Ecclesiastes - Chapter 12
Remember your creator (1-8):
The point of this first portion of the final chapter is to motivate us to make the most of life for the glory of God while we can. Do not wait until the days of old age when it may be difficult to find pleasure in our lives. Remember God and live for Him,
before your arms and hands grow weak, before your legs are bent and feeble, before you lose your teeth, before your eyes grow dim. Remember the creator and give Him praise.
Before your soul leaves your body to be reunited with the Lord who gave it, use the gift of life on earth to give Him glory in all that is done.
The last words written by our preacher nearing the end of his book are filled with some anxiety over a future that foreshadows the end of life. He looks back and now speaks to those who are in their youth and strongly advises them to make God the center of attention. Make the most of the gifts of life while you are young and vital while keeping in mind the final curtain that waits for all. The details of the aging process are not necessarily the main focus but he does remind his students that old age does indeed bring an end that those still young may not consider as they should.
He paints a word picture in these verses concerning death.
It is like the coming of winter, after the autumn rains, when cloudy and cooler weather would come. There are leafless trees, fruitless vines, and cloudy skies, all are symbols of winter itself. These are also symbols of the dark and unknown state of death.
For Solomon, death removes us from all the good things of God's creation. He next pictures a funeral scene which always brings to mind the complete stop of all activity of life. The scene begins at a house, probably the house of the one who has died. The normal activities of everyday life are not seen or are slowed down. The scene shifts to the actual procession of the funeral itself with sadness where those who grieve are bowing low.
There is nothing gentle about this word picture. The verbs “shattered” and “broken” are words for destruction. Life is broken and destroyed by the final call of death upon the one who has left. We see burial language in verse 7 and some of the most revealing words of our book. The body returns to the dust from where it was taken and the the spirit returns to God who gave it.
Here in this graphic moment, the one who was said to have been given more understanding than any other man, is explicit in teaching that it is in spirit that we return to the Lord when death separates us from the body.
The teacher's discipline (9-11):
Here the preacher makes three strong points:
He identifies the chief task is teaching the people.
He says that the ministry of teaching must be careful and upright.
He witnesses that there is pain in the teaching, designed to correct bad behavior and to guide all those who hear and read towards the good path.
The student's duty (12-14):
Our subject makes a sharp turn toward a specific student (or a group being taught together) as he uses the term “my son”. His aim in these verses seems to be to spell out that the students have a double obligation that is put upon the shoulders of those who want to seek wisdom teachings and apply them to their own lives:
They are to follow the advice given by the preacher diligently.
They are to discount opinions of others and center their lives on God.
They will demonstrate this effort by obedience to God's commandments, knowing that God holds them accountable for all they do, even deeds that no one else may see.
In the end Solomon warns his students to give attention to the whole matter, to the whole duty of man, to every work, and even to every secret thing.
While our preacher, Solomon, sought to find and detail the true meaning of life and found instead that in spite of all that he had been given and all that God allowed him to possess, even that which was against the commands of the Lord, he found instead that none of the riches brought peace or happiness. His gold or his wives brought him no contentment. The more he examined life and tried to make sense of it, the more he saw that his pursuit of worldly things made life futile and vain.
His book does bring us some strong lessons that are just as profound in our own time as they were when Solomon wrote them. Some of these are:
True wisdom is always conditional on an attitude of submission and obedience to God.
We MUST not forget a perfect example of this lesson that is given to us in Ezekiel, who wrote about 400 years after Solomon lived. In Ezekiel 28:12 we are told that Satan had been originally created filled with wisdom. In 28:17 we are taught that he had corrupted his wisdom and was cast down.
True happiness and contentment come from GIVING not from GETTING. Solomon looked in the wrong direction for joy and fulfillment and his pursuit in that wrong direction took him further away from the answer he sought. Selfishness and the pursuit of things of this world above spiritual things leads to frustration, misery, and bitterness. We see all three in the life of this wise one.
Sin always makes people negative. Obedience to God makes people positive. Solomon, while wisest of all men, lived life in a negative pursuit while Paul who had very little and was not graced with the type of wisdom Solomon had, lived his life of obedience to God (after his conversion) almost always positive.
God gave great wisdom to Solomon when he asked for it. But that God given understanding did not stop him from pursuing a life of compromise with the worship of false idols, brought upon him by his continued disobedience of the Lord's command that His appointed rulers not multiply wives EXACTLY for this reason.
Without faithful obedience great wisdom is corrupted and becomes useless. Paul gave us this strong lesson in 1st Cor 3:19:
“... the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God...”