Aging Is Meaningless without Jesus

Solomon commands us to remember our Creator in the days of our youth (12:1). What does that entail? Remembering your Creator means trusting Him, obeying Him, and walking with Him. It entails teaching your kids about God (Deut 6). The reference to God as Creator here looks back to the creation event, which has been the backdrop to Ecclesiastes all along. Joy can truly be found if one lives out the wise order by which God created the world. God created everything good and to be enjoyed; however, because we sinned, now everything is broken. We now use things—even good things—wrongly or worship them as idols, and that departure from God’s design leads to brokenness. Solomon has catalogued this throughout Ecclesiastes concerning pleasure, comedy, success, wisdom, money, extravagant possessions, and so much more. The only way to navigate this world wisely and truly enjoy the good gifts God has created for us—not as idols we place above Him but as gifts meant to glorify Him—is by faith in Him, so we are called to repent of our sin, repent of our idolatry, and believe in Him.

Johnny Hunt points out that you “cannot afford to put off faith in God” until you are older (Ecclesiastes, 73). You will regret it because not living your life with God at the center causes you to make stupid decisions: you might do something like marry an idiot, choose the wrong friends, or start the wrong occupation (Chandler, “To the Young and Old”). Those dumb decisions will have repercussions for the next 30 years of your life or even longer. Tons of money is spent on counseling and medications because of poor life choices (Driscoll, “Threading Your Needle”). So turn to God now and submit yourself to His Word for decision making.

The vocabulary of the poem is apocalyptic. It uses language often used in passages that describe the end of the world, such as the darkening of the sun and moon (cf. Joel 3:15). The point in Ecclesiastes 12 is that your world personally will end in death. In the poem the author gives three “before” statements to depict vividly aging and dying. First, we must turn to God before evil days come (12:1), which refers to impending death. Death is not the way the world should be. It was not part of God’s original design but rather is an enemy intruder in the world. When those evil days come, we will have no pleasure in them (12:1). The depressing reality for many people is that if they live long enough, they will become so sick, experience so much daily pain, or feel the indignity of not being able to do everyday things they used to do with no thought, and they will beg God to let them die. They will ask God why they continue to live, and they will hope for death.

Second, we must turn to God before the astrological lights go out (12:2). We need to understand as we walk through the poem that it contains highly metaphorical language, and we cannot be dogmatic about what it all means. However, we can make some observations that come close, I think.^[7]Solomon says the lights will go out, which may refer to eye failure or the loss of mental powers. The reference to rain and clouds could refer to glaucoma (i.e., cloudy vision) or that our reasoning and memory functions decline in old age—after all, even when young people forget something, they say they had a “senior moment.” Perhaps Solomon is alluding to the heartbreaking effects of dementia. Others think the clouds could refer to troubles that were minor setbacks in youth, but now the aged do not recover as quickly from them, or they never recover from them. Thus, the clouds never go away (Kidner, Ecclesiastes, 102).

Solomon continues this section by talking about

the day when the guardians of the house tremble, and the strong men stoop, the women who grind cease because they are few, and the ones who watch through the windows see dimly, the doors at the street are shut while the sound of the mill fades. (12:3-4)

These images refer, it seems, to the diminished capacity of the senses and motor skills in old age. In old age your hands tremble (i.e., the guardians), major muscles fail so you begin to bend over (i.e., the strong men), teeth go missing and chewing is difficult (i.e., the grinders), eyesight dims (i.e., the watchers), and hearing fades (i.e., the doors). The cruel irony is that while your hearing fades, the slightest noise—like a bird chirping—startles and wakes you (12:4). In old age sleeping is difficult—you’re up with the birds!

He continues by saying that

they are afraid of heights and dangers on the road; the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper loses its spring, and the caper berry has no effect; for man is headed to his eternal home, and mourners will walk around in the street. (12:5)

The elderly are afraid of heights, and they are also afraid of falling, or danger in the road, that is, being jostled, in contrast to the courage of youth. The blossoming almond tree refers to white hair in old age, and then after the bloom the hair goes away and you are bald. The burdened grasshopper can refer to something light that is now too heavy to lift with the vigor of youth gone, or it may refer to bad joints and the loss of mobility. Finally, there is a loss of sexual desire. The caper berry was a known aphrodisiac, but now it has no effect. As Matt Chandler humorously points out, Solomon notoriously loved women and managed to put the loss of sexual appetite dead last. He has no teeth, he cannot move, he cannot see, he cannot hear, and finally he is not interested in sex anymore (“To the Young and Old”). This description of aging and the nearing of death is similar to the death of King David in 1 Kings 1. He is cold and cannot keep warm, so they put a beautiful young woman in bed with him to try to warm him up, but the Bible says nothing happens. The only thing left is death. Adam goes to his eternal home, which does not refer to heaven in the context of Ecclesiastes. Throughout the book the author has limited his observations to a human perspective, and therefore he is uncertain about what lies beyond the grave since no human can know for certain. The eternal home merely refers to death itself, which is then followed by a funeral with mourners.

Third, we must turn to God “before the silver cord is snapped, and the gold bowl is broken, and the jar is shattered at the spring, and the wheel is broken into the well” (12:6). The images of the silver cord, the golden bowl, the shattered jar, and the broken wheel refer to drawing water. The problem is that the system to get life-sustaining water has deteriorated and shattered into the finality of death (Webb, Five Festal Garments, 99). The cord that pulls the water, the bowl that holds the jar, the jar that holds the water, and the wheel for the pulley system are all broken at the bottom of the well. Life has gone out. The outcome is that man returns to dust (12:7), that is, he dies and decays under the curse of sin while the breath of life returns to God. Again, this is not a comment on heaven. It refers to the departure of life. This reality is the sentence God passed on Adam because of his sin and his posterity’s sin (Gen 3; Rom 5). When you sin against God, you shall surely die and return to the dust from which you came. Ecclesiastes has said all along that we live in a cursed world where death is inevitable because of humanity’s sinful choices that led us to this point.

The text is painful, depressing, and heartrending, but death’s sting should stir us to action. Remember God now when you can avoid living with regret. That exhortation leads to the conclusion of Ecclesiastes.

Ecclesiastes 12:8-14

Ecclesiastes 12:8 gives the final assessment, which is the same as the first assessment in Ecclesiastes 1:2: everything is futile, fleeting, meaningless, and absurd. The conclusion helps us understand the purpose behind exposing the meaninglessness of life. Solomon wants us to realize that God imposed a curse on the world to show us the meaninglessness of following our own devices and to drive us to Him. Thus, the point of Ecclesiastes, like every book of the Old Testament, is ultimately to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ (2 Tim 3:15). When we see death up close in hospital visits, the suffering of a loved one, or the passing of a friend, it signals that there is something better out there. That’s the point of Ecclesiastes: everything is meaningless without Jesus. We see this in the conclusion (12:9-14)

Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes to shepherd the reader with words that are pleasing, true, convicting, and wise (12:9-10). His words are like goads, spiked sticks that prod cattle down the right path. That has been his intention all along. He gives messianic wisdom to convict us of the meaninglessness of life without God and to drive us to remember our Creator. After all, the image of the “one Shepherd” is only used in reference to the Messiah (see Ezek 34:23; 37:24).

Solomon turns his attention to his son, pleading with him to beware of moving beyond his words (12:12). He trains his son in wisdom in order to establish the kingdom, so he tells his son not to attempt his own investigation as if the son could find meaning somewhere that Solomon failed to look. Solomon says his words recorded in Ecclesiastes are sufficient. This is the sum total of the matter (v. 13). Solomon knows the temptation to try anything and everything other than God to find satisfaction, so he has talked about his pursuit of wealth, education, women, pleasure, success, and other things. When all is said and done, God is the only One who can satisfy the human heart.

Solomon, therefore, teaches his son not to try his own search for meaning and to take Solomon’s words to heart. Here is the bottom line: “Fear God and keep His commands,” since that is our chief end in the light of judgment (12:13-14). The book has longed for judgment because of the injustice in the world, but the problem for us is our part in the injustice of the world. God will set all things right, the wicked will not finally prosper, and the righteous will not finally suffer, but the difficulty for us is that Ecclesiastes makes clear we have failed to keep God’s commands. Everyone has failed, including Solomon and his son. Within Solomon’s lifetime he went from being the wisest man on planet Earth to sanctioning the sacrifice of babies, all because he saw some hot foreign women he wanted to be his. Yes, Solomon was a great sinner, and we might try to assuage our guilt by saying, “But I never had a thousand wives.” Still, you are not without guilt. You have your fantasies and your online history. Ecclesiastes ends by saying even the secret things we think are hidden will see the light of day in judgment when we are completely laid bare and exposed before the holy God (v. 14). That’s frightening.

We are under condemnation; that’s the bad news. But the good news is that there is one who is greater than Solomon who has come on the scene. He is the Wisdom of God. He does not just teach us messianic wisdom and fail to live up to it; He perfectly lives out the wisdom of God. And yet the One who perfectly lived out the wisdom of God took the judgment for our folly on the cross. He experienced everything we should experience for falling short of God’s glory. The enemy—the curse of sin and death—will steal our hearing, steal our motor skills, steal our sight, and steal our youthful vigor, but Jesus redeems us by becoming a curse for us (Gal 3:13). He took on our death. He took on three dark days in the grave, unable to hear, unable to walk, and unable to see. But He did not decay into the dust; He walked away from death. As Jaroslav Pelikan says, “If Christ is risen—then nothing else matters. And if Christ is not risen—then nothing else matters.” Because of Christ, the decay of death is not the final word. Because of Christ, aging is not the end. Because of Christ, life can be meaningful, and youthful radiance will last in eternal life after the grave.

Life is meaningful because Christ reconciles us to the Creator of life and gives us the ability to be wise. Now, in Christ, we can be satisfied in God alone, rather than loving His gifts more than we love Him. We can now experience true joy, true meaning.

Only when you trust God fully and are satisfied in Him alone can you truly enjoy life. God has a design for everything. We are meant to enjoy such things as food, drink, relationships, sex, work, and money as a means of worshiping Him. The problem is that we depart from God’s good design. We turn the gifts into idols. This reality is one of the fundamental issues Ecclesiastes has uncovered for us: we worship the gift rather than the Giver. Doing so is not just wrong—although it is—it is also unsatisfying. It causes brokenness and meaninglessness. Still, we continue to do it because we think the next thing we move on to will bring us the satisfaction we so desire. We do it with money and possessions, we do it with sex (like Hozier’s song “Take Me to Church”), we do it with work success, and we do it with pleasure. These things are fleeting joys at best and cannot satisfy, so we end up broken. Here is the good news: Christ took on our brokenness, and if we repent and believe, then we can recover and pursue God’s design for our lives and live life as we are meant to live it. Now, fully satisfied in Jesus, you can enjoy money as one who is content and generous, sex with your covenant spouse in marriage, work as one who provides for his family, and much more in the way God intended. All of these things are meaningless without Jesus, but with Jesus you can live a meaningful life here and hereafter.