Read Ecclesiastes 11:7–10
Questions from the Scripture text: What is sweet (Ecclesiastes 11:7a)? What is pleasant (verse 7b)? What might a man do (Ecclesiastes 11:8a)? With what effect upon him (verse 8b)? But what days should he remember (verse 8c)? How many will they be (verse 8d)? What is all that comes to him (i.e., in this life, verse 8e)? What should a young man do (Ecclesiastes 11:9a)? In what? What should his heart do (verse 9b)? When? What may his heart do (verse 9c)? What may his eyes do (verse 9d)? But what will the Lord do (verse 9f)? And what is the young man responsible to do (verse 9e)? Therefore, what should the young man do with his heart (Ecclesiastes 11:10a)? And with his physical body (verse 10b)? Why—what is true about his younger years (verse 10c)?
How should we live our short lives? Ecclesiastes 11:7–10 prepares us for the hearing of God’s Word, publicly read, in the holy assembly on the coming Lord’s Day. In these four verses of Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit teaches us that we should spend our short lives in rejoicing and righteousness.
This life is so short. We might say, “like a blink.” Ecclesiastes says, “like a vapor.” And there’s a microcosm of that in our childhoods. When they are over, your younger years are a vapor, a blink. So will it be with this entire life, when it is over.
So, there are two great lessons about life as a whole, that we can learn from applying them to our youth.
First, enjoy life while you have it: let light and sunshine be sweet to you (Ecclesiastes 11:7), enjoy each and every year that you are given (Ecclesiastes 11:8a–b), just as the young should enjoy their childhood (Ecclesiastes 11:9a–b). So the first application is “rejoicing.”
But the second application is “righteousness.” And the second is “righteousness.” Remember how much longer your life after this world will be, than your life in it. Everything in this life is “vapor” (more literal than NKJ, “vanity,” in Ecclesiastes 11:8e), by comparison to eternity. Ecclesiastes 11:9e–f is even more pointed: live in the knowledge that your life must pass muster at God’s judgment.
This requires regeneration, conversion. For if one is going to walk in the ways of his heart (Ecclesiastes 11:9c), and his eyes (verse 9d), but in a way that acknowledges God and His judgment (verse 9e–f), then it is obvious that he needs a new heart and new eyes!
Lets we had somehow missed the great lesson in Ecclesiastes 11:7-9 (indeed, in the whole book thus far), Ecclesiastes 11:10 winds it up very plainly and bluntly to the young: rejoice (verse 10a), and be righteous (verse 10b), because childhood and youth are a vapor (verse 10c).
And, in a book in which the Spirit has repeatedly called our whole life under the sun a vapor, it is plain that this applies to the whole of our blink-long life under the sun: rejoice, and be righteous, because life is a vapor!
The key to both of those will come in the next passage: remember your Creator. Remembering Him is the key to rejoicing. And remembering Him is the key to living righteously.
So, dear reader, rejoice! And be righteous! For life is a vapor.
In what phase of life are you, right now? Can you look back on a childhood that now seems like it was a vapor? Are you currently in a childhood that you need to remember is a vapor? How aware are you, in your functional, everyday living, that our entire life in this world is a vapor? How are you “remembering your Creator” in service of extracting as much joy as you can out of every moment of this blink-long life? How are you “remembering your Creator” in service of living as you will wish you had, when you enter the incomprehensibly long eternity?
Sample prayer: Lord, forgive us for how we have wasted so much of our lives, by permitting anxiety or sadness to dominate our hearts. And, forgive us for how, in so many moments of our lives, we have not lived as we will wish we had, when we enter eternity. We thank You for Christ, Who is the most joyful Man, and Who has always made the most of the time. For His sake, forgive us. And by His life, make us to be like Him, we ask in His Name, AMEN!
Suggested songs: ARP15 “Within Your Tent, Who Will Reside” or TPH400 “Gracious Spirit, Dwell with Me”
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