Ecclesiastes 12:1-8 “Remember God”
Silvia and
John are 56 years old, they have been married for 37 years, raised their family
and retired from their jobs. There first few years were painful but they stuck
it out and got a routine together. They did not spend time talking together
other than a few stolen moments, a vacation, or when a struggle demanded it.
Now they have time, but they find it hard to talk. The opinions and habits of
the past get in the way. They find that 90% of their life is not connected to
each other. Being alone with each other for so much of the day scares them.
Many
retired couples find themselves in this same place. Solomon finds himself in
the same place in his relationship with God. He and God made a good start but
now Solomon is overwhelmed by the meaningless things he did and the
relationship with God he does not have.
1. Solomon in old age
a. the days
of trouble
b. find no
pleasure in them
c. v 2 your
eyes go
d. v3 legs
tremble and arms are weak
e. v3 teeth
are few
f. v3 friend
no longer come to call
Solomon sits
on a throne of compromise knowing he has given his best strength to the wrong
things.
2. our time
a. in our
teens: church is boring, prayer, reading, (what is out there)
b. family
to build, careers to cultivate, money to save, we just need a rest.
c. My life
is full of troubles and even though I am interested in God …
d. I got
time to do the things I have missed…
e. now in
old age with all the time to think, pray, focus on God but I don’t
3. Build it now
a. the last
full measure of devotion.
b. Lincoln
was asking for our first measure of devotion
c. Live
your lives with Jesus while your children can see it
d. live your
life with Jesus now so you retire with a friend not a stranger
e. given
your best strength to Jesus who gave His best to you.
f. vs 13
love God…
g. teach
your children to do the same.
Gettysburg Address
Four score and seven years ago our fathers
brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war,
testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can
long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to
dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here
gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and
proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -
we can not consecrate - we can not hallow - this ground. The brave men, living
and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to
add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here,
but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to
be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus
far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great
task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased
devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of
devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in
vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and
that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish
from the earth.
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