June 7 Daily Devotional

Scripture for Day 38—Ecclesiastes 12:1

¹Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, "I have no pleasure in them;"

Devotional:

This verse performs a double function. On the one hand, the advice for the young (or, young at heart, 11:7-10) culminates in the simple phrase, "Remember you Creator." But this imperative also provides the header for the poem of 12:1-8. Before we investigate this poem, a few remarks about remembering God are in order.

"Remember your Creator" is the ultimate antidote to becoming ensnared in the sinful pursuit of happiness, happiness defined in terms of my own agenda. If we only had the two warnings from 11:7-10 (youth is transitory & judgment is coming), true happiness would be virtually impossible. It would amount to indulgence moderated by the thought of retribution and limited opportunity. There must be a better motivation, a higher principle, and it is captured in the saying of 12:1.

Remembering God our Creator involves active, deliberate reflection on his person. Actually, in the OT, remembering God will often be a synonym for worship in the fullest sense of the word. The opposite notion, namely forgetting God, almost invariably goes tandem with the worship of idols. Judg. 3:7 serves as an example: "And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of Yahweh. They forgot the Yahweh their God and served Baals and the Asheroth." We may add to this Deut. 4:23: "Take care, lest you forget the covenant of Yahweh your God, which he made with you, and make a carved image, the form of anything that the Yahweh your God has forbidden you."

To forget God is to worship replacement gods. Conversely, to remember God is synonymous with worshiping him. No matter how we look at it, we are wired to worship. If we fail to remember our Creator, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, we will replace his glory with something else (cf. Rom. 1:23). "Remember your Creator" simply spells: Look at God in Jesus Christ, trust him fully, and love him with all your heart. Cast all your cares on him, and entrust your soul "to a faithful Creator while doing good" (1 Pet. 4:19).

This will make our joy perfect, better even than the joy of youth. And this joy will remain with us when our bodies fail on account of old age. I have seen bitter, old persons who have given up on life and themselves because the time when they could rejoice in earthly pleasures was over. There is nothing more miserable than an old person in such a frame of mind, for there is nothing left to hope for when joy is tied to temporary things as money, physical strength, and beauty, and time has taken them away from us. May you not finish your life in this way. Finish well! Remember your Creator. "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts" (Heb. 3:15).

The author of these devotionals, the Rev. Martin Emmrich, is an ordained OPC minister (Westminster OPC, Corvallis, Oregon) as well as the author of Pneumatological Concepts in the Epistle to the Hebrews, a book on the teaching of Hebrews on the Holy Spirit. We are happy to make these devotionals on Ecclesiastes and other passages of Scripture available to you.