits and the importance of anchoring our hopes in something deeper. Through reflections on youth, age, and the intricacies of human responsibility, discover how to align daily life with divine purpose.
Remember our relationship to God first because he is our creator and thus demands our worship and our praise and our love and our adoration of him. But there’s a second very serious reason. And that is because difficult times will come. Why should I remember my God that way? Why should I praise him? Why should I have joy? Why should I be shouting thanksgiving to his name? Why? Because difficult times will come.
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This is Hope for Today. We’ve walked through every chapter of Ecclesiastes in recent weeks on the program, and we’ve listened to Solomon test life. under the sun. We’ve seen Solomon’s experience with wealth, pleasure, achievement, wisdom, and he ends up calling much of that vapor, mist. But now the question turns towards us. What have we learned? Have we seen the emptiness of chasing what cannot satisfy? Have we felt the weight of eternity pressing against temporary things? Well, today, David Hawking begins our final message in Ecclesiastes, based in chapter 12. We’ll take a few days here and consider what have we learned? You know, this is not just a conclusion of a book. It’s the conclusion of a journey we’ve taken together. So stay tuned. And just ahead of today’s study, you know, if you’re walking through a difficult season right now, and this study in Ecclesiastes has brought some of those realities close to home for you, we want you to know that you’re not alone. This book has spoken honestly about the frustrations, the questions, the uncertainty, and the limits we all face under the sun. So if any of that has stirred a burden in your heart, you’re facing some tough times, or you want to make some changes in your life, we’d be honored to pray for you. If you’d like someone to stand with you before the Lord and lift your needs in prayer, please do give us a call. In the U.S., the number is 875-BIBLE. In Canada, reach us at 888-75-BIBLE. And Bible by the Numbers is 24253. It’s a privilege for us to bring your request before the Lord and to encourage you from his word. And of course, please pray for us as well. Well, right now, here’s David with today’s study.
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Turn to Ecclesiastes. This is the final message in our series. Ecclesiastes chapter 12. And appropriately titled, What We Have Learned. What have we learned and what does the writer Solomon summarize in this portion, the conclusion of his book? Chapter 12 of Ecclesiastes. Follow along with me as I read. Beginning at verse 1. Remember now your creator in the days of your youth before the difficult days come and the years draw near when you say, I have no pleasure in them. while the sun and the light, the moon and the stars are not darkened, and the clouds do not return after the rain. In the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men bow down, when the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look through the windows grow dim. When the doors are shut in the streets and the sound of grinding is low. When one rises up at the sound of a bird and all the daughters of music are brought low. Also when they’re afraid of height and of terrors in the way. When the almond tree blossoms and the grasshoppers of burden and desire fails. For man goes to his eternal home and the mourners go about the streets. Remember your creator before the silver cord is loosed or the golden bowl is broken or the pitcher shattered at the fountain or the wheel broken at the well. Then the dust will return to the earth as it was and the spirit will return to God who gave it. Vanity of vanities, says the preacher, all is vanity. And moreover, because the preacher was wise, he still taught the people knowledge. Yes, he pondered and sought out and set in order many proverbs. The preacher sought to find acceptable words, and what was written was upright, words of truth. The words of the wise are like goads, and the words of scholars are like well-driven nails given by one shepherd. And further, my son, be admonished by these, of making many books there is no end, and much study is wearisome to the flesh. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether it is good or whether it is evil. Let’s look to the Lord in a moment of prayer. Father, thank you for the wisdom of your word. And thank you, Father, for the power of your Holy Spirit to implant it deeply in our hearts. God, we ask you to open up our minds to what your scripture is saying as the summary and conclusion of all of life. And I pray, dear Lord, that you will reinforce these matters upon our hearts as we live our lives from day to day. We’ll understand what really counts, what really are the priorities. God, we pray you’d bring us to understand the issues, the seriousness of commitment to you. And we’ll thank you and praise you for what you do. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. When we look back over Ecclesiastes, at what we have studied during this whole period of time, I think it’s good to refresh our memories with how Solomon organized all his material. He basically wanted to show us that all of life is to be enjoyed. It’s all a gift from God. But in a very important sense, it is vanity. It is meaningless. It is futile to set your hopes on what is happening from day to day. Your hope has to be far deeper than that. It has to be centered in the future and what God’s going to do in the future. But he kept reminding us frequently through this book, that we better be careful about how we live because we are accountable to God. And though he encourages us to live with joy and great zest and enthusiasm and enjoy all the days we have that God has given to us, yet he kept warning us that we need to remember we’re accountable to God. In this final chapter, I think you have a summary of what we have learned in this book. And I want to center on just three things. In the first eight verses, what we have learned is to remember our relationship to God. The great tragedy is to go from day to day, or we might say as Christians, between Sundays, and forget our relationship to God, or ignore it, at least in our lives. So what we have learned in this book is to remember our relationship to God. That’s the first eight verses. Then when we pick it up at verse 9, down to verse 12, the second little paragraph of this chapter, it What he is telling us that we’ve learned is to realize our reliance upon God and his wisdom. Solomon has continually exhorted us to look to the wisdom of God. And that’s what the point is behind verses 9 to 12. To realize our reliance, our dependency upon God and his wisdom. A lot of us think we can make it on our own. Let’s face it. We think we can come up with the stuff that we need to somehow handle the problems of our life. Instead of fleeing to the wisdom of God, we’re trusting ourselves or the advice of our friends. And the third thing that I think we have learned, it’s a summary in verse 13 and 14, is to recognize our responsibility before God. You cannot live your life the way God wants you to live it without that recognition of our responsibility and accountability before God. That’s what’s really wrong. That’s why we compromise with sin. That’s why we tolerate things in our life we shouldn’t, because we do not recognize our accountability and responsibility to God. A lot of people don’t want to deal with this. They don’t want to think about it. That God’s going to bring everything, including every secret thing you’ve ever done, said, or thought, into judgment. People don’t want to face that. Our accountability to God is an awesome matter. So let’s back up and look at these first eight verses. What we’ve learned is to remember our relationship to God. That’s how it starts. Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth. And he gives you several reasons, really four of them. Why you should remember your relationship to God continually. Number one, which is in verse one, is because he’s your creator. There is no more fundamental reason to remember that God is who he is and that we have a relationship to him than the fact that he is our creator. Don’t ever lose sight of that. You were made in the image of God and after his likeness. And when we say remember, we’re not talking about the opposite of forgetting. The word remember in the Hebrew Old Testament appears about 235 times, and in all of its usages it has a depth to it that’s a lot more than just remembering a fact. For an example… When Rachel was barren and prayed and wanted a child, the Bible says in Genesis 30 that God remembered Rachel and opened her womb. You’ll find that several times in the Bible. God remembers somebody and opens their womb or gives them a child. Another example would be 1 Samuel 1, verse 19. Hannah prayed for a child. She eventually had Samuel. And the Bible says the Lord remembered her. Something far more than just knowing her name. He remembered her by giving her a baby. Another interesting example. In Exodus 2, 24, when the children of Israel were in bondage in Egypt, they cried out to God, begging Him for deliverance. The Bible says God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The word remember obviously has a depth to it. God not only remembered in the sense of the facts, but he delivered them from Egypt. There was a result in every case. In the case of remembering a woman who needed a child, the result was having a child. And that’s what it means to remember them. In the case of Israel wanting to get out of Egypt, God remembered them by taking them out of Egypt. Very strong word. Another example in Jonah chapter 2 verse 7. Jonah’s in the whale and Or the large fish, if you want to quibble over it. But anyway, the Bible says that Jonah said, When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer went up to you. And the fish vomits him out on the dry land. To say that you remember something is far more than simply thinking of the fact that was involved. There’s a commitment, there’s an action, there’s a response that happens. And you’ll find this consistently through the Old Testament under the usage of the simple word, to remember. The reason why I point that out is he’s not simply saying, oh, don’t forget God. Remember God. Hey, we always remember God in the terms of if you’re a Christian, you’re a believer, you know he exists, you know you’ve come to know him. He’s talking about a level of commitment, a response to God, to remember God, remember your relationship, and relate to it in everything you do. That’s the whole theme of Ecclesiastes. What does it mean that you and I have a personal relationship with God in terms of how we live and how we govern our lives? Remember your creator. Now, when he says, remember your creator, the question is why? Why does that affect my life to know that he is my creator? I’d like you to take your Bibles, please, and go to Psalm 95. Basically what that means is that we owe him our best. He made us to glorify him. And because he’s our creator, we owe him the very best of our lives. We owe him everything. In Psalm 95, 6 and 7… It says, O come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker, for He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. We are His people. He made us. He knows all about us. And we are to glorify Him, and we are to worship Him. Look over at Psalm 100. Psalm 100. What’s he saying? He’s saying that because the Lord has made us, because he’s our creator, then we should come before him. We should kneel down before him. We should praise him. We should thank him for all that he’s done for us. I relate that back to Ecclesiastes. Solomon says, remember your creator. And all through this book, he has been telling us that everything in life comes from the hand of God. He’s the creator. He’s made it all. Then what should be my response if I remember my relationship to God? It’s to constantly praise him and to thank him and to love him and adore him, to worship him, to honor him in my life. Solomon frequently tells us that people who are living for the vanities of the world are the exact opposite. There’s no recognition of God. And throughout this book, he urges us to remember all that we have, even the ability to enjoy what we have. It’s coming from the one who made us. To remember is something far more than simply to accept the fact of God’s existence. It’s to respond to him with love and praise and worship, to bow down, to enter his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise, to give a joyful shout to the Lord, the Bible says. And I got to thinking about it. Remember your creator and what that conjures in your mind. The whole business of joy and celebration of God. I wonder if that has really been what we have learned. In Ecclesiastes, the constant emphasis on enjoying our relationship to God and enjoying life itself. And yet a lot of us, it seems to me, do not live in the realization and consciousness of our Creator that brings us great joy. Instead, we’re sad, we’re discouraged, we’re depressed, we’re upset. There’s all kinds of problems in our life. And yet God says, if you remember me, there’s going to be a joy and enthusiasm in your life. There’s going to be a joyful triumph. The Bible is constantly telling us to praise God, and half of us are deader than a doornail. We wouldn’t know what it was if we asked God about it. We don’t understand that He wants us to praise Him. And I ask you, as I ask myself, do I remember my Creator while I’ve got my breath, while I have my life? Is that really true? If it is, and I do what the Bible says, I am praising Him, I am thanking Him, I am shouting to Him, I’m singing praises to His name. And I think of how often you can ignore Him. You can cruise through your day and all the problems you got down at the work, you know, and the business, and it isn’t even in your mind. Hey, I tell you, this passage convicts me. Remember your Creator. Every time I read about that in the Bible, there’s nothing but praise to God. In Revelation 4, it tells us we’re going to praise him forever as before his throne we recognize that thou, O Lord, art worthy to receive glory and honor and power. Why? Because you’ve created all things. Man, it’s so easy to lose sight of that. You know that and I know that. Nehemiah 4.14, it says, Remember the Lord because He’s great and awesome. And it challenges the people. Don’t be afraid of all of those who are trying to hinder us in our work for the Lord because the Lord is great and awesome. Let’s praise His name. Boy, that’s a tremendous thought. Remember your creator. Moses in Deuteronomy 8.18 is reviewing all of God’s laws and commands to the children of Israel before they go into the promised land. And he says, you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth. And the very ability to go to work and to make money and to live in this world is related to who God is. And out of our hearts should come constant praise and constant love and constant joy and sing with the voice of triumph. I wonder how we really are remembering our Lord. It’s powerful stuff here. Let’s go back to Ecclesiastes again, chapter 12. Remember our relationship to God first because He is our Creator and thus demands our worship and our praise and our love and our adoration of Him. But there’s a second very serious reason. Look please at the end of verse 1 and all the way down to verse 6. You have a very important point. And that is because difficult times will come. Why should I remember my God that way? Why should I praise Him? Why should I have joy? Why should I be shouting thanksgiving to His name? Why? Because difficult times will come. He says, remember your creator in the days of your youth before the difficult days come and the years draw near. When you say, this is somebody saying this, I have no pleasure in them. If you remembered your creator, you would not say that. But somebody who forgets his creator, who is not committed to praise him and worship him, guess what happens? As you get older and the longer you live, a certain bitterness sets in and you say, I have no pleasure. In the days that God has given to me. Why? Because when difficulty comes, you get bombed out and wiped out. Because there’s no heart praising God. No heart seeing that everything comes from the hand of God. So category bad all of a sudden rips us apart. And we can’t cope. The difficult times will come.
SPEAKER 04 :
That’s Bible teacher and author David Hawking, and this is Hope for Today. David will be back in just a bit to close out our study time today. Some additional teaching is just ahead, so do stay tuned for that. First, though, his son Matt is here, and Matt, we’ve got a great bundle this month. This is exciting, and I think folks are really going to love this.
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Let’s talk about it. The Old Testament Message Series Sermon Notes Outlines is our special bundle package this month.
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This is a pack of David Hawking’s sermon notes and outlines for each message in the 35 series he has taught over the years in the Old Testament. This is for everyone, including the serious Bible student. The very structure, plan, outline, and notes your dad used to preach each message, they’re all included.
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Yeah, and I love these because the notes are already written down for you. Now, you can add some of your own, of course, but the essential and crucial points are all there for you.
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And what a tremendous tool for reviewing any Old Testament series we feature on radio or that you might watch in our website media center or that you might purchase. And Matt, we have a few of the sermon note packs here. I’m holding here a pack of sermon notes by your dad for his series in Job. And folks, I just have to tell you, David Hawking’s series in Job on pain and suffering is one of the best series on that topic I have ever seen. I hope you get a chance to hear that and get these sermon notes. There’s 24 messages in this series, so there’s 24 message outlines for the series. Mm-hmm. And what a powerful way to follow along as your dad teaches, because all the key points, again, are right here.
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You know, I’m looking at his book of Exodus. It’s huge. And I like the way he breaks it up. Example, on message number 11, Passover, divided into points. So it was chosen to be the beginning of months. It was centered in the sacrifice of a special lamb, the selection of the lamb, the spotlessness of the lamb. The sacrifice of the lamb, the shedding of the lamb, it’s amazing. And all these have subsections to them. The verses that they apply to, cross-references, examples, illustrations. Just a sample of what you’ll receive this month when you order the Old Testament Message Series Sermon Notes Bundle. Sermon notes and outlines for all 35 Old Testament teaching series by David Hawking. And a special price? Just $75. You know, the sermon notes help you capture the lessons, applications, and encouragement from Old Testament studies. in a comprehensive but concise format. And if you’re listening to David teach, they are an outstanding aid to help you follow along. And again, the sermon outlines and notes bundle for all of my dad’s Old Testament teaching series is just $75.
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to get your copy of the complete collection of David’s original sermon notes in the Old Testament. And again, there’s 35 of them. Now, last week, we mistakenly said 39, but there are actually 35, and we apologize for that mistake. This is an amazing Bible study bundle, 35 packs of David’s original sermon notes in the Old Testament. That makes it just about $2 per study pack, with the price being $75 for the pack. Call us at 800-75-BIBLE in the U.S., 888-75-BIBLE in Canada. And Bible, again, by the numbers 24253. You can also get it on our website, davidhawking.org. And if you’d like to mail in a special gift, a donation at this time, we sure could use that help. You can write to us, send the gift by mail in the United States to Hope for Today, Box 3927, Tustin, California, 92781. In Canada, write to Hope for Today, Box 15011, RPO7OAKS, Abbotsford, B.C., V2S, 8P1. Or make a donation by phone at 875-BIBLE-IN-THE-US, 888-75-BIBLE-IN-CANADA, or online at davidhawking.org. And thank you for prayerfully considering joining with us in ministry. Well, once again, here’s David.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, it’s with a certain degree of sadness that we’re coming to the last chapter of Ecclesiastes. I hope you’ve enjoyed our study on cultural apologetics or how to handle life. And the title of the whole series is Life Worth Living. Well, if for the pursuits that most people have, the answer would be no. But it certainly is worth living if you know who God is and what he’s doing. and learning to trust Him and depend upon Him. So that’d be one thing that we have learned. But understand that this chapter, this last chapter, just 14 verses, starts out with the word remember. It’s easy to forget, isn’t it? Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them. Yes, that’s what life’s all about. There are hard times, painful times. Maybe you’re listening right now, and you’re not really sure of your own relationship to God, and you’re having a real tough time coping with what’s going on in your life. Well, I’m here to tell you that there is hope, hope in the Messiah of Israel, the one who died and paid for our sins and rose again from the dead, the one who has promised to come again. He will give you eternal life and forgiveness of all sin if you put your faith and trust in him alone. If you really would like some help, like a free booklet, a free Bible study, just give us a call in the U.S., 1-800-75-BIBLE. In Canada, 1-888-75-BIBLE. And I pray that you’ll take advantage of this. Just tell the operator when you call that you’re not sure of your relationship to God, and you’d love to have that free booklet and free Bible study by mail so you can understand what it is that we need to learn. Learn from the Bible and learn from the Lord himself. God bless you.
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And friend, the booklet David mentioned is called What Is Christianity? It’s a free gift for new believers or for anyone listening today who is not yet a Christian, but you’re curious. It’s a simple but powerful resource that explains from the Bible what it means to trust Jesus Christ, have your sins forgiven, and to know with confidence that you have eternal life. When you contact us, we’d also like to send you our free Bible study by mail. That’ll help you get started in a new life in Jesus Christ. If God is moving your heart right now, don’t push him away. Reach out to us. We’d be honored to send you What is Christianity? and the free Bible study by mail. Call 875-BIBLE in the U.S., 888-75-BIBLE in Canada, or visit us online at davidhawking.org. On our next program, it’s day two of What We Have Learned from the Book of Ecclesiastes. So join us on Hope for Today.
