SPEAKER_01: Ministry to the heart and for over 165 years.
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Chapter and First, the Bible teaching ministry of 40 minutes, first of all, you'll find amazing teaching in Factory.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for listening.
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to this edition of the Legacy Series of our Chapter and First podcast.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter and First is a podcast that highlights the Bible teaching and preaching ministry of First Feddy's Church.
SPEAKER_00: We've been blessed to have incredible men of God as a part of our history.
SPEAKER_00: And this legacy series of our podcast gives us a chance to go back and hear some of these godly men share incredibly powerful and impacting messages.
SPEAKER_00: Today you're going to listen to a man named Angel Martinez.
SPEAKER_00: Angel was a gifted, God-empowered evangelist, and he did evangelism meetings and rallies around the world and all over the United States.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, as a high school kid at Briarcrest Baptist High School in the early 80s, when we had a spiritual emphasis week in revival, it was Angel Martinez who came and preached in our high school.
SPEAKER_00: He preached to untold number of souls, and only when we get to heaven will we find out how many people were saved under the evangelism ministry of Angel Martinez.
SPEAKER_00: Angel was a longtime member of First Baptist Church and used this as his home base and was referred to as the staff evangelist.
SPEAKER_00: And so we are so honored to be able to be a part of his ministry throughout the years, and we are blessed to be able to let you hear this message from Angel Martinez as a part of our legacy series.
SPEAKER_02: Why are we here?
SPEAKER_02: What is the purpose of human existence?
SPEAKER_02: What is the significance of the journey between the cradle and the grave?
SPEAKER_02: And this man explores those avenues, not only intellectually, but also experientially.
SPEAKER_02: And he becomes a clean history of what works in life.
SPEAKER_02: Because this man ranged the entire compass of human life.
SPEAKER_02: He was both a poor man and a rich man.
SPEAKER_02: He was both uh not knowing and later very intellectual.
SPEAKER_02: He was a very uncultured person, then became very cultured.
SPEAKER_02: A man of low position who became the king of Jerusalem and of Israel.
SPEAKER_02: So this man compasses the range of the entire gamut of human existence.
SPEAKER_02: And he has a conclusion.
SPEAKER_02: And the conclusion is chapter 12.
SPEAKER_02: Chapter 12.
SPEAKER_02: So we're going to begin from the back and go forward.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm going to give you an overview.
SPEAKER_02: We're going to get up high and look at the entire book.
SPEAKER_02: This is a wonderful way to study the Bible sometimes, not only verse by verse, as we do here in the book of James from Sunday to Sunday, and then chapter by chapter, as many pastors do often, and others book by book.
SPEAKER_02: And we're going to talk about a book.
SPEAKER_02: A wonderful book.
SPEAKER_02: The book of Ecclesiastes.
SPEAKER_02: Because the writer of Ecclesiastes exploring a very important facet of human existence.
SPEAKER_02: Why?
SPEAKER_02: It's really a philosophical treatise.
SPEAKER_02: Because philosophy asks the question, why?
SPEAKER_02: Why?
SPEAKER_02: Now theology asks the question, who?
SPEAKER_02: Who made this universe?
SPEAKER_02: Who is the author of this intricate pattern we call our system?
SPEAKER_02: Our galaxy.
SPEAKER_02: Our solar system.
SPEAKER_02: Our universe.
SPEAKER_02: This intricate pattern that defies human intelligence.
SPEAKER_02: And we are trying to reach out and discover how God has done it.
SPEAKER_02: Because that is what science is.
SPEAKER_02: It's an attempt to find out what God did.
SPEAKER_02: We are only the discoverers.
SPEAKER_02: We are not creators.
SPEAKER_02: So theology answers the question: who?
SPEAKER_02: Who made the universe?
SPEAKER_02: Who made this wonderful, wonderful orb on which we exist?
SPEAKER_02: Who gave the stars their celestial push and placed them in their orbit?
SPEAKER_02: Who put a carpet of green grass upon the earth and nailed it down with beautiful flowers?
SPEAKER_02: Who took the rainbow and wove it into a scarf and draped it around the shoulders of a dying storm?
SPEAKER_02: Who opens the door of the morning and floods the world with light and beauty?
SPEAKER_02: Who at evening time pulls down the shade of night and shoots it through with sunset fire?
SPEAKER_02: You see, the God of the universe, the infinite mind, the infinite I am, is a composer of all the chemistry and all the physics and all the biology and all the anthropology and all the sociology and everything we try to learn about life and man and things and laws and nature, energy, and motion.
SPEAKER_02: God is the author of all of these.
SPEAKER_02: Who?
SPEAKER_02: You see, theology answers that question.
SPEAKER_02: Now biology and science answer the question how and when.
SPEAKER_02: They're concerned about the clock and they're concerned about the mechanics.
SPEAKER_02: They do not uh scientists do not create anything, they synthesize.
SPEAKER_02: Or they analyze, they break up something and say, well, this element here is composed of this and that and the other.
SPEAKER_02: Or they take various elements and synthesize them into new combinations, but they do not create the basic elements.
SPEAKER_02: The 115 elements in the Mendeleev chart of chemistry were not formed by the human mind.
SPEAKER_02: No, the laws of physics, whether they be Kepler's laws of motion or others, or Faraday's laws about matter, these are the works of the infinite God.
SPEAKER_02: I think that Einstein said it beautifully in one of his books, that uh man is like little children on an Easter hunt.
SPEAKER_02: He said before the Easter hunt, the mothers go out in the field and take the beautiful colored eggs and put them in different places.
SPEAKER_02: And then they turn the children loose.
SPEAKER_02: And from the distance they hear one little voice cry out, Oh, I found a blue one.
SPEAKER_02: Another voice, I found a green one, another voice, I found a red one.
SPEAKER_02: And Dr.
SPEAKER_02: Einstein said that's what scientists are doing.
SPEAKER_02: They're just finding what God has recessed in the beauty of nature and the complexity of the physical order.
SPEAKER_02: So biology asks, how?
SPEAKER_02: How is this done?
SPEAKER_02: And all that we do in science is try to find out how.
SPEAKER_02: We're trying to find out about outer space.
SPEAKER_02: And it cost us seven lives last week.
SPEAKER_02: And uh it's going to cost us some more.
SPEAKER_02: Progress always demands a price.
SPEAKER_02: And uh people die in war and they die in peace, and they die in the search for knowledge.
SPEAKER_02: And these are part of the human existence, the human circle, the human dilemma.
SPEAKER_02: So, we're concerned, biology, about how?
SPEAKER_02: Theology, who, philosophy, why, and that's what the writer is exploring in this book of Ecclesiastes.
SPEAKER_02: Now let's look at chapter 12 and verse 1.
SPEAKER_02: He begins by saying, or concludes rather by saying, this wonderful chapter, after trying, and I'm going to show you in the eleven chapters what he has done, how he has tried, not only intellectually but experientially, avenues of human existence that are good up to a certain point, but do not answer the deeper questions of the human heart.
SPEAKER_02: So in chapter 12, he explodes in a discovery.
SPEAKER_02: After eleven grueling chapters searching, trying to find an answer.
SPEAKER_02: He said, Here, here's the solution.
SPEAKER_02: Remember thy creator in the days of thy youth.
SPEAKER_02: While the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.
SPEAKER_02: The word remember, by the way, in the Hebrew is the word welcome.
SPEAKER_02: It's the picture of a house with an open door.
SPEAKER_02: The writer is saying, God is passing by and giving you a chance to make him your guest.
SPEAKER_02: So don't keep your door closed against the spiritual dimension that makes life meaningful and gives it purpose.
SPEAKER_02: The King James word is the word remember.
SPEAKER_02: But the Hebrew word is the word welcome.
SPEAKER_02: Welcome.
SPEAKER_02: As God passes by and he does every moment of your life.
SPEAKER_02: Open your arms and say, Come into my house.
SPEAKER_02: That's the picture here.
SPEAKER_02: Welcome thy creator.
SPEAKER_02: And he's talking about the creator, the God who made the world, the God who lived the sun, the God of all power.
SPEAKER_02: The God who is the author and the finisher of human existence and the entire cosmos.
SPEAKER_02: Welcome Him.
SPEAKER_02: Let him become a part of your thinking and living.
SPEAKER_02: That's what he's talking about.
SPEAKER_02: Remember thy creator in the days of thy youth.
SPEAKER_02: In the days of thy youth.
SPEAKER_02: He says, Don't wait until you get old to take this spiritual fortifying power into your life.
SPEAKER_02: You know, it's amazing how many people have the idea, young people and old, that religion is a preparation for death.
SPEAKER_02: The Bible teaches it's a preparation for life.
SPEAKER_02: You're not prepared to die until you're prepared to live.
SPEAKER_02: And you're not prepared to live until God moves in.
SPEAKER_02: Your life is a broken fragment.
SPEAKER_02: Your life is a piece.
SPEAKER_02: You're just a piece of a human being.
SPEAKER_02: I don't care how rich you become, how famous you become, how intellectual you become, how popular you become, you're nothing.
SPEAKER_02: The grace of God is what adds the plus factor to you.
SPEAKER_02: You're like a bunch of zeros.
SPEAKER_02: You know a bunch of zeros are nothing by themselves.
SPEAKER_02: But you take a one or an integer and put it in front of the zeros, and now the zeros become meaningful.
SPEAKER_02: And God is that front number.
SPEAKER_02: You may be a one-zero person, maybe two, maybe three, but when God adds his one or his two to you, then you become a lot.
SPEAKER_02: Because you have a certain potential which is nothing until God activates it.
SPEAKER_02: That's why in 1 Corinthians 15 10, Paul could say, By the grace of God, I am what I am.
SPEAKER_02: Paul said, The end result of what I am right now is not my education, nor my genetic background.
SPEAKER_02: You remember in Philippians 3.8 he talks about being a Hebrew of the Hebrews, nor my moral standards, and he had high ones.
SPEAKER_02: He was a Pharisee, and those men were highly moral men.
SPEAKER_02: But Paul said, All these things are refuse.
SPEAKER_02: They're ciphers.
SPEAKER_02: There's heroes.
SPEAKER_02: Until Jesus moves in.
SPEAKER_02: Until God moves in in the person of Christ.
SPEAKER_02: And so do it when you're young.
SPEAKER_02: And he's making that emphasis here.
SPEAKER_02: He said, 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.
SPEAKER_02: And the pronoun them is referring to the days of your youth.
SPEAKER_02: In other words, the writer is saying, if you let God escape your youth, if you live live, if you make your youth a succession of days and weeks and months and minutes and hours that soon will become history, that soon will become yesterday, and you don't include this spiritual dimension, which is so integral to the formative part of your life, your decision making and your problem solving and your temptation structure in your life.
SPEAKER_02: If you don't make God a part of your life when you're young, you're going to someday look back and say, Don't remind me.
SPEAKER_02: I have no pleasure in them.
SPEAKER_02: The writer is simply saying, Life is not worthwhile without God.
SPEAKER_02: And the time to let Him, to welcome Him into your life is right now when you're young.
SPEAKER_02: And by the way, the word, the words, remember thy creator, in the days of thy youth.
SPEAKER_02: The word youth there in the Hebrew is a is a word for somebody under twelve years old.
SPEAKER_02: You know, we have words in English that determine how old a person is by the word itself.
SPEAKER_02: For example, if you say about somebody, he's a teenager, well, you have a picture of that person, the age about.
SPEAKER_02: If you say about somebody, he's an adolescent, you have a picture of that person.
SPEAKER_02: If you say he's an infant, you have a picture in your mind of a little baby.
SPEAKER_02: You you can tell by uh you say about somebody he's middle-aged.
SPEAKER_02: Well, you can tell about that person.
SPEAKER_02: And so the word here, youth, is somebody under twelve years old.
SPEAKER_02: Let's translate it.
SPEAKER_02: Welcome that creator before you're twelve years old.
SPEAKER_02: Because if you don't, the day will come when looking back you'll say, Forget it.
SPEAKER_02: I have no pleasure in the past.
SPEAKER_02: Life was just an existence, a meaningless jargon of days and nights, and minutes and hours.
SPEAKER_02: Life is too powerful to be denigrated to that level.
SPEAKER_02: Every moment has a potential, every hour has a possibility.
SPEAKER_02: And the writer is saying, God makes it important.
SPEAKER_02: Don't let this spiritual dimension elude you.
SPEAKER_02: Solomon said, I've tried it all, and I'll show you in a moment as we go back and overview the book.
SPEAKER_02: I've tried it all, I've thought about it, I've explored the mind and the body.
SPEAKER_02: And Solomon said, I've come to a conclusion.
SPEAKER_02: Only God can do it.
SPEAKER_02: Only God can make life worthwhile.
SPEAKER_02: And he said, Not only that, but don't wait till you become an old man to do it.
SPEAKER_02: 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.
SPEAKER_02: While the sun or the light or the moon or the stars, he continues, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain.
SPEAKER_02: Now here's poetry.
SPEAKER_02: You know when you're young it rains, and then the sky clears up, and then it the sun shines for a while, for a long while, then another storm comes.
SPEAKER_02: But when you get older, it's one storm after another.
SPEAKER_02: The clouds return after the rain.
SPEAKER_02: So when you get older, it rains and rains, and then it stops, and you say, Well, it's going to clear up for a while, and then here come the clouds again.
SPEAKER_02: Another storm.
SPEAKER_02: And that's why you need the strength, the spiritual strength that gives you the inner insight that makes you a competent human being as you journey between the cradle and the grave.
SPEAKER_02: And that's what the writer is saying here.
SPEAKER_02: Life is tough, life is complex.
SPEAKER_02: You cannot do it by yourself.
SPEAKER_02: You need the comfort and the intelligence and the guidance of somebody beyond you.
SPEAKER_02: So when he passes by your front door, you keep that door open and step out on the front porch and open your arms and say, Welcome.
SPEAKER_02: You're the one who made me and redeemed me on a cross.
SPEAKER_02: And do it while your eye is clear and the voice is firm, and the step is firm, and the cheek is red, and the voice is loud.
SPEAKER_02: Welcome Him now.
SPEAKER_02: If you don't do it, said the writer, then looking back, you're going to say, It wasn't worth it.
SPEAKER_02: I just made my life a succession of days and nights and minutes and hours.
SPEAKER_02: Now he goes into physiology.
SPEAKER_02: We have a great uh Norwegian expositor in the Old Testament named Mo Binkel, who has done some beautiful study in the Hebrew words of the book of Ecclesiastes and the Book of Psalms and the Book of Job and the Book of Proverbs.
SPEAKER_02: He's majored on those on the Hebrew of those four books and done a very beautiful and minute study.
SPEAKER_02: And he contends that the following figures talk about the human body, the aging body.
SPEAKER_02: And you see, the writer is still trying to impress us to do it now.
SPEAKER_02: The urgency of allowing God to invade life when you're young and strong and bold and firm and not wait till it's too late.
SPEAKER_02: And the bulk of life is behind you.
SPEAKER_02: So he goes on to say in verse, in the third verse, in the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble.
SPEAKER_02: Now here we have a picture of the aging process in the physical body.
SPEAKER_02: The keepers, he said, don't wait till this happens.
SPEAKER_02: You let God come into your life right now while you're young and you're facing temptations and you're facing problems and you're facing decisions and you cannot do it alone.
SPEAKER_02: You need God's help in your life, and God's wisdom, and God's comfort.
SPEAKER_02: And did you ever stop to realize that the attributes of God are the resources of the believer?
SPEAKER_02: Let me repeat that.
SPEAKER_02: The attributes of God are the resources of the believer.
SPEAKER_02: What do I mean by attributes?
SPEAKER_02: I mean that God has all power.
SPEAKER_02: Well, if that's true, it's a resource for me.
SPEAKER_02: That's in my favor because I belong to him, and he's my father, and I'm an heir of God and a joint heir with Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_02: And what belongs to God belongs to me.
SPEAKER_02: And if God knows everything, he's omniscient, then that's in my favor because he's my father.
SPEAKER_02: And if God is uh is everywhere present, omnipresent, that's in my favor.
SPEAKER_02: And if God is perfect, I make mistakes, I make blunders, I'm a sinner.
SPEAKER_02: But if God is perfect, then that's in my favor because he's my father, and by virtue of kinship, I can appropriate what belongs to him because it belongs to me as a child.
SPEAKER_02: So the attributes of God become the resources of the believer.
SPEAKER_02: That's why the writer is encouraging us to open the door.
SPEAKER_02: And he said, Don't wait until the keepers of the house.
SPEAKER_02: And Dr.
SPEAKER_02: Movinkel says the hands, the hands are uh referring to here to the hands, because the Jewish person, the Jewish man protected his hand, his home with his hands, and the Jewish wife kept the house with her hands.
SPEAKER_02: The domestic labor.
SPEAKER_02: Don't wait till the keepers of the house shall tremble.
SPEAKER_02: And there you have a picture, of course, many of the uh aging diseases, like Parkinson's disease.
SPEAKER_02: You've seen older people with trembling hands, it's a brain dysfunction.
SPEAKER_02: Doctors used to open the brain and go in there with a technique called cryosurgery, where they would freeze some tracts of the of the brain and stop the tremor.
SPEAKER_02: But now that has been discarded and medication is being used instead.
SPEAKER_02: And uh so don't wait till the keepers of the house shall come.
SPEAKER_02: Or the strong men, the next phrase bow themselves.
SPEAKER_02: Bow themselves.
SPEAKER_02: There you have the shoulders.
SPEAKER_02: Dr.
SPEAKER_02: Movinkle says the strong men refers to the shoulders.
SPEAKER_02: The strong men bow themselves.
SPEAKER_02: Now you have a picture of rheumatoid arthritis.
SPEAKER_02: Now you have a picture of osteoporosis.
SPEAKER_02: You know, as people get older, the calcium problem becomes very prominent in their system.
SPEAKER_02: And they begin to stoop.
SPEAKER_02: The body loses some of its height as age creeps on.
SPEAKER_02: And the writer is saying, don't wait till the strong men shall bow themselves.
SPEAKER_02: The next phrase is obvious, though it's poetry.
SPEAKER_02: The grinders cease because they are few.
SPEAKER_02: In the country of Solomon, a thousand years before Christ, they used the women would grind them the meal in the mornings, so they would have bread for the rest of the day.
SPEAKER_02: And the grinder was a noisy apparatus.
SPEAKER_02: Everybody could hear it.
SPEAKER_02: But when you couldn't hear it, it would be like saying today he's deaf, he can't hear thunder.
SPEAKER_02: Well, back in those days they say he couldn't he can't hear the grinder.
SPEAKER_02: The sound of the grinding is low.
SPEAKER_02: The three little apparatuses in the middle ear that conduct sound through vibration from the outside environment to the auditory nerve, and then to the part of the brain that interprets that phenomenon begins to fail.
SPEAKER_02: The sound of the grinding is low.
SPEAKER_02: Next phrase: they that look out of the windows be darkened.
SPEAKER_02: There you have a picture of the eyes becoming dim.
SPEAKER_02: As age creeps on, there's an implication of cataracts, an implication of a detached retina.
SPEAKER_02: Or that screen in the back of the uh eye that contains the cones and the rods that interpret for the visual nerve the phenomenon that we see loses its mooring and begins to swim in the vitreous humor of the eye, causing all kinds of occlusions in vision.
SPEAKER_02: There's a picture of glaucoma, where the fluid imbalance in the eye becomes a problem.
SPEAKER_02: And medical doctors and ophthalmologists have to make a little slit in the limbus of the eye and release the pressure that might damage the optic nerve.
SPEAKER_02: The writer is saying, don't wait till that happens to you.
SPEAKER_02: They that look out of the windows be darkened.
SPEAKER_02: Next phrase.
unknown: Dr.
SPEAKER_02: Movinko said the Hebrews refer to the lips as the doors.
SPEAKER_02: Shut in the street as a picture of a stroke.
SPEAKER_02: Whenever strokes take place in the speech area of the brain, the person cannot speak.
SPEAKER_02: You've seen that happen.
SPEAKER_02: And though the person was very eloquent and very loquacious in youth, now he says nothing.
SPEAKER_02: The doors are shut in the street.
SPEAKER_02: Old age is coming.
SPEAKER_02: And the writer is saying, Don't wait till all this happens to you.
SPEAKER_02: Remember thy creator when you're young in the days of thy youth.
SPEAKER_02: While the evil days come, not the years draw nigh when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.
SPEAKER_02: While the sun, the light, the moon, the stars be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain.
SPEAKER_02: In the day when the keeper of the house shall tremble, the strong men shall bow themselves, the grinders cease because they are few.
SPEAKER_02: They that look out of the window shall be darkened.
SPEAKER_02: Doors shall be shut in the street.
SPEAKER_02: Sound of the grinding is low.
SPEAKER_02: They shall rise up at the voice of the bird.
SPEAKER_02: There's a picture of the insomnia that older people experience as time goes by.
SPEAKER_02: You know, as you get older, there's a sir in the hypothalamus, there's a section of the brain that controls the sleeping patterns of human existence.
SPEAKER_02: And when you're young, they function beautifully, and you can sleep late.
SPEAKER_02: But when you get older, you wake up with the birds, and you cannot resume your sleep.
SPEAKER_02: They shall rise up at the voice of the bird.
SPEAKER_02: And the next phrase, the daughters of music shall be brought low.
SPEAKER_02: The Hebrews call the larynx, these two little muscles in the throat that vibrate when you push air from the diaphragm in the lungs through them and producing song and voice and speech.
SPEAKER_02: The daughters of music are brought low.
SPEAKER_02: You know, as you get older, the you you don't sing as well as you did when you were younger.
SPEAKER_02: Because the vocal cords thicken, they thicken as age creeps on.
SPEAKER_02: And sound depends upon vibration for its production.
SPEAKER_02: Take, for example, 440 vibrations per second, produce the sound of A on the piano and vocally.
SPEAKER_02: Now, whenever the chords are thicker, they cannot vibrate at that speed, and oftentimes you get off key, and you f your voice is flat.
SPEAKER_02: Because the thicker vocal cords are not responding.
SPEAKER_02: The daughters of music shall be brought low.
SPEAKER_02: The next phrase, when they shall be afraid of that which is high.
SPEAKER_02: You know, older people are very careful about steps.
SPEAKER_02: Now you've seen boys and girls climb the tree, walk on a fence.
SPEAKER_02: You've never seen grandma do that.
SPEAKER_02: She knows better.
SPEAKER_02: If a youngster falls out of a tree and breaks an arm in six weeks, he's back in business.
SPEAKER_02: But if it happens to an older person, the recovery is not there.
SPEAKER_02: They shall be afraid of that which is high.
SPEAKER_02: And the next phrase says, and fears shall be in the way.
SPEAKER_02: As one gets older, the endocrine system loses its balance.
SPEAKER_02: Especially the adrenal glands and all kinds of emotional disparities arise.
SPEAKER_02: Fears.
SPEAKER_02: Many of you know this.
SPEAKER_02: You were younger, you were daring.
SPEAKER_02: Now you're even afraid to drive the car to the store.
SPEAKER_02: And you wonder why.
SPEAKER_02: The system is wearing out.
SPEAKER_02: Fears are in the way.
SPEAKER_02: And the almond tree shall flourish.
SPEAKER_02: That means the hair turns white.
SPEAKER_02: And with some men it turns loose.
SPEAKER_02: Years ago, when I was preaching as a youngster after the sermon one night, an old man who was bald headed came up to me and he put his arm around me and said, You know, when I was young, I had waves in my hair, like you have.
SPEAKER_02: But he said, All I have left now is just the beach.
SPEAKER_02: The almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper becomes heavy, becomes a burden.
SPEAKER_02: Strength is gone.
SPEAKER_02: You know the muscular system of the body is a beautiful miracle.
SPEAKER_02: Six hundred and forty some odd muscles in the body.
SPEAKER_02: Some are small, very small, like the ones in the eye, and some very large, like the muscle in the thigh, the sartorius muscle.
SPEAKER_02: And uh all you do with muscles is just lengthen them and shorten them.
SPEAKER_02: All the creativity in human existence on the manual or physical level is based upon that binary expression of lengthening a muscle or shortening it.
SPEAKER_02: When a gifted surgeon performs a delicate operation, all he's doing with fingers and tips of fingers and parts of his hand is just shortening and lengthening muscles.
SPEAKER_02: Youngster kicks a football, runs a mile in less than four minutes, or plays a Beethoven concerto.
SPEAKER_02: All he's doing is just lengthening muscle and shortening it.
SPEAKER_02: But as one gets older, the neural connection between brain and muscle is impaired.
SPEAKER_02: And that function doesn't operate at optimum level.
SPEAKER_02: The grasshopper becomes a burden.
SPEAKER_02: Next phrase, desire shall fail, referring to the diminishing of sex.
SPEAKER_02: Desire shall fail.
SPEAKER_02: Because man goeth to his long home, see, death is coming, and the mourners go about the street.
SPEAKER_02: Now he describes four categories of death.
SPEAKER_02: Or ever the silver cord be loose, Dr.
SPEAKER_02: Mo Winkle says that's referring to the spinal column.
SPEAKER_02: The Hebrews call the spinal column the silver cord, be loosed.
SPEAKER_02: Or the golden bowl be broken.
SPEAKER_02: There's a picture of uh high blood pressure or strokes, or the inflammatory diseases of the brain like meningitis.
SPEAKER_02: Or the pitcher.
SPEAKER_02: Broken at the fountain, the Hebrews call the heart the pitcher, heart attacks.
SPEAKER_02: Or the wheel broken at the cistern, the next phrase says.
SPEAKER_02: The Hebrews call the liver the wheel.
SPEAKER_02: One of the most important organs in the body.
SPEAKER_02: Did you know a hundred years ago we thought the liver had no function in the body?
SPEAKER_02: The physiologists, the scientists, thought that it was a leftover from the past.
SPEAKER_02: They called it vestigial.
SPEAKER_02: But now we've discovered the liver performs more than a hundred chemical functions in the body.
SPEAKER_02: And next to the brain and the heart, the liver is one of the most important organs in the human symphony, in the human physiology.
SPEAKER_02: Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was.
SPEAKER_02: Now the show is over.
SPEAKER_02: Death has come.
SPEAKER_02: The dust returns to the earth.
SPEAKER_02: You know, when God made man from the dust of the earth, that's a very scientific statement.
SPEAKER_02: The sixteen chemical elements in our body are in the ground beneath our feet.
SPEAKER_02: That's why we eat plants or the animals that ate the plant.
SPEAKER_02: Because they gather all of these ingredients that sustain human existence in our bodies.
SPEAKER_02: But the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit, look at the next phrase, the spirit returns to God who gave it.
SPEAKER_02: The spirit, not the body, because when you die, they put you in the ground to await the resurrection.
SPEAKER_02: The mind, allied to the brain, is also in that category.
SPEAKER_02: But the real you, the spirit.
SPEAKER_02: Did you know when you become a child of God, God gives you a human spirit?
SPEAKER_02: Before you're saved, you're dichotomous.
SPEAKER_02: You have a body and a mind with a potential for a human spirit, but unfulfilled until you open the door of your life to God and say, Come in and take over.
SPEAKER_02: 36 things transpire immediately in your system, in your spiritual life.
SPEAKER_02: Number one, you were born again.
SPEAKER_02: Number two, you have eternal life.
SPEAKER_02: I can mention some of them.
SPEAKER_02: Number three, your name is written in heaven.
SPEAKER_02: Number four, you're an heir of God.
SPEAKER_02: Number five, you're a joint heir with Christ.
SPEAKER_02: Number six, you're an ambassador of God.
SPEAKER_02: Number seven, you're a priest of God.
SPEAKER_02: Number eight, let's say it, you have a God gives you a human spirit.
SPEAKER_02: You see, before you're saved, you're dichotomous.
SPEAKER_02: You know, often we say glibly, man is made in the image of God, which means trichotomous.
SPEAKER_02: God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_02: But that's not true.
SPEAKER_02: Adam and Eve were made in the image of God.
SPEAKER_02: You and I are made in the image of fallen Adam and fallen Eve.
SPEAKER_02: That's how we begin the trip.
SPEAKER_02: But when you kneel at the foot of the cross, you become trichotomous.
SPEAKER_02: You receive a human spirit.
SPEAKER_02: That's why it says here that the spirit returns to God.
SPEAKER_02: Who gave it.
SPEAKER_02: When did he give it?
SPEAKER_02: When you got saved.
SPEAKER_02: That's why 1 Corinthians chapter 2 and verse 14 says, the natural man knoweth not the things of God.
SPEAKER_02: The word natural there in the Greek is the word phukikos, which means we get our word psychology from that same root.
SPEAKER_02: Which means the soulish man, the man with a body and a mind, knoweth not the things of God, because they are spiritually discerned.
SPEAKER_02: You see, and he doesn't have a human spirit until he gets saved.
SPEAKER_02: And along with the human spirit, God gives you the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_02: If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, Romans 8:9, he is none of his.
SPEAKER_02: Alright, so therefore, when you die, the spirit, the real you returns to God who gave it.
SPEAKER_02: The body is placed in the ground to await the miracle of the resurrection.
SPEAKER_02: When God will resume the thirty trillion cells of your human system, wherever they are, and immortalize the body for an eternal existence in fellowship with God.
SPEAKER_02: So you see, the other writer is simply trying to say to us, here's the answer.
SPEAKER_02: And after trying for 11 chapters now, he's been trying everything.
SPEAKER_02: And now he says, Here's the answer.
SPEAKER_02: Let God take over in your life.
SPEAKER_02: And now, in closing, I want to give you a running resume of the other 11 chapters and show you the background to this beautiful, beautiful chapter or beautiful passage we have just exegeted for you here, where the writer is saying, Do it when you're young, open the door of your life to God.
SPEAKER_02: Don't wait until the keepers of the house shall tremble, the strong men bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few.
SPEAKER_02: But right now, while the eye is clear and the cheek is red and the step is firm and the voice is strong, let God take over.
SPEAKER_02: Life is difficult and complex and full of potential.
SPEAKER_02: And you cannot make it that kind of a life by yourself.
SPEAKER_02: It was never meant for you to do it, no more than your body was meant to exist without oxygen.
SPEAKER_02: Like the body needs oxygen, like the circulatory system needs fluids, both the lymph system and the heart system.
SPEAKER_02: As music needs notes, as arithmetic needs numbers, you need God.
SPEAKER_02: And the writer is trying to show us that's the point, that's the point.
SPEAKER_02: And the thing is that life is so powerful and beautiful that you ought to include the spiritual dimension before you're twelve years old.
SPEAKER_02: Welcome 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.
SPEAKER_02: Now the book of Ecclesiastes, by the way, the word Ecclesiastes comes from the Septuagint.
SPEAKER_02: You know, 300 years before Christ, 70 men, that's what the word Septuagint means, seventy men translated the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek.
SPEAKER_02: And for many Bible scholars in the Greek language, this document, which is still in existence, copies of it, very, very important.
SPEAKER_02: Because then they understand how the Greek was used back in those days.
SPEAKER_02: And the word Ecclesiastes could come from the Greek word Ecclesiah, which means a congregation, and somebody addressing a congregation.
SPEAKER_02: And so the writer is saying, I have a crowd before me, I have the human race before me, and I want to say something.
SPEAKER_02: That's what the book of the word Ecclesiastes means.
SPEAKER_02: That's why he called himself the preacher.
SPEAKER_02: In Hebrew, this book is named Kohelith, from the word kahal, which means the same thing as it does in Greek: an assembly with somebody saying something.
SPEAKER_02: So the writer of Ecclesiastes said, I want to turn the world into a congregation, and I've got something to say.
SPEAKER_02: And we just read the conclusion, and now we're going to read the various avenues he tried in trying to read and give you an overview of this book in the next ten minutes, and then we're through.
SPEAKER_02: By the way, the book was written by Solomon.
SPEAKER_02: All the testimony of the early writers of the Bible, we call it the patristic literature, men who wrote in the second and third and fourth centuries, all agree that Solomon wrote it.
SPEAKER_02: In fact, if you read verses 1 of chapter 1 and verses 12 of chapter 1, he called himself the son of David and the King of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_02: He said, I the preacher, I the one who's announcing what I'm saying here in this book, this honest exposure of human existence that needs a God in the middle of it.
SPEAKER_02: He said, I want to talk to you about calls himself the preacher, about life and God and other things.
SPEAKER_02: And actually, there are about five sermons in the book.
SPEAKER_02: If you go with the uh the congregational motif and the fact that here's a man, a preacher, a proclaimer, somebody wants to say something to the whole universe, and he's gathered the entire universe before him, and he says, I want to tell you a few things that I have discovered.
SPEAKER_02: And chapter 12 is the conclusion of it.
SPEAKER_02: So if you're writing notes, I want to give you five overviews, or five sermons, or five attitudes, or five experiential and intellectual pursuits that this man tried, and then we'll have, then we'll see how chapter 12 fits in.
SPEAKER_02: If you read chapters 1 and 2, for example, you find out that Solomon tried luxury.
SPEAKER_02: And if you're writing notes, the keyword is the word luxury.
SPEAKER_02: Each one of these points begins with the letter L.
SPEAKER_02: He tried material things.
SPEAKER_02: He said, There's the answer.
SPEAKER_02: Make money.
SPEAKER_02: Major on the tangible.
SPEAKER_02: And he did.
SPEAKER_02: And if you read 1 Kings chapters 1 through 13, you find there the lavish resume of the financial holdings of this Old Testament tycoon.
SPEAKER_02: He became the wealthiest man not only of his day, of all time.
SPEAKER_02: Nobody has ever been as rich as Solomon was in his day.
SPEAKER_02: But you know, if you read chapters 1 and 2, you sense a feeling of rumbling discontent running through chapters 1 and 2.
SPEAKER_02: Because Solomon is ready to tell us that all the money, and he says, I've got all of it, I've got everything, material things that I could want.
SPEAKER_02: Something is missing.
SPEAKER_02: He said, I didn't find happiness, I didn't find meaning in materialism.
SPEAKER_02: And mind you, we are not disparaging material things.
SPEAKER_02: There's no condemnation in the Bible against wealth, per se.
SPEAKER_02: If a man gets wealth in a wrong way, that's condemned.
SPEAKER_02: If he uses it wrongly, that's condemned.
SPEAKER_02: But some of the wealthiest men in the Bible, uh, greatest men in the Bible, religious men in the Bible, were wealthy men.
SPEAKER_02: Abraham, Job, Solomon, Joseph of Amithea in the New Testament who buried our Lord.
SPEAKER_02: The Bible doesn't condemn or denigrate wealth.
SPEAKER_02: There's nothing wrong with being successful.
SPEAKER_02: There is no premium placed on poverty and failure.
SPEAKER_02: But to make wealth an end in itself.
SPEAKER_02: That's where the problem lies.
SPEAKER_02: And Solomon said, I didn't find fulfillment in material things.
SPEAKER_02: And Solomon discovered it's very possible to be vogue on the outside and to be vague on the inside.
SPEAKER_02: And if you read chapters 1 and 2, you find out that Solomon discovered.
SPEAKER_02: Discovered that a man can have a whole lot in his purse and have nothing.
SPEAKER_02: In his person.
SPEAKER_02: And Solomon discovered that money may buy a house, but it won't buy a home.
SPEAKER_02: And money may buy acquaintances, but it won't buy friendship.
SPEAKER_02: And money may buy marriage, but it won't buy love.
SPEAKER_02: And money may buy an education, but it won't buy wisdom.
SPEAKER_02: And money may buy thrills, but it won't buy happiness.
SPEAKER_02: And you know we've taught our young people how to conjugate the verb to have, to have, to have, and they know it in all of its moods and tenses.
SPEAKER_02: But far more important than having is being.
SPEAKER_02: And the person who is has.
SPEAKER_02: And character is more important than cash, and God is more important than gold.
SPEAKER_02: And while money is not in itself bad, you remember in 2 Timothy 6.10, Paul said the love of money is the root of all evil.
SPEAKER_02: He didn't say money was the root of all evil, the love of money.
SPEAKER_02: And you know what the word love there in the Greek is the word agape?
SPEAKER_02: It's the love that you use to worship a God.
SPEAKER_02: Paul is saying when you worship material things, you're in trouble.
SPEAKER_02: Solomon didn't find the answer.
SPEAKER_02: He tried luxury.
SPEAKER_02: Number two, he tried learning.
SPEAKER_02: If you read chapters three and four, he said, There's the answer, be smart.
SPEAKER_02: And he became one of the most intelligent men of all times.
SPEAKER_02: If you read the book of Proverbs, he composed, you find him conversant with all the sciences of that day.
SPEAKER_02: He was a geologist, he knew about rocks, he was an ichthyologist, he knew about fish, he was an astronomer, he knew about the stars.
SPEAKER_02: He was a philosopher, he wrote this book.
SPEAKER_02: He was a songwriter, he wrote the songs of Solomon, which were the love ballads that young people sang to one another in the courtship relationship, and they were so beautiful that after a while the Holy Spirit adopted them to illustrate the love between Christ and the human soul.
SPEAKER_02: Smart.
SPEAKER_02: But he didn't find the answer there, and as wonderful as knowledge is, and in America we've majored on education, we have built a college in every town and a schoolhouse under every tree, and that's wonderful.
SPEAKER_02: Yet knowledge by itself cannot solve the problem because knowledge is temporary and transitory.
SPEAKER_02: You know, Tennyson in one of the quatrains of in memorium said, knowledge comes.
SPEAKER_02: But wisdom lingers.
SPEAKER_02: That's a tremendous line.
SPEAKER_02: Knowledge comes, all that you can acquire, but wisdom lingers.
SPEAKER_02: And knowledge is so temporary and so fragmentary, and the truths of the day become the lies of tomorrow.
SPEAKER_02: And the men of physics will have ten years from now, youngsters will rewrite the physics books.
SPEAKER_02: Like we're rewriting now, the books on astronomy, because we have found so many more moons around Saturn and the outer space which we thought was so and so.
SPEAKER_02: Now we have found that we were wrong.
SPEAKER_02: It's more.
SPEAKER_02: Did you ever stop to realize for the first time in human history, man is afraid of what he knows?
SPEAKER_02: You see, man is smart enough to split the atom, but he's not good enough to be trusted with the atom.
SPEAKER_02: You know, science can make the world a neighborhood, but not a brotherhood.
SPEAKER_02: You can board a plane in Fort Smith and be in Europe in a matter of hours.
SPEAKER_02: Science has shrunk the world.
SPEAKER_02: Science has given us proximity, but science has not given us community.
SPEAKER_02: Science can tell us how to live longer, but not how to live better.
SPEAKER_02: That comes from God, that comes from the inside.
SPEAKER_02: And Solomon discovered the answer was not in learning.
SPEAKER_02: Now watch him, he's moving on.
SPEAKER_02: After trying luxury and learning, he tries liquor.
SPEAKER_02: Chapters 5, 6, and 7.
SPEAKER_02: Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.
SPEAKER_02: And he stopped his cellars with the best wines in the country.
SPEAKER_02: And he said, Have a good time.
SPEAKER_02: Life is short, death is certain.
SPEAKER_02: He became an Epicurean.
SPEAKER_02: He lived for amusements and for a good time.
SPEAKER_02: But all you hear him say in chapter 7, Vanity of vanities.
SPEAKER_02: All is vanity.
SPEAKER_02: You know what the word vanity in Hebrew means soap bubbles.
SPEAKER_02: He said, pleasures are like pretty soap bubbles.
SPEAKER_02: You admire them, they sparkle, they reflect the light, and they produce beautiful shades of this and that, but then they burst.
SPEAKER_02: And what's left?
SPEAKER_02: A pitiful little drop that falls to the ground.
SPEAKER_02: And he didn't find the answer there.
SPEAKER_02: I think the poetess Dorothy Parker signified that attitude when she said, There's little in taking or giving.
SPEAKER_02: There's little in water or wine.
SPEAKER_02: This living, this living, this living was never a project of mine.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, hard is the struggle and sparse is the gain of the man at the top.
SPEAKER_02: For art is a form of catharsis, and love is a permanent flop, and work is the province of cattle, and rest is for the clam in the shell.
SPEAKER_02: So I'm thinking of throwing the battle.
SPEAKER_02: Will you kindly direct me to hell?
SPEAKER_02: Now you see the pessimism that is engendered in that poem is realistic.
SPEAKER_02: Because true happiness and true fulfillment cannot be found in material or amusements.
SPEAKER_02: It cannot be found in tangibles and evanescent pleasures.
SPEAKER_02: Now, after trying luxury and learning and liquor, now he tries lust.
SPEAKER_02: Chapters 9, 10, and 11 said, There's the answer.
SPEAKER_02: Have a good time, give the id.
SPEAKER_02: As Freud called it, complete expression.
SPEAKER_02: Let sex ventilate.
SPEAKER_02: Don't be concerned about guilt or morals.
SPEAKER_02: And Solomon tried this avenue.
SPEAKER_02: If you read 1 Kings, he married 700 wives.
SPEAKER_02: Men don't envy Solomon.
SPEAKER_02: That also means 700 mothers-in-law.
SPEAKER_02: And that ruins the picture, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_02: Somebody has said the time in America is 6 o'clock.
SPEAKER_02: And that's more than just a pun.
SPEAKER_02: It's a reality.
SPEAKER_02: The permissiveness of our day is appalling.
SPEAKER_02: And what's the result?
SPEAKER_02: Are people happier?
SPEAKER_02: No.
SPEAKER_02: As the French call it, ennui, boredom has moved in.
SPEAKER_02: And we have learned from experience and observation, and maybe reasoning, that the pattern which God gave the human race in the Old Testament in the Garden of Eden, one Adam for one Eve and one Eve for one Adam, is still the ideal basis for the home and for mental health and for the fulfillment of sex.
SPEAKER_02: So after trying luxury and learning and liquor and lust, now we find him in chapter 12.
SPEAKER_02: He tries the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: There's the fifth L.
SPEAKER_02: And I've already talked about this.
SPEAKER_02: He tried the Lord, said there's the answer.
SPEAKER_02: There's the answer.
SPEAKER_02: You want to make life good?
SPEAKER_02: Open the door of your life and let God take over when you're young.
SPEAKER_02: Don't wait till the keepers of the house tremble, the strong men bow themselves, and the grinder cease because they're few.
SPEAKER_02: But right now, while the eye is clear and the cheek is red and the step is firm, let God take over.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, my dear friends, after being a minister for 50 years and being a Christian for 50 years, I want to recommend to you that nothing for fun or sheer delight beats the harmony that God brings when he moves into a worthless human existence that's refuse and ciphers and zeros until God, through Jesus Christ our Lord, moves in and takes over.
SPEAKER_02: Let me conclude by saying this.
SPEAKER_02: When you were born, you began life with a cry.
SPEAKER_02: The doctor slapped you to encourage the ingestion of oxygen.
SPEAKER_02: But when you cried in the chamber of delivery, the doctor smiled.
SPEAKER_02: There was life.
SPEAKER_02: The nurses smiled.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe an anxious father, waiting in the hall, hearing the cry, smiled.
SPEAKER_02: So when you were born, you wept, and others smiled.
SPEAKER_02: So lived by the grace of God that when you come to die, you'll smile.
SPEAKER_02: And the others will weep.
SPEAKER_02: Let's bow for a moment of prayer.
SPEAKER_02: Heavenly Father, we thank you for the word of God, a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our pathway.
SPEAKER_02: We're living in a dark, dark world, and the flickering light of science and technology, wonderful as they are, cannot illumine the path between the cradle and the grave.
SPEAKER_02: We need the illumination of divine revelation, the light from heaven.
SPEAKER_02: Help us to welcome this light very early into our existence.
SPEAKER_02: And to heed the words of the philosopher in our book and in our text, who, after exploring intellectually and experientially all these different avenues, he came to a conclusion that to let God take over when you're young is the answer to human existence.
SPEAKER_02: For those of us who are here saved and born again, may the corroboration of this truth encourage us to keep on going and sharing with others this wonderful, wonderful truth.
SPEAKER_02: And if there be somebody in this room who has not yet received Christ as personal Savior, may this be the hour when he opens the door.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus is passing by today, and may they welcome him into the heart so he can forgive and comfort and guide us the rest of our days.
SPEAKER_02: It isn't too late.
SPEAKER_02: We ask it in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: We pray this message has been a blessing to you and helped to strengthen your walk with Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Please know we want to minister to you and pray for you.
SPEAKER_01: Send an email to contact us at fsfbc.org and let us pray for you and help you in any way we can.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for listening to Chapter and First, the Bible Teaching Ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church.