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A Time for Everything | Ecclesiastes 3:1-15 (9-17-2023 Mark Evans)
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The sermon is based on the book of Ecclesiastes and focuses on the idea that wisdom is not just about doing the right thing, but doing it at the right time. The speaker discusses how everything in life has its own season and timing, and that it is important for humans to align themselves with God's established rhythms. The sermon explores various examples of actions and emotions that have their own appropriate time, such as birth and death, planting and plucking, love and hate, and laughing and mourning. The speaker emphasizes the need for faith and trust in God's timing, even when it doesn't align with our own. Well, if you have your Bible, do make your way to the book of Ecclesiastes as we continue our sermon series through this wonderful book, and this morning we find ourselves in chapter 3. We'll be covering the first 15 verses of chapter 3, and to get us going, I'll read the first eight verses of Ecclesiastes 3. And these are the words of the God who is the great Ancient of Days. For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven, a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to break down and a time to build up, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to seek and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to cast away, a time to tear and a time to sew, a time to keep silence and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. While the grass withers and the flower fades, let us pray. Heavenly Father, we praise you that you are the God who is infinite, who is eternal, who knows no change, and yet here we are living under the sun, under your appointed times, your appointed seasons for all things that happen according to the counsel of your perfect all-wise will. And so we do pray that you would give us hearts that are sanctified, that are meek, full of faith to walk in a manner that is pleasing to you. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Amen, you may be seated. Well, I have found myself amused and humored recently as I've walked into various stores, be it a retail store, grocery store, even hardware stores, and the occasion for my humor has been to witness that Christmas apparel is already being put out on display. And I can't help chuckle at such displays because my first thought is that just a few days ago the thermometer was registering 105 degrees, and yet right in front of me this storefront has a snowman out on display. And I chuckle because the whole thing seems misaligned with the seasons and disoriented in terms of its timing. I think this humorous episode reveals the deeper truth, that much of wisdom is not simply doing the right thing, but it's doing the right thing at the right time. You can do the right thing, but if you do it at the wrong time, then the right thing becomes the wrong thing, simply because your timing is off. Proverbs 27 has a great example of this, when the proverb says that if you bless early in the morning, it's a loud voice, that's actually a curse. If you don't believe me, just try and experiment. Wake up at 430 in the morning and walk through your house and into each bedroom and shout out blessings as loud as you can. Belt out, may God bless you. And see if your blessings don't feel more like a curse, simply because your timing is off. And so Proverbs commends not just a word, but a word fitly spoken. A word in season, the right word at the right time. Surely you've said something before that was formerly true, and when you look back on it you realize that was poor timing on my part. And of course, while we grapple and struggle over this wisdom, it is not so for our great God, that our great God is the all-wise God. And that means that everything comes to pass according to His perfect wisdom. Simply put, everything is right on time. Every tick of the clock, every turning of the season, whether sickness or health, cycles of wealth and poverty, the first breath of a newborn to the last breath of a long life. All of it perfectly orchestrated according to God's wisdom. And it's this truth that Ecclesiastes is going to have us consider this morning, that our God has appointed a season for everything under the sun. And what that means for you and I is that we're to respond with a faith, a deep, deep trust in God and in God's timing. I think most of us would say, oh yes, I certainly trust in God, but it's when God's timing doesn't sync up with my timing that faith begins to become an issue. And so, Ecclesiastes is going to show us today the fear of the Lord that rests solely in the sovereignty of God in His seasons over our lives. And so, we're going to walk through this portion in two very simple parts. We'll just look at God's rhythms and secondly, we'll look at God's timing. It's a very simple point, that man is to fear God. And so, let's look at God's rhythms from this very famous poem of Solomon's. This one immediately launches us into this truth by saying, a quote, there's a time to be born and a time to die. One of our children was actually born on the very first day of the year, New Year's Day. She was the first baby born in the hospital for the year. And it was somewhat amusing because the hospital gave my wife and I what was basically an award and congratulated us on this fine achievement as though we had anything to do with it. Of course, you see, verse 1 immediately humbles us that our very inception is sovereignly determined just as our ultimate disappearance is sovereignly determined. It is as the psalmist says, all the days that were ordained for me were written in your book before even one of them had come to pass. Every person is immortal until God's appointed day of death. As God says in Deuteronomy, I kill and I make alive. And so, what Solomon is doing in this poem is bringing us into and under God's rhythms. So far, we've heard Solomon speak at length about vanity, all is vain, and I might give off the impression that there's no real rhyme or reason to the ebb and flow of life under the sun. Now, that may be from your limited perspective, but that is certainly not true in a greater sense, because Solomon is now drawing our attention to the rhythms of creation that our God superintends. You might remember when God covenanted with Noah, God decreed that there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night. And these cadences of creation are upheld by God's covenant promise. And so, Solomon is now waxing poetically on that very truth and how you and I are to live in God's established rhythms of birth and death, planting and plucking, keeping and casting. And I think as we dive into it, you'll see it's probably not as easy as it might seem at first. I know I've occasionally toyed around with various instruments, maybe a guitar, maybe a piano. And one of the things that's immediately obvious, picking up an instrument, is that the ability to keep rhythm, or more so, to come under the rhythm that the music demands, is vital to playing well. And Solomon says that's all the more true when it comes to living life under the sun, that the Christian is to come under God's symphony of sovereignty, to know in his heart that God has a time for everything, because you can probably read through this poem and notice the subtle, or maybe not so subtle, ways that the world and the pride of man rails and recoils against God's times. For instance, an easy example would be pacifism. Unfortunately, even well-meaning Christians say that we ought never to kill, there's never a just reason for war or for fighting, that all violence, without exception, is condemned. We see verse 8 says, no, there is a time for war, or as verse 3 says, there is a time to kill. Or you can hear the world's rebellion to God's wisdom and its mindless mantra of love, common expressions like, love is love, love wins, having saw the NFL plastered on their helmets, the words, choose love. They may have seen the reverse idea in yard signs as you drive about neighborhoods that has a yard sign proudly displaying the words, hate has no home here. It's quite popular to find this kind of thoughtless dualism, that love is always good, hatred is always bad. But you see verse 8, God's wisdom, is that no, there is a time to love and there's a time to hate. Scripture does not simply suggest hatred, but actually commands of us a righteous hatred in imitation of our God. You could simply say that because God is love, He therefore hates all that is unrighteous. As Proverbs says, there are seven things that the Lord hates, and so you and I as His creatures are to go and do likewise. We're to hate evil, we're to hate any false way that would be in us, we're to hate anything that would rival the Lordship of Jesus Christ. However, the point of the poem is, can we do that at the right season and at the right time? Right? If we're always seething and boiling with hatred, Solomon says, ah, your timing is off, you're misaligned. Or if we love all things without discretion, without discernment, Solomon says, no, your timing is off, you are misaligned. Now that said, maybe to poke a little fun at Presbyterians, we tend to do a better job at being sour and dour, right? If you need someone to frown and to furrow their brow, be very self-serious and tightly wound, just find yourself a Presbyterian. But Solomon would have us know, no, there's also a time for levity. You see it in verse 4. He says, yes, there's a time to weep, as Paul says, we should weep with those who are weeping. But notice he also says, there's a time when you should be found laughing. It is no mark of godliness to be so serious that you can't bring yourself to laugh. And once again, we ought to laugh because our God laughs. God has a sense of humor. Scripture has many instances of God laughing. Now, for instance, God sits in the heavens and He laughs as He looks down at the nations trying to overthrow His plans. To Him, this is about as funny as a lump of clay declaring war against the potter. If you don't think God has a sense of humor, just visit the zoo, right? Go look at the aardvark or the octopus. Go look at the hippo and you'll see God has a sense of humor. Yet, we bounce back in the other direction in verse 4. It continues and says, there is a time also to mourn and to grieve. Do you know how to grieve and how to mourn? It is a lost art in our day. But of course, it's proper to grieve over sin, over tragic loss, certainly over death itself. You've probably noticed in the modern day that funerals are on the decline and in its place come celebrations of life. But Solomon will later say it's better to be in the house of mourning. I think that we're not so great at grieving is perhaps why we also know so little of verse 4 when it says, there's also a time to dance. I remember once the great Sinclair Ferguson, and if you don't know who that is, just imagine a very proper Scottish theologian. Dr. Ferguson told us students once in class that when he first became a Christian and it dawned on him that he was in Jesus Christ, all his sins were forgiven. He was washed, cleansed. He was walking down the street, he turned the corner, he made sure no one was looking and he did a little dance. He did a little jig. That is the right response at the right time for the right reason, isn't it? You might remember how David danced before the Lord with all his might, rejoicing that the ark of the Lord had come home. And there again, you see the world's opposition to this joy that his own wife, Michal, despised it. She found it unsuitable, undignified for a king to put in on this display of dancing. And for her, this was not the right time. And of course, David said, I'm just getting warmed up. You see, too, there's even a time for destruction in God's economy. As verse 3 says, there is a time to tear down. You need only think of Christ cleansing the temple when He declared that it is time for this temple to be destroyed and come down to the ground because it was also time for a new temple to be built up. I remember for myself, there was a time when our company that took decades and decades to build was seemingly torn down in just a matter of a few months. I'm sure you have a similar thought. And we're right to ask the question, where does one turn to to make sense of such things? Well, one turns to Ecclesiastes. And the one thing, the one word that all of these couplets in verse 8 have in common is that word time. There is a time appointed for each one of these things. As verse 1 says, there's a season for everything. And Christian, I hope you see what an immense encouragement that is for the Christian life. That when you are sad and grieving, we sometimes ask, when will this pass? When we are laughing and on a high, we whisper to ourselves, it's too bad, this will pass. Why can't life always be this way? Why is this so short-lived? Kids, when you are working, you probably say, ah, when is the time to be plain? But you see, the subtext of this entire section is the providence of our God, that our God governs every season, every sunrise and every sunset, every tear, every laugh, every great war, every peace treaty. He presides over the formation of every new friendship. He presides over the goodbyes of those very same friendships. He governs all of it right down to your last fleeting breath. And so what that means is that there's not one single season of your life that you could point to and say, there is no place for this. No, there's a season for everything. And so what is ours to do is two things. Firstly, to rest in and trust God's providence over the seasons of our lives, that in that dark period of mourning or in a light season of laughing, the Christian can honestly say everything is right on schedule. Everything is right on time. And you are so often angered, discouraged, even trapped in unbelief when our timing does not match God's timing. But as the Heidelberg Catechism says, the Christian knows that he is so completely in God's hand, has such a firm confidence that he cannot so much as move apart from God's will. And so that means, practically speaking, whatever it is, it is in season. Right? If life is crazy busy and you're running from this practice to that recital, this sport to that rehearsal. Meanwhile, it seems like clowns have taken over the housekeeping and those dirty dishes just keep on piling up. There's a season for that. And Ecclesiastes says, embrace it. And so, too, if the season has turned a page, the days are longer. It seems that there's time, ample time on your hands. Ecclesiastes says there's a season for that and embrace it. Particularly so, with a season of suffering and hardship and mourning, Ecclesiastes says here is the wisdom to trust that our God has His times of tearing down and of building back up. Secondly, none of what we said, none of what we covered would remove or lessen our responsibility. In fact, it's just the reverse. It calls for our alignment to these rhythms. Each season has its purpose, and so we need the wisdom to live rightly, the wisdom to make the best use of the time. And we've seen that means the right thing at the right time for the right reason. It's as simple as if we spoke and we should have been silent, then we're off. Or if we kept silent when we should have said something, then once again we are off. And so the Christian is to seek after this wisdom, to walk in a manner pleasing to the Lord in every season. You can recall those strong words of Jesus in Luke chapter 12 to the crowds when He said to them, you hypocrites, you know how to read the seasons, you know how to read the skies, you know when it's about to rain, and yet you cannot read this present season when the Messiah is standing right here before you. They did not have the wisdom that was from above. And so there's the word on God's rhythms. Let us look now at God's timing. As Solomon returns us to really what is the seminal question of the book as a whole. If you forgot verse 9, it brings us back to the burden of the preacher, a question you surely know by now. You see it there. What gain does the worker have from all his toil? What does it all amount to in the end? Stack it all up and weigh it out. What are we left with? And so far Solomon has masterfully demonstrated the vanity of it all. We saw last week, for instance, the pursuit of pleasure for the sake of pleasure does not deliver. Man is left unsatisfied. And now, it's as if Solomon says, okay, out with man's strivings, let's look now at God's work. Namely, in two areas. God's work of beauty and His work of eternity. Firstly, beauty. This wonderful verse you see in verse 11, that our God makes everything beautiful in its time. Beauty is more related to the first section than you might think. Because the great thinkers tend to agree that beauty has a kind of fittingness, a kind of right proportion to it that makes it pleasing and delightful. Beauty is often the right thing done in the right proportion. So to give you a very, very simple example, you probably combed your hair this morning. My apologies to our bald brethren for this analogy. But think of this, when you comb your hair, you are arranging it, right? You're setting your hair to have a certain proportion, a certain look, a distinct fittingness that you believe looks the best and the most beautiful. You brought your hair from disorder to order, from bedhead to what is on your head now. That's a very small example of making something beautiful. And you can see how on a greater level, this is what an artist does on a blank canvas. This is what a novelist does when crafting a story. This is what a builder does, taking raw stones and shaping a beautiful building. And of course, on the greatest, on the grandest level of all, this is what our God does. Our God has made everything beautiful. He did it in that creation, right? When all was formless and void, God shaped it to be that which was good and beautiful. Even when God made the plants in Genesis 2, the text specifically says that God made the trees, quote, pleasant to the sight. God could have made ugly trees. He could have made boring trees, but that's not His character, right? God specifically made beautiful trees for man to enjoy. This is what our God does. He makes everything beautiful. Yeah, that's not quite what verse 11 says entirely, because you see, the full verse says God has made everything beautiful in its time. This beauty takes time. For things to be formed and fashioned into the beautiful will take time. And once again, just imagine you're watching an artist paint on a canvas. That paint is going to go over a progression, beginning, middle, to end. There might even be times when you're looking on at the canvas and you're thinking to yourself, I don't quite see where this is going. In fact, this kind of looks ugly. I don't see how this is going to turn out. And it may not be until those final brush strokes that you step back and you see, okay, yes, now I see it in all of its beauty. And that is what our God is doing in all of creation, in all of history, in every season. And that is what God does in the lives of his people. That means, no doubt, there will be moments when you say, I don't see how anything beautiful could come out of this. I don't see how any beauty could come out of this tragedy, this loss, this heartache, this death. But God makes everything beautiful in its time. And nowhere is that truth clearer than in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. That our Lord was born into the lowliest of estates, that he was born into the squalor of a manger, that as Isaiah says, there was no form, no beauty that man should look upon him. That he came to his own, his own rejected him, that as he told his disciples, I must be betrayed, crucified, and given into the hands of lawless men. And his disciples encouraged him, no, don't do that. And Christ said, no, my path is toward the cross. And at just the right time, in the fullness of time, he set his face to Jerusalem. And there on Calvary, indeed, was the greatest ugliness of them all. By the hands of lawless men, he's delivered over for your sins, for my sins, for your transgressions, my transgressions, mocked, beaten, spit upon, crucified, dying the shameful death of a condemned sinner, crying out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And I'm sure in those two days following the crucifixion, if you found a disciple, if you found anyone and asked them, was there anything beautiful about this crucified Christ that you speak of? Is there any beauty in this story, any beauty in this bloody crucifixion? I'm sure they would have looked at you as though you didn't know what the word beauty meant. But just give it one more day, one more day, that on that third day, that same crucified Christ raised up, vindicated, glorified, and exalted with the name above every name. And so you see what was the foulest, the ugliest thing ever, God in time made it the most beautiful thing of all. And friends, you must see, he does the very same thing in the lives of his people and your life. What is the New Testament version of this, but that creation is groaning and that our God is working all things for good. Your story, warts and all, pains and all, sins and all, all of it coming to a head in a glorification that will rightly be called beautiful. Secondly, not just beauty, but you see also God's work of eternity. Verse 11, Ecclesiastes says that God has put eternity into the heart of man. I hope you've seen so far how Ecclesiastes would be of great use in evangelism. Because no doubt, in the course of your life, every week, you are rubbing up against someone who is rubbing up against vanity. Perhaps they feel it in the toil, the vexation of their work day. Perhaps it shows up in the futility of their relationships. Perhaps you can spot it in their endless pursuit of pleasure that never satisfies. And of course, it's our task to pull on that thread, right, to show them that they are chasing a shadow. They are striving after the wind. And this verse puts in context that deep down, what they're really longing for is eternity. That man has this irrepressible desire for eternity. Calvin called it the sensus divinitatis, simply meaning we come out of the womb with a knowledge of God. C.S. Lewis described it as longing to hear the news from a country that we've never visited. Romans 1, that we read earlier, simply said that deep down, man knows God. Even the most hardened atheist cannot fully escape the knowledge of God imprinted upon him. And the most he can do is exchange it for a lie and chase after vanity. And so that means that whoever it is you are talking to, you are talking to an image bearer on a quest for eternity and yet trapped in vanity. And you have that good news from the far-off country of the king who saves sinners. Now, that said, eternity in the heart does not mean eternity in the mind. In fact, it's just the opposite. Verse 11 continues on and it shows us man's limit. God has put eternity into man's heart, yet man cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. In other words, man does not have a God's eye view to see what God is doing, right? Man has no perched position to peer into exactly how God will make all things beautiful. As under the sun, God is enthroned above the heavens and His ways are insearchable and we cannot find them out. But don't cry just yet. And once again, Solomon does not land us in the jail of despair. Ecclesiastes does next what Ecclesiastes does best, and that is a hard pivot towards an unexpected joy. You see, verses 12 and 13 say that because of man's limitations, not despite them, but because man is just this time-bound creature, therefore, there's nothing better than to be joyful. Do good. Eat and drink. Take pleasure. This is the gift of God. God opens His palms and says, enjoy your daily bread. And our reaction should be, of course, this is what we're created to do, to enjoy God and glorify Him forever. And Ecclesiastes has stripped away every other vain pursuit, and now it says, sit in this low seat. In fact, sit in the lowest seat of all. And from that low seat will actually come great, great joy, and something as simple as your daily eating and daily drinking. For how often we do deceive ourselves, isn't it true? We tell ourselves that the more and more that we are in control, the happier we will be. And to see the true joy rests in the sovereignty of God. Just think of how the Lord Jesus said this in His great parable when He said, consider the lilies of the field. Your Father is clothing them. His sovereignty is numbering the hairs on your head, even the feeding of the birds. Do you really think your Father would not feed you? Are you not of more value than the birds? You hear what He's saying. Your Father is sovereign. You are not. God is your Father. You are the child. And knowing that equation by faith produces joy. And by contrast, you know those words of Christ when He says, that anxiety of yours. What fruit has that anxiety produced? Anxiety, of course, is just a shorthand word to say a distrust in God's sovereignty. And so His question, all the anxiety in the world, has it added a single hour to your life? And see, Solomon says the very same thing in verse 14. Whatever God does endures forever. Nothing can be added to it. Nothing can be taken from it. God has done it. And just notice His conclusion from that truth. So that people fear before Him. God's sovereignty, man's fear. Our God sits in the heavens and He does as He pleases. At no point are we adding to or subtracting from the perfect counsel of God. And so the only right response of man to that is the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord that is the beginning of wisdom. The fear of the Lord that is the fountain of joy. It is fear alone that realizes our work actually matters because God's work endures forever. Just as R.C. Sproul famously said, that right now counts for eternity. Indeed, under the sun our work may seem trivial. But because God's work endures, everything has meaning. It says the Lord Jesus said, even giving the cup of cold water, something as simple as that, if done in my name, that work endures forever. And friends, it even applies to the things that seem to be lost and gone forever. Not so in God's economy. You see verse 15 says that our God, quote, seeks what has been driven away. It's this imagery of the wind carrying something off, blowing it away, seemingly gone for good. That being driven away is going to be all too true of Israel herself. You know how that story goes, that Israel is driven away. Driven out of her promised land. Driven off by her enemies and into exile. She is scattered. She is dispersed. Seemingly lost. And yet our Lord spoke these words through the prophet Micah, I will gather those who have been driven away. This is what our God does. He seeks out and redeems that which was driven away. I trust this morning you have friends, maybe even family members, who have driven, who have drifted away. I trust some of you even have past abuses, sins, hurts, heartaches that seem irredeemable from your point of view. You may even have years, maybe even decades of a marriage or a hard family life that from your point of view it seems driven away, lost for good. You need to hear what our sovereign God does. He's the God who seeks after that which was driven away. As the prophet Joel says, he restores the years that the locusts have eaten. Even as our Lord Jesus said, behold, I am making all things new. So friends, what is ours to do? It's very simple. It's to walk in the fear of the Lord and trust that our great God is the God who has made and shall make everything beautiful in its time. He has already done so in raising up the Lord Jesus Christ. Let us pray. Our gracious God, our heavenly Father, we praise You for who is like You. The God who has made everything beautiful in its time. The God who sets eternity into the heart of man. The God who sits enthroned above the cherubim. And here we are under the sun. We praise You for what this means for us, that this means nothing less than joy. That You have given us the gift of joy, that we might be satisfied in You and make much of You in big things and in things as small as eating and drinking, that all of it done to the glory of our great God. And so we pray for the wisdom to do likewise, in Jesus' name, amen.
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