Sermon Tone Analysis

I want to begin this morning by asking you a question…have you ever heard these phrases before...

“Where did the time go?” “There aren’t enough hours in the day.”

“I’ve got to make the most of my time.”

For some, most likely those in adulthood, time moves way too fast.

The moment you begin to figure out and enjoy one season, you are on to the next one.

Time will not slow down for you to enjoy anything.

Each year passes more quickly than the last.

For others, most likely the young, you are frustrated by the slowness of time.

You cannot wait for more freedom, for your driver’s license, to be done with school, or to be out on your own.

Time is the tyrant that frustrates all of us, isn’t it?

As we’ve been walking through this book, we are discovering that Solomon is struggling to make sense of his life on earth.

He has pursued everything his heart desired and has come up empty every time.

He is describing his journey to discover the Meaning of Life…to find some sort of individual significance to his being on this earth…to find something he could point to and say there it is…this is what I’m here for, this is what satisfies my soul...

The problem was, Solomon was looking in all the wrong places…he uses the same phrase over and over “under the sun”…meaning on this earth, in this life right now…

Time and time again, he concludes “this too is futile and chasing after the wind”.

So within his heart is a colossal struggle to find answers to the question “why am I here”… what am I supposed to do?

If we are going to be honest here this morning, that is a question that every one wrestles with at some point in time…perhaps you are wrestling with that right now…and within your own heart there is uncertainty.

And I commend you for being here this morning, because in some small part or perhaps on a larger scale you believe there is a direct link of finding purpose in life to your relationship with God.

You and I may not know what is going on inside the person sitting next to us, but we do know that God, who made us, knows exactly where we are, what we’re thinking, how we’re feeling, and how we are trying to make sense of life as it is presented to us.

Where we are in this text this morning, we see the discussion shift slightly…Solomon has been raging on and on about the futility and vanity of human existence under the sun…while on earth.

He has told us over and over again, that the things we do in this life are empty, meaningless.

There is nothing in this world to truly distract us from the harsh realities of life.

Pleasure doesn’t satisfy human longings...

Wisdom provides more pain...

Wealth gets left to the person who comes after you...

Everything we chase after is futile…like trying to catch the air.

All along, Solomon is trying to expose the foolishness of a life lived without God....he wants to push us to enjoy God and His gifts.

We got a small glimpse of that last week at the end of chapter 2…Read Eccl 2:24-26.

The meaningful life is a life that is satisfied in God…unless Jesus is the Lord of your life, you will continue to struggle in your search for something meaningful!

Solomon now shifts our focus for a bit by writing a poem about time!

You would have thought he would say something discouraging about time…like we never have enough of it to do all we want to do!

He could have said that time is a vicious tyrant that seems to control every millisecond of our lives.

He could have said that time was fleeting, we are running out of time and once it is gone it can never be recovered.

He did none of that!

Instead, Solomon introduces us to the concept of God’s sovereignty over life by writing a poem about time.

What we are going to examine this morning is really part of the larger context of chapter 3…we are only going to examine up to verse 10 this morning and then we will look at verses 11-15 next week.

Look for just a moment at verse 11…Eccl 3:11 “He has made everything appropriate in its time.

He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end.”

So verse 1 is the summary statement of chapter 3 and our main point flows out of the entirety of chapter 3…it is this...

Read Eccles 3:1 “There is an appointed time for everything.

And there is a time for every event under heaven—”

Main Point: Walk by Faith, Trusting in God’s Sovereignty.

This theme will carry over into next week’s text as well..

Some have looked at this poem and wrongly conclude it is almost totally pessimistic…that Solomon is being fatalistic…there is a time for this and a time for that and there is nothing man can do about it.

I would say that most of those critics struggle with the doctrine of God’s sovereignty.

Rather than finding encouragement in his governance of time and his determination of human events, they see God as arbitrary and random.

Look back at how Solomon concluded the previous section…he declares that we find enjoyment when our perspective is focused on God and that life is a gift from Him.

Verse 11 indicates that Solomon came to appreciate the sovereignty of God over time and eternity…Through his God-given wisdom, he has gained some insight into life and he wants to share that with his audience.

Read Eccl 3:1-10.

Let’s look at the insights Solomon gained...

God Determines The Purpose and Meaning of the Events of Life (1)

Eccl 3:1 “There is an appointed time for everything.

And there is a time for every event under heaven—”

If we are going to have a biblical understanding of time and events, then we must begin with the sovereignty of God.

Although God is not mentioned in these first eight verses, He is in the text that follows.

Notice how Solomon shifts the focus a little…he now says here “under the heaven” instead of “under the sun”.... he is still talking about life on earth, but now he takes a little different perspective…there is a recognition of the God of heaven superintending the events under heaven.

Everything that happens in this time bound universe is under the authority of the God who rules in Heaven.

God is sovereign over time and all the events that happen in time.

God is not surprised by anything that happens in the course of history…as chaotic as this world is right now, God is still in control of all things…

and the chaos we see now is just a speck on the chaos meter of what will come in God’s program of Eschatology…the Bible describes the most chaotic point of human history that is yet to come as the Tribulation and Great Tribulation, and at no point of that does God ever lose control!

The scope of God’s sovereignty is further emphasized in Solomon’s poem.

Verses 2-8 are a poem with a parallel series of related opposites…he employs a literary device known as a merism.

Merism = a figure of speech in which two polarities make up a whole.

Examples…in Genesis 1:1 we read that God created “the heavens and the earth”… we understand that means God created the entire universe.

Similarly, each of the pairs in this text make up a larger whole…together birth and death comprise the whole of human existence…weeping and laughing summarize the full range of human emotion, and so on...

There is something comprehensive about each pair.

There is also something comprehensive about the list as a whole.

There are 14 pairs in all..which is 2x the biblical number of perfection and completion...

The pairs seem to take in the whole sweep of human experience…from birth to death, from war to peace…and everything in between.

See God is the King of time therefore, He is the one who regulates our minutes and our seconds…he rules our moments and all our days...

There is nothing in our life that catches God off guard…God is always on time with what he does…Toby Mac has a song in which he declares “He is never early, never late”…God is sovereign over time as well as eternity.

God is Orderly in Everything He does.

God is a precise God…He puts everything in its own time and place…

we see this in creation…everything was put in place in a very specific order....think about it…God did not create the fish before he created the water…he did not create the birds without giving them a place to fly....there was an orderliness to his plan.

God created the seasons…think about the natural progression of the seasons....

what if fall came before summer and spring came before winter…if fall came before summer, the shade trees would have no leaves to protect you from the summer sun…if winter came after spring, all the newly formed flowers and newly birthed animals would freeze...

In Ecclesiastes 3 we see that same sovereign control and order applied to human activities and relationships…for everything there is a season…not just the four seasons, but for everything that happens under heaven.

Solomon uses that term in the sense of a fixed time, a predetermined purpose.

The Greek Translation of the OT uses the term kairos (time is viewed as an opportunity) rather than chronos (time considered as duration) meaning that in God’s economy there is a suitable occasion or appropriate opportunity for everything that happens.

Solomon is not being fatalistic here by saying God is arbitrary and there is nothing we can do about what happens.

His point is there is reason for what happens.

This is where our faith kicks in and trusts that God knows what He is doing.

We often want to know why things happen believing we are entitled to know them…but we have to come to grips with the truth that there are certain things that God does or allows to happen that we will never know thy why’s and what for’s…

Deuteronomy 29:29 (NASB95)

“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law.

Instead of clamoring for an explanation, we must allow our knowledge of God to take our thoughts captive, and we trust Him because we know that God is good all the time.

We believe that whatever He is doing is being done at the right time and with His eternal purpose.

God is Sovereign In Every Routine Cycle of Life (2-8)

What we have in verses 2-8 is a poem that describes the routine cycles of life…Read Eccles 3:2-8.

For those of you who can actually remember the 60’s, the group Byrds made this poem famous…to everything there is a purpose, turn, turn, turn.

Birth & Death

These are the two most momentous experiences in life…both of which God completely controls…none of us are in control of when we arrive or when we depart.

Ps 139:13 “For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb.”

Job 14:5-6 ““Since his days are determined, The number of his months is with You; And his limits You have set so that he cannot pass.

“Turn Your gaze from him that he may rest, Until he fulfills his day like a hired man.”

As much as we want to think we are in control of our time, we actually are not…regardless of how organized your daily calendar may be, it better be in pencil because God ultimately controls your schedule.

That really creates a problem for those who like to think they are in control of everything…all of us are like that, and we know it because how do we react when God changes our time table!

All of us exist under God’s authority…God gives life and death is that enemy that reminds of sin’s curse.

Planting & Harvesting

We really have no control over planting and harvesting do we…we simply respond to the time of year we are in and act accordingly..