Ecclesiastes 3:1-22
Notes
Transcript
Ecclesiastes 3:1-22
Ecclesiastes 3:1-22
Oh Vanity of Vanities! All is vanity! The word hevel meaning smoke.
That’s what we’ve been learning in Ecclesiastes so far right? What’s this book about? It’s about Solomon’s search for the meaning of life and he’s found what? This world just ain’t worth a darn, right? Nothing he can do satisfies.
We find out that this world repeats itself. What has happened, will happen again. Why? When you’re training someone what do you need to do? You tell them OVER and OVER and OVER and OVER…Run it again…Run it again…There are lessons, for some reason, God wants EVERY GENERATION to experience.
With that knowledge, Solomon found out that there’s “nothing new under the sun.” Solomon found that God recycles, who knew right? Maybe God was a hippie? BUT, there is something new under the sun though, right? What IS new under the sun? US right?
1 To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven: 2 A time to be born, And a time to die; A time to plant, And a time to pluck what is planted; 3 A time to kill, And a time to heal; A time to break down, And a time to build up; 4 A time to weep, And a time to laugh; A time to mourn, And a time to dance; 5 A time to cast away stones, And a time to gather stones; A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing; 6 A time to gain, And a time to lose; A time to keep, And a time to throw away; 7 A time to tear, And a time to sew; A time to keep silence, And a time to speak; 8 A time to love, And a time to hate; A time of war, And a time of peace.
To everything there is a season. What does that mean? Practically? For farmers, what needs to be done in the Spring? You plant. In the summer, you fertilize, in the fall, you harvest, in the winter, what do you do in winter? You complain. You know what I mean, right? What are some seasons of life? Each of those seasons have a purpose, right? Teaching, learning, waiting, preparing...
Franklin Covey, the developer of the DayPlanner, remember those? the little 37 ring binder (you’re welcome Ellen) that helped you organize your life BEFORE our phones helped with that. He wrote a book called “7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” The 1st 2 tenants of his copywritten system are Be Proactive, and Begin With The End In Mind. These are stressed in that calendar. What has Solomon just laid out for us. That God has ordered the events of our life. A time to be born, a time to die, to plant, to harvest, to kill, and to heal, to break down, to build up...
Time to kill, is there ever a time to kill in our modern times? War. Is it ok to kill someone? Ever? It’s objective, right? It’s a matter of evil. Sheep I wouldn’t expect to understand that concept, but the sheep dogs among us, they do. When evil is present, you want someone by you that knows what evil looks like, recognizes it, and acts to protect the innocent. It’s a huge responsibility that has eternal consequences, but yes, there is a time. Most of us will never experience it, but there is also a time to heal.
Ecc 3:8 “8 A time to love, And a time to hate; A time of war, And a time of peace.” Is there a time to hate? What are we to hate? What God hates right? What is that? Sin. How do we show our hatered of sin? Let’s be practical. help me. How do we confront sin? Let’s dialogue for a minute.
9 What profit has the worker from that in which he labors? 10 I have seen the God-given task with which the sons of men are to be occupied. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end. 12 I know that nothing is better for them than to rejoice, and to do good in their lives, 13 and also that every man should eat and drink and enjoy the good of all his labor—it is the gift of God. 14 I know that whatever God does, It shall be forever. Nothing can be added to it, And nothing taken from it. God does it, that men should fear before Him. 15 That which is has already been, And what is to be has already been; And God requires an account of what is past.
God has made EVERYTHING Beautiful in it’s time. Is our calendar God’s calendar? Deut 32:35 “35 Vengeance is Mine, and recompense; Their foot shall slip in due time; For the day of their calamity is at hand, And the things to come hasten upon them.’” Habakkuk 2:3-5 “3 For the vision is yet for an appointed time; But at the end it will speak, and it will not lie. Though it tarries, wait for it; Because it will surely come, It will not tarry. 4 “Behold the proud, His soul is not upright in him; But the just shall live by his faith. 5 “Indeed, because he transgresses by wine, He is a proud man, And he does not stay at home. Because he enlarges his desire as hell, And he is like death, and cannot be satisfied, He gathers to himself all nations And heaps up for himself all peoples.” In Habakkuk’s time, the judgement of Israel had a long time still to come. BUT, God said, it comes.
Frustrating, isn’t it?
He put eternity in our hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end. This means that since birth we’ve had a sense of wonder. A yearning to know more about what’s beyond. We just put a space telescope on the other side of the moon that’s rewriting the “LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE.”
Back in 2014, the Large Hadron Collider in Europe, that’s a big electromagnetic ring that’s 16mi in circumference that fired electrons at each other trying to find the Higgs Boson particle, or what was called the “God Particle.” The main building block of atoms. During a few of these experiments scientists captured particles traveling faster than the speed of light. Scientists wrote it off as an error.
Do you know what i think when I hear stuff like this? The old addage, could God make a rock so big he can’t lift it? The answer is NO, he wouldn’t do that because it’s against his nature. However, we’ve seen over and over again thruout scripture that God likes to show off…and His laws aren’t always OUR laws. So, I ask you…could God break the laws of physics to prove the Universe He made is so much more incredible than we thought it could be? I think God begs the question…Are those YOUR laws, or MY laws I’m breaking? We long to understand, the answers are here. People need to know we are searching too.
Ecc 3:14-15 “14 I know that whatever God does, It shall be forever. Nothing can be added to it, And nothing taken from it. God does it, that men should fear before Him. 15 That which is has already been, And what is to be has already been; And God requires an account of what is past.” What God does shall be forever, and every generation he calls us back. Run it again. Learn from your mistakes, learn from THEIR mistakes. Failure and boredom are GOOD THINGS. USE THEM. Rejoice and do good. Give credit to God in all things. If people disagree, ASK THEM WHY and listen to their answer.
16 Moreover I saw under the sun: In the place of judgment, Wickedness was there; And in the place of righteousness, Iniquity was there. 17 I said in my heart, “God shall judge the righteous and the wicked, For there is a time there for every purpose and for every work.”
Vengeance is who’s? Deut 32:35 again right? But we see it today all over. Anyone walking into a courtroom should expect justice. Right should be aquitted, and wrong should be punished. Technicalities prove the “practice” of law. That’s why it’s called a “practice” because if the steps aren’t followed, the case gets lost by the one who doesn’t follow the rules, no matter how egregious the crime or how apparent the guilt is. Now, states are lowering the bar, literally, by reducing the criteria needed to pass the bar in states like New York to be more inclusive…which will further lead us to lawlessness.
Politics is brutal with judges too. It’s offensive to me that an innocent man or woman should have to worry if they are going to jail depending on how good their lawyer is at presenting their case. That’s why Romans 13 encourages us to follow the law, because it brings Him honor. It’s all spin, that’s why it’s important we know that there is One faithful and true Judge that knows our heart.
Like Jonah 4:1-4 “1 But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry. 2 So he prayed to the Lord, and said, “Ah, Lord, was not this what I said when I was still in my country? Therefore I fled previously to Tarshish; for I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm. 3 Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live!” 4 Then the Lord said, “Is it right for you to be angry?”” Jonah had a cliffside seat! He had his shades out, Bermuda trunks, stogey. He was ready to watch then end of the world. But NO, I knew you’d forgive them!
Something the justice of this world doesn’t take into account when characterizing people is when the deviant behavior stops. - When we stop our behavior, repent and turn, there is power in that point.
Hollie Example -
18 I said in my heart, “Concerning the condition of the sons of men, God tests them, that they may see that they themselves are like animals.” 19 For what happens to the sons of men also happens to animals; one thing befalls them: as one dies, so dies the other. Surely, they all have one breath; man has no advantage over animals, for all is vanity. 20 All go to one place: all are from the dust, and all return to dust. 21 Who knows the spirit of the sons of men, which goes upward, and the spirit of the animal, which goes down to the earth? 22 So I perceived that nothing is better than that a man should rejoice in his own works, for that is his heritage. For who can bring him to see what will happen after him?
We act like animals a lot huh? We’re driven by our animal instincts. Last week Solomon told us the eyes of a wise man are where? In his HEAD! Right. Thanks for pointing that out Sherlock…right? Have any of you been to a night club? Are eyes in people’s heads there? Nope! That’s carnality. That’s a child wanting a new toy. God tests the condition of our hearts, to do what? To PROVE to US that we are animals. Animals are single-minded. They care about themselves and nothing else.
Have you ever been drugged? Not looking for a show of hands here, but I’ll fess up, I was drugged Friday night by my wife. Let me tell you how I know. I woke up Saturday morning and my body felt like stiff leather in my joints, my eyelids felt like garage doors (Have you ever had to open a garage door by hand? Heavier than you think right?) and as I scraped the coating of slime and drool I had on the side of my face off of my saturated pillow I asked my loving wife “what did you give me last night?” Instead of a cooing and loving response, the bed starts shaking. Not in an earthquake kind of way, but in an irregular shaking that periodically takes breaths because it can’t control itself as it laughs at me.
My loving wife said “I gave you some magnesium gummies that I was giving to the kids to help them sleep. You haven’t been sleeping well, so I thought these might help. I gave you the same amount I gave your 12 year old son.” I felt like crying “Why would you do that?!?!?!” Again, more snickers and snorts as the kids come pouring in wondering what the laughing is all about...
I tell you that story to tell you this one: -20 TO -19.9 STORY
At the beginning of this chapter, Ecc 3:5 “5 A time to cast away stones, And a time to gather stones; A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing;” …a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing. This verse about love encapsulates Jesus’ ministry. We so often get things like this wrong. He showed a time to embrace, but showed us times to refrain from embracing. He taught us how to love the unlovable Matt 5:44 “44 But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you,” And how to resist the proud Matt 23:13 “13 “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.”
Solomon is talking here about our marriage relationships. There are so many times when the busyness of life separate us, sometimes for long periods of time. We get sick, get injured, etc. Weak relationships seek to fill that embrace with other things OR other people. Strong ones though, they know what it’s like to be tested under fire. They bring honor to God and are an example to those around. They’re not easy, EVER, but you build for those moments when you are separated.
How are we doing in the relationship department? Are we embracing those who have small differences with us? Are we acting like the pharisees and keeping people from heaven? I know I’ve had to hold some stuff back. I’ve chosen to stop fighting a fight for the sake of a person’s salvation. A new Christian watching me argue minor theological points with fellow Christian. To witness that is emberrassing at the least and damaging at most. It’s like watching the right and the left duke it out and the moderate is like “Clearly I can’t choose the wine in front of me, and clearly I cannot choose the wine in front of you...” Stop fighting, start loving. Err on the side of LOVE. Loving someone doesn’t mean let someone continue in their sin. Ask them WHY? Why do you do this? Getting an athiest to agnostic is one step, but it can be earth shattering and sometimes even dangerous. You don’t know what’s coming…but you ask my wife about the times when we can talk, I tell her, she tells me - “Ok, this is great, let’s get all of these bad ideas out now!” Let the floodgates open, don’t be offended when someone screams their rhetoric at you or seethes. Respond gently, responsibly, and coherently.
I want to re-read those timing statements again. As I’m reading them, write down in your notes the season of life you’re in right now. Be thinking of the spiritual aspects of what these mean as well. Let’s look again at the first 8 verses Ecc 3:1-8 “1 To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven: 2 A time to be born, And a time to die; A time to plant, And a time to pluck what is planted; 3 A time to kill, And a time to heal; A time to break down, And a time to build up; 4 A time to weep, And a time to laugh; A time to mourn, And a time to dance; 5 A time to cast away stones, And a time to gather stones; A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing; 6 A time to gain, And a time to lose; A time to keep, And a time to throw away; 7 A time to tear, And a time to sew; A time to keep silence, And a time to speak; 8 A time to love, And a time to hate; A time of war, And a time of peace.”
What season or seasons of life are you in right now? I’m in the embrace season. I get that wrong all the time. I push people away from me so hard when they are against me. I’m always quick to embrace, but there’s a method behind it…and that’s wrong. Jesus bemoaned those who kept people from Him. He called us to LOVE those who attack us. Are you working too hard to take someone to Jesus that you’re driving them? Jesus told the disciples when the 4000 were hungry “You feed them.” The boys were focused on the actual food that the people wanted. His words were not a rebuke, but confirming what he said in John 6:35 “35 And Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.” then in John 6:63 “63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.”
Give them the bread of life. Don’t force-feed it to them. If you can make someone eat that, I’ll pay you to come to my house every morning and make my kids eat breakfast on time! You have to temper your time and efforts, soemtimes they are casting pearls before swine, but there is a time to plant, and a time to harvest. Plant the seeds. Prepare the field for the harvest, because it’s coming. Some people are morning people, some people aren’t. Some people need their coffee to get them going in the morning. We have to help people get their eyes back in their heads where they belong, because where they are is where their heart’s desires are. Jesus said the eyes are the lamp of the soul. Be patient with people as you take them down a peg. Sheep learn to build trust just as we do. Your story matters and is a powerful testimony.
What did we learn this week? That God has a calender for us, and we need to be OK with that. The events may be different than other people’s, but all of us deal with the same issues in our lifetimes. Death, life, arguments, reconciliation, war, peace, bondage, freedom. Solomon keeps throwing in the towel Ecc 3:22 “22 So I perceived that nothing is better than that a man should rejoice in his own works, for that is his heritage. For who can bring him to see what will happen after him?” Eat and drink and be merry right?
We also learned that nothing in this world will satisfy our desire for more knowledge. God set eternity in our hearts so we would long for him…and we fill it with information instead of knowledge. As our eyes are opened, we find we need to unlearn what we have learned but our pride sometimes gets in the way of shedding that husk of a person, especially as we see the cost of handing over the keys to a God we don’t know if we can trust, because our world was just shattered and we don’t know who to trust anymore.
Finally, we learned that these seasons are made for us to knit us together with people. We have a reputation on earth, and in Heaven. Our earthly reputation may need to change. I know mine is changing. I told my son on Friday as I’m listening to him interact with his brothers and sisters: “Hey, what you’re doing is wrong, because this is how I talked to them before. You learned this from me, and I need to work on teaching you better.” He only knows what I teach him. That’s why Jesus’ ministry was so effective, because the people around him watched his every move, listened to his every word. If you have been teaching someone how to do it wrong, swallow your pride and show them your scars and lovingly put your arm around them and teach them. You are the teachers, you know the Word. Jesus was a carpenter, that means demolition and construction. There is a time to tear down, and a time to build up. Let’s pray.