Ecclesiastes 12:1 – Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them;

Ecclesiastes 12:2 – While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain:

Ecclesiastes 12:3 – In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened,

Ecclesiastes 12:4 – And the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of musick shall be brought low;

Ecclesiastes 12:5 – Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets:

Ecclesiastes 12:6 – Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.

Ecclesiastes 12:7 – Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.

Hello readers, I read through the book of Ecclesiastes recently, and I noticed this phrase in the final chapter “because man goeth to his long home”. What a last chapter it is, and in it, you’ll find some of the best advice you’ll ever read for your life from a man who learned the hard way about what really matters and what doesn’t in life. And this advice isn’t just from Solomon, it’s from God. This Bible isn’t the word of man, it’s the word of God. God’s going to give us wisdom for how to think, how to live, what to spend our life on. Solomon spent his life on things that could not give him anything beyond momentary fleeting pleasure and fulfillment. And at the end… vanity! Vexation of spirit!

The most important thing you can do is remember your Creator in the days of your youth. The temptation for us all growing up is to spend that youth on ourselves. Growing up is a really, really dangerous time of our lives. In our youth we can ruin our life before it ever really begins. We can set our direction in our youth and make such a ruin of our lives it seems impossible to be redeemed from. How many young people ruin their life early and never get it back. If you have ruined your life, there is hope, because Christ can redeem you, but don’t go into sin counting on Jesus magically absolving you from the consequences that surely accompany it.

Before you think that you’ll find fulfillment, purpose, happiness in this world, take advice from king Solomon who did everything, had everything, tried everything… and none of it fulfilled him. You may be right now in pursuit of what you think you want, and all you know is that you want it. You can’t be told otherwise, you don’t even have the capacity to think otherwise. It may be you want another person in love, it may be success in sport, it may be the pursuit of money, it may be the earnest search for peer acceptance and validation… you may be devoting your time and thinking and energy into anything and everything that does not matter, that has ZERO eternal value, and will only add to the list of regrets you have in time.

Whatever you’re doing, it will be a waste if it’s not founded and centered on the Lord Jesus Christ. End of story. And that’s not just a cliché like we learn to say at church or say around our religious peers to look good. And you may know how to speak, act, and look before others… but inside and in reality it can often be a very different story. We all know how to put on an act, let’s not kid ourselves. But Jesus knows what’s going on inside, you aren’t fooling him one second.

That wasted life, those wasted years, those spurned opportunities… that life of sin, that life of pursuing and gratifying your lusts… it will torment your soul. I look back at my own life, and I wasted a lot of my good young years. If I can say that at just past thirty years old, I can only attest to the truth of this opening verse of the final chapter and start redeeming the time from this day forward. Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth. Why? Because in the distance lies trials, dark times, and death. You have no guarantee that the opportunity you have to be saved and be a light in this dark world will be there tomorrow in the future. Only one life will soon be past, only what’s done for Christ will last. Don’t count on being able to get back things that you take so badly for granted right now. Remember, there were a lot of men of war who wasted out in that wilderness because of unbelief. All that potential and ability and it was lost because they disobeyed and rebelled against God and did it their own way.

You can lose a lot early in life. You can lose your purity, innocence, virginity. You can loose your testimony, witness, and light. You can loose your heart and your mind and conscience. You can surrender all you could’ve been to the devil and the wolves of this world. So often children who radiate the light that they’ve been given that Jesus put in them become filled with darkness as they begin to rebel in earnest against that light. They sin, and they get around sinners, they throw in their lot with sinners, they share their purse with sinners, they walk in the company of sinners, they walk in the counsel of sinners… and they make a trainwreck out of a golden opportunity to make their life count and spend their time and years and energy and youth on God.

Time given to God is not wasted time. Yeah you think it is, you’re missing out on fun that you feel entitled to that everyone else is having. Don’t be so stupid. I look back and my sport and my other pursuits and activities are all not just redundant, but a waste, for that time could’ve been redeemed with obeying Jesus Christ, but instead I just threw years of my life into the wind, and the wind took it all away. And now those youthful years and energies and lust become vanity and vexation of spirit, just as Solomon warned. If you spend your life trying to please those people that don’t even like you anyway, if you spend your life endlessly groveling to the demands this world makes on you, you will literally just flush the minutes of your life down the drain.

But now I want to focus on the phrase “man goeth to his long home”. Think about that long home today. Where is your long home? Where are you going to spend eternity? It’s a long home to be in hell isn’t it. Torment, pain, suffering, regret, wailing, weeping… that’s bad enough for a few moments, let alone forever. You know, it seems like we will live forever when we are young. Death is so far off it doesn’t even seem real. Adulthood so far off it’s irrelevant to us. Then we don’t like to think about death and eternity, so we occupy ourselves not thinking about it. We deal with it by not dealing with it. Things like accountability and judgment barely cross our mind. But you know, at every stage of life it always seems so far off. But this short life is nothing compared to the long home.

You know, each of us have a long home. You don’t cease to exist when you die. Who told you that? Someone who doesn’t know told you that. Someone who hasn’t died yet tells you like they know that there is no life after death. How stupid can you be to listen to that rubbish? Oh, there is a long home for you. Just where will your home be. Hell is going to be a terrible long home for so many people. It’s a long home waiting in hell until the final judgment, when you will be cast into the lake of fire, which is where every single person that has rejected Jesus Christ will end up. The great white throne and the lake of fire is you last stop in eternity. That’s the end of the line for you. You know that last stop on a bus or train, you go past all the other stops, and maybe you’re past a few stops, a few milestones, a few roadmarkers already… and your last stop is going to be the lake of fire, your long home. Maybe you’re closer to pulling into that trainstation, that final stop, than you think.

What a fearful statement, man goeth to his long home. Talk about perspective. Because Solomon is going to give us perspective. Badly needed perspective on what matters in life. So often our economy in life is so out of whack. We put value on all the things that have no value. And we place no value on something that is forever. All we think about is our life right here right now, and setting ourselves up in it. For what? People aim their whole life for a state of existence that they never realize and at best is brief and then gone. The Bible is not kidding when it says that our life is like a vapour that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth. You know all that deception that you are in right now is going to vanish one day, and all you’ll be left with is the consequence of your sin. Just because you choose a pretend world doesn’t make it real.

And then what? Where is your long home? Where are you going. Where are you going right now? Where is your citizenship. Are you already in hell just waiting to go there? You see, for a Christian, if you are saved you are already seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. My conversation is in heaven already. That’s my home. When Judas Iscariot killed himself the Bible says he went to his place. Hell was his place. That’s where he belonged. Live this life with the long home in mind. That’ll provide perspective. No wonder the Bible says in that same book that it’s better to go to the house of mourning then the house of feasting. The house of mourning will be better for you. Job was better for what he went through though it was absolutely horrible. Those trials and tribulations and absolute injustices in life, you may just end up looking back on them with the greatest gratitude to your loving tender Saviour.

You’re making your eternal home in this short life here and now. That long home is so terrible for the unbeliever. But that long home is where we belong and look forward to and eagerly await as a Christian. Because it’s our better place. See, my best life isn’t now, it’s in the world to come. I have a place in God’s eternal kingdom. The only death that is swallowed up in victory is the death of a child of God. As a Christian, we die knowing that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Jesus has prepared my home for me, just as he promised, a promise that is valid for all believers. Heaven can be your home. But either way, you will have a long home. We are all going somewhere. We are all on a road. Remember what Jesus Christ said. There’s a broad road and a narrow road, but we are all on the road. Can you stop time? No you can’t? Can you prevent yourself from dying? No you can’t. You’re not as independent and in control as you think you are. You’ve been lied to. Your very breath and spirit is in the hand of God. And when you die, your spirit will return to God who gave it. And Proverbs says the Lord weigheth the spirits. When your spirit is put in the perfectly just balance of the most High, how will you weigh up?

Here’s the verse, Proverbs 16:2 – “All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; but the Lord weigheth the spirits.” See, you think you’re pretty good, you think you’re ok, and in your own eyes, your matters and causes are just and right. But God’s gonna put your life on the scales. And I can promise you in accordance with the Holy Bible that in those balances, none of us will weigh up. Belshazzar was weighed in the balances and found wanting. And he went to his long home that very night. When he started his party, oh life’s a party, that night he didn’t think that that very night his soul was going to be required of him. No wonder Jesus said, thou fool in that story about the rich man filling his barns. Planning his big expansion for his business and he’s going to die that very night. The day of the Lord cometh as a thief in the night. It did to him, it did to those in Noah’s day, it did to Sodom and Gomorrah… will he come on you as a thief. And your entire life will be broken up and you weren’t ready. But if you’re saved, you are of the day, you’re in the light, and his day does not come upon you as a thief. No we look forward to a blessed hope and the glorious appearing of our Lord and Saviour whom we will be forever with.

So today, where is your long home? Is the lake of fire your long home? Is that’s what’s at the end of your road? Are you preparing a life who’s destination ends there? Don’t fool yourself, don’t be so willingly deceived. The Bible says if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly appear. If the blood of Jesus Christ scarcely saves the believer, what hope the person that is living in sin and rebellion towards God? Thinking about the fact that you will go to your long home one day, that will provide perspective in a life that could get lost on everything that does no matter.

God is a good God. He knows what’s best for you more than you know what’s best for you. As God said to David, I took you from a sheepcote, I gave you everything, why’d you have to go and take the only thing that you were not allowed to take. Why are we such nasty, rotten, ungrateful, untrusting sinners? Why can’t we just ask and let God provide what he wants for us and knows is best for us. God is a faithful Creator, you are not losing to give your youth to him. Give your best to him, give those things that you hold back from him because they’re so dear to you to him. Abraham gave his Isaac, and you give your best to him, and it will come back to you. Just as the Bible says in that same book again. Ecclesiastes 11:1 – “Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.” Give your life to God, not just in word, but in deed and in truth. God’s not fooled or mocked, he knows the truth about you. Man goeth to his long home, where are you going when you die, is your long home in heaven or hell?

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