Ecclesiastes Part 16
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“Growing old isn’t for sissies.”
As time passes, we experience the joy in many of the things
we did when we were younger less and less. Activities you delighted in, aren’t enjoyable
anymore. That happens throughout life. But I have witnessed that what the
teacher said is true. The older you get, life itself can be described this way.
Aches and pains increase while opportunities decrease.
The teacher has encouraged us in
many ways not to waste the time we have been given because it is passing like a
vapor. This means there are choices about old age you have to make before you
get there. (long-term health care insurance, retirement accounts, where you
will live, who will care for you, etc.). Perhaps a greater question that needs
to be asked is who will you be?
When the aches and pains increase
will your participation in Kingdom ministry decrease? Will your usefulness to
God in this world evaporate?
It is true that because of the fall, time is a thief. It takes
away our youth, our energy, our vigor, and eventually our earthly lives.
Will you believe Satan’s lie that
you are washed up and wasted because your vigor and energy are depleted. Will
he rob you of your delight in the years God has left you with?
You may have
no delight in the years that bring old age, but you can still take great
delight, during old age, in the God who gives opportunity for as long as
He gives breath!
The teacher has told us to
embrace and make the most of the years of our youth. Do that! But if you live
long enough, it will be gone. However, that doesn’t mean that our older
years are to be unproductive/unfruitful. Don’t just live to die!
12 The righteous thrive like a palm tree and grow like a cedar tree in Lebanon. 13 Planted in the house of the Lord, they thrive in the courts of our God. 14 They will still bear fruit in old age, healthy and green, 15 to declare, “The Lord is just; he is my rock and there is no unrighteousness in him.”
Summary: The righteous (Christ’s
righteousness) will thrive, grow, and be planted, still bearing fruit in old age.
Why? (15) To declare the glory of God!
It means that until your last breath and, based on the legacy
you leave, beyond your last breath, you are to declare the glory of God.
Because we physically lose energy, strength, and vigor
in old age, remaining active in ministry takes intentionality and the faith
that God still has a purpose for you in your old age!
So, for the young, the encouragement today is for you to wisely
consider today with the end in mind, and for the more mature, decide today that
you’ll never retire from Kingdom work.
Illustrations:
Lois Arthur – Peru at 75
Dwight Sanders’ grandparents in
their 90s still ministering
Are you willing and prepared to actively be used by God
for your entire life? Are you taking advantage of every opportunity according to
the stage in life you are in now?
I want to encourage you to adopt a mindset and
adapt your lifestyle to invest in Kingdom work as you age. To
that end I want to share 7 points of encouragement:
1. Determine that your God-given wisdom will not terminate on yourself.
Your experiences and your walk
with the Lord teach you how to make better decisions as you age. Don’t waste
those lessons on yourself – make sure they live beyond you.
To
the more experienced among us: make yourself available for God to
use you to help develop the next generation of godly young men and women.
Maybe you don’t consider yourself
particularly wise, but if you’ve made mistakes, at the very least you have
the negative experience to help the ones who come behind you from making
them, too.
Knowledge is knowing what is right, wisdom is knowing how to
apply it. We all gain knowledge, but wisdom often takes experience, so live
your life with intentionality and look for opportunities to encourage someone as
you grow older.
12 Wisdom is found with the elderly, and understanding comes with long life.
Make the request for wisdom a
part of your daily prayer-life:
James 1:5-8 (NOTE: this is a preview of our next
series)
5 Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God—who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly—and it will be given to him. 6 But let him ask in faith without doubting. For the doubter is like the surging sea, driven and tossed by the wind. 7 That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord, 8 being double-minded and unstable in all his ways.
Young people need the wisdom of your years of experience
whether they realize it or not, and many of them don’t yet.
To
the young, I encourage you to fight the urge to only get the advice
and counsel of those who are in the same stages of life that you are; who have
the same limited perspective that you do.
Pride and arrogance are two of Satan’s greatest tools in being
the final word in someone else’s life. Know your limits because moving past
them will lead you, or someone else, astray.
Yes, there is benefit to sharing
life with godly peers, but how do you get directions from a person who has
never been where you are going, and are trying to find the same destination?
Seek out those who have already
traveled the road. Be humble enough to listen to their directions, and
though you may feel you already know the direction, you can’t know all the
pitfalls and potholes that lie on the road, because you’ve never seen them.
They have.
ILLUS: Waze
– I like it because you can even know where a pothole is, or where a dead deer
is in the road. Why does it work? Because drivers ahead of you have seen them
and are telling you. Can it be wrong? Yes. It normally isn’t, so I trust it
with eyes wide open.
OK,
back to the old folks:
I mentioned the word, “Intentionality.”
2. Commit to make yourself available to mentor/disciple
younger people in the wisdom God has given you through the years.
It doesn’t help if our young
people are willing to listen but you’re not willing to speak –
Invite them to dinner, talk to
them after service, etc.
It also doesn’t help if you’re
not pursuing the kind of godly life they want to live…
3. Live an exemplary life to those who are coming behind
you and teach them to walk in the way of the Lord. A perfect life isn’t
required, but a holy life (set apart from sin) and repentant life (that doesn’t
remain under the control of sin) is.
Titus 2:2-3:
2 Older men are to be self-controlled, worthy of respect, sensible, and sound in faith, love, and endurance. 3 In the same way, older women are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not slaves to excessive drinking. They are to teach what is good,
older
men: self-controlled, worthy of respect, sensible, and sound in faith,
love, and endurance. 3 In the same way, older women are
to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not slaves to excessive
drinking. They are to teach what is good, 4 so that they
may encourage the young women.
older
women: reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers (diabolos) or addicted to much
wine, but to teach what is good."
ILLUS:
widows in our church have been encouraging young ladies in this church for decades.
4. Learn to fight: become prayer warriors
Luke 2:36-38 :
36 There was also a prophetess, Anna, a daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was well along in years, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, 37 and was a widow for eighty-four years. She did not leave the temple, serving God night and day with fasting and prayers. 38 At that very moment, she came up and began to thank God and to speak about him to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.
worshiped
night and day, fasting and praying.
Her time with the Lord put her
in a position to have insight and wisdom.
ILLUS:
Jo Thompson: Prayed and believed.
When the church was in severe financial troubles, she
prayed and believed because God owns cattle on a thousand hills. He’ll just have to sell a cow, honey.
5. Embrace your weakness. Suffering well is a ministry of
faith to those around you.
7 especially because of the extraordinary revelations. Therefore, so that I would not exalt myself, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to torment me so that I would not exalt myself. 8 Concerning this, I pleaded with the Lord three times that it would leave me. 9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.”
Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me. 10 So I take pleasure in weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and in difficulties, for the sake of Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
6. Age with grace, as a part of Gods plan for life in a
fallen world. Proverbs 31:30
30 Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord will be praised.
Live eternal life now so that
your attitude toward growing old communicates you’re getting closer to going
Home. Remind yourself that a decaying body is meant to help you let go of this
foreign land. It helps us let go of our “stuff”. Younger generations could
benefit from this truth on display.
ILLUS: Great
lesson my Dad taught me about “stuff” in his final year.
7. Seize today. There is no tomorrow until it gets here.
We all know the end of life doesn’t always come in slow progression. Could be
quick and soon so take advantage now wherever you are in life.
John
Piper, Don’t Waste Your Life
“I will tell you what a tragedy
is. I will show you how to waste your life. Consider this story from the February 1998 Reader’s Digest: A couple took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Florida where they cruise on their 30-foot trawler, play softball, and collect
shells… Picture them before Christ at the great day of judgment: ‘Look, Lord.
See my shells.’ That is a tragedy.”
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