A Time for Everything - Ecclesiastes 3:1-15

A Time for Everything

Ecclesiastes 3:1-15

©May 10, 2020 by Rev. Bruce Goettsche

Chuck Swindoll poses this scenario: suppose you were told you would be given 86,400 pennies a day ($864.00) but you would have to spend it all each day or lose it. That would be

$6000.00 a week, $315,000 a year. Could you spend that money wisely?

Imagine another scenario. You are given 86,400 seconds or 1440 minutes a day. Whatever you don't use, you can never get back. Will you spend that wisely?

It is hard to define time because it is impossible to define life without it. This morning we see Solomon reflect on time in certainly the most famous passage in the book of Ecclesiastes. Some of its fame came from the song "Turn, Turn, Turn" by the Byrd's which takes its lyrics entirely from this passage.

Let's look at the passage again.

1For everything there is a season,

a time for every activity under heaven.

2A time to be born and a time to die.

A time to plant and a time to harvest.

3A time to kill and a time to heal.

A time to tear down and a time to build up.

4A time to cry and a time to laugh.

A time to grieve and a time to dance.

5A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones.

A time to embrace and a time to turn away.

6A time to search and a time to quit searching.

A time to keep and a time to throw away.

7A time to tear and a time to mend.

A time to be quiet and a time to speak.

8A time to love and a time to hate.

A time for war and a time for peace.

This is a poem that is written so that every line contains opposites. The poem itself is not hard to understand. Life consists of all of these things at various times. The question is, "What is Solomon trying to teach us?"

He answers that question in the next several verses

9What do people really get for all their hard work? 10I have seen the burden God has placed on us all. 11Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.

As Solomon looks at life, he sees the drudgery and burden of life. When I take the train back home after being in Chicago, I get on in Naperville. It is the end of the evening rush hour. We watch as the Metra trains shuttle people home from downtown Chicago. Crowds depart the trains as a herd people each carrying the burden of living life. They race to see who gets on the bus first or gets out of the lot ahead of others. Each time I think, "I am so grateful that this is not my life."

At times we all feel like we are on a treadmill that is getting us nowhere. These observations of Solomon could have been made by anyone; even an atheist. However, I believe Solomon takes us in the next verses from under the sun to living life as a child of God.

Life is Not As Arbitrary as it Seems (9-11)

Life seems arbitrary. Why do some people seem to carry such a heavy weight while others seem to breeze along? Why does disease kill one person, and another gets well? Why does one person walk away from a car accident while another dies? Life doesn't seem to make any sense.

What Solomon says next is a gem we need to hang on to. "He has made everything beautiful for its own time and has planted eternity in our hearts."

The Bible tells us that God is purposefully involved in our lives. The Apostle Paul tells us God is working to conform us to the image of Christ. God takes the good and bad of life and uses these things to accomplish his purpose. I'm not saying God sends the bad things. Ever since Adam and Eve chose to rebel against God in the Garden of Eden, we have been experiencing the effects of sin in our lives. Bad things happen because we live in a sin-stained world. Until God redeems the world fully, bad things will continue to happen.

However, Solomon recognized, even before the coming of Christ, that God works through the bad things to accomplish His purposes. Think about a carpenter who is able to take scraps of wood and create something beautiful. Or an artist who is able to transform chards of glass into a stunning stained-glass window. Or maybe a chef who takes whatever ingredients are given to them to make something wonderfully delightful. That is what God does. He makes all things beautiful in their time. God does not waste what life gives us.

Solomon also tells us that God plants eternity in our hearts. In other words, as we saw last week, God gives us glimpses of the world that is beyond our own; There are enough good things in the world that we know there is something better out there. There are times when we experience a joy that seems other-worldly. It may be the joy of holding a newborn child, the exhilaration of a moment of pure intimacy, a passing glimpse of the presence of God, or the staggering beauty of nature that points to a supreme artist.

But there are other times we see the homeless on the streets, we read of unspeakable crimes, we watch as people starve in foreign lands or watch the devastation of a natural disaster and we find our hearts saying, there must be something more than this.

These moments do not last long, but they are enough to make us yearn for something more. They point to a time when wrongs will be made right, and heartache will be replaced with the joy we have only tasted in this world.

Solomon continues

12So I concluded there is nothing better than to be happy and enjoy ourselves as long as we can. 13And people should eat and drink and enjoy the fruits of their labor, for these are gifts from God.

14And I know that whatever God does is final. Nothing can be added to it or taken from it. God’s purpose is that people should fear him. 15What is happening now has happened before, and what will happen in the future has happened before, because God makes the same things happen over and over again.

As I pointed out last week, some people have taken this verse to advocate what is called fatalism. It is the idea of "whatever will be will be." It is the notion that we are puppets in a play known as life. Events are fixed in advance. They follow a blind pattern and there is nothing we can do about it. Lots of people live with this attitude. It leads to despair and a feeling of indifference to life since there is nothing we can do about it.

I do not believe that is what Solomon is saying. He tells us what God does is final. God is in charge. No matter what the world throws at us, it is not beyond the scope of God’s sovereignty and power. God is never caught off guard. He never wrings His hands fretting about what He is going to do.

Our response to these truths should not be resignation. We should face the hard things of life with the knowledge that life is not arbitrary . . . even though we may not understand what is happening. We maintain a deep fear, or respect for God who is at work in and through all situations.

In the Old Testament, nations were judged when the time was right. Kings were crowned when the time was right. Israel in the desert moved forward when the time was right. When Jesus walked the earth He said many times, "My time has not yet come." Jesus was acutely aware of the fact that God's timing is perfect. It is our job to learn to discern God's timing. This requires a re-wiring of our brain because we feel the best time to do things is when we want to do them. Because of this we sometimes rush ahead of God's timing or we miss opportunities. Learning to seek God's timing is the challenge and the privilege of our lives.

Derek Kidner wrote,

We are like the desperately near-sighted, inching their way along some great tapestry or fresco in the attempt to take it in. We see enough to recognize something of its quality but the grand design escapes us, for we can never stand back far enough to view it as its Creator does, whole and entire, from the beginning to the end. [1]

Lessons

I believe there are life-altering lessons we can learn from this popular text.

Life is filled with Ups and Downs; Good Things and Bad Things. There is an ebb and flow to life. This is simply what it means to be alive. We live in a sin-scarred world and as a result of that, there are effects that are negative.

This is true also for the believer. This is the way life is while we live under-the-sun. For some reason, we don't seem to understand this. After we turn to Christ, when difficult times, painful times, devastating times, come into or lives, we often ask, "What did I do wrong?" "Why has God turned away from me?" Some even walk away from the faith believing they have been ripped off.

Do you see the underlying assumptions behind these feelings? The assumption is that when we come to Christ our problems should disappear. Life is now supposed to be smooth sailing. The problem is . . . that is not a promise God ever made to us. There may be people teaching this, but God did not. The problem-free life comes when we leave this life under the sun and live in new Heaven and new earth that is coming someday. What our Lord does say is,

"I am with you always to the end of the world." (Matthew 28:20)

"Peace, I leave with you; not as the world gives." (John 14:27)

Jesus said, "WHEN they drag you before the court don't worry about what to say." (Matthew 10:19)

He told his disciples, "Don't fear those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul." (Matthew 10:28)

Jesus said "In the world you WILL HAVE tribulation." (John 16:33)

The Apostle Paul said, "All who desire to live a godly life WILL be persecuted. (2 Timothy 3:12)

The idea that the Christian life is only one of blessing and peace may be promoted by some, but it is fake news! It is not what the Bible teaches. What we ARE told is God will never leave us alone to handle the hard times which are a part of life "under the sun."

When we recognize that difficulties are a part of living, we are better prepared to meet them. When we understand that bad things don't just happen to those who are doing something wrong, we will stop judging each other as being worse than someone else simply because they have faced difficulty. We will understand that this is life! And it is in THIS life which ebbs and flows where we learn to trust Him and praise Him.

God is Working in Every Situation to Make us More and More Like Jesus. Our text says, "God makes all things beautiful in His time." Sometimes we mistakenly think "beautiful" and "pleasant" mean the same thing. They do not. We will not see the beauty in all things until we stand before our Father in heaven.

As you look back on your life, I suspect that you, like I, have grown the most through some of the worst situations. We didn't see it then . . . we may have felt defeated at that time. But looking back we see that God grew us greatly through those circumstances if we continued to simply hold on. When we reach the end of our strength we are able to discover just how strong He is. James tells us to consider it joy when we encounter various trials and temptations because the testing of our faith refines us in a number of different ways. Romans 5 tells us the same thing.

Do you remember a few weeks back? We watched a video called the chisel with the Skit Guys. There was a line in that skit that I hope I never forget. Eddie said to Tommy (playing God), "There have been so many times you have let me down." And God's response was, "You can't let me down because you are not holding me up! I am holding you up."

We go through hard things, but God promises that He will always be at our side to help us get through them and to grow because of them.

The best illustration of this is that of a tapestry on a loom. If you look at that tapestry from underneath all you see is snarls and knots. That is what life is like "under the sun" or on this side of eternity. It is only when we see from above that we will be able to discern the stunning work of art that God has been producing in our lives. There is a poem that has unfortunately been attributed to many people so I don't know who to give credit to. But the poem is wonderful and I hope will create an image you can carry with you

My life is but a weaving

Between my God and me.

I cannot choose the colors

He weaveth steadily.

Oft’ times He weaveth sorrow;

And I in foolish pride

Forget He sees the upper

And I the underside.

Not ’til the loom is silent

And the shuttles cease to fly

Will God unroll the canvas

And reveal the reason why.

The dark threads are as needful

In the weaver’s skillful hand

As the threads of gold and silver

In the pattern He has planned

He knows, He loves, He cares;

Nothing this truth can dim.

He gives the very best to those

Who leave the choice to Him.

Finally, our job is to live life joyfully, knowing God is at work. Think about this as a child with their parent. A young child is enjoying the journey. In fact, it is hard to keep them from stopping to look at everything and everybody. They hold the hand of their parent and they know whatever happens the parent is going to take good care of the. It is not a conscious thing . . .they just know. And because they know, they enjoy the journey.

That same child has to trust that the parent knows much more than they do. If the parent yells STOP! That child will usually stop. They don't know what the danger is but they trust the voice of their parent.

David Gibson writes,

Satisfaction lodges in my heart when I accept the boundaries of my creaturely existence and accept the seasons of my life as coming from his good and wise hands. Accepting these things is the gift of God, for, left to our own devices, we accept neither. I often refuse to accept that I am a creature by never expecting to walk through deep valleys but only experience the mountaintops. Am I in a season of sorrow and despair? I often refuse to accept that this has come to me from his fatherly care. It is easy to stop believing that God will bring every single one of my moments into his eternal present and put right what has gone wrong. [Living Life Backwards]

Let's put these three things together. First, when difficulties or failures come my way I do not beat myself up or pull away from Him. I do not assume that I have done something wrong or God is punishing me. I accept the fact (perhaps not immediately) that this is life.

Next, I remind myself that God takes the messes of life and finds a way to use them to help me grow and deepen as His child. He redeems situations just as He redeems people. I accept the fact that there will be things I may never understand in this life, but I know that He does, and someday, when I am before Him in my redeemed state . . . I will also understand.

Knowing these two things I can now savor the good times. I can look at people and simply love them because I know how such love can transform a person. I can more easily get up after I have stumbled, look to the Lord for mercy and grace once again, and then get back at it.

This is what life is like for the believer. Our lives begin and end with God's grace. Once that really sinks in, we can relax and enjoy the journey. There are many beautiful things in this world. We can fret about the problems and the blemishes of life or we can embrace and celebrate the blessing of life God has given to each of us. When we get to that later point, we will be able to say that "Life is Good" and mean it.

[1] Derek Kidner A TIME TO MOURN A TIME TO DANCE p.39