Enjoying Life

Intro:

I hope that all of you had a great week!

As you probably know by now, the stay at home order had been extended until May 15th.

If it is lifted at that time, we will be in phase 1 of getting life back to some semblance of normal.

I have been in several webcasts this week and have at least one next week on recommendations on how we go back to meeting.

What we do know right now is that in phase one we are only able to have 25% of the building occupancy at one time.

That is a total headcount, not just adults.

That will make things quite difficult if not impossible.

No decisions have been made yet, but I want you to understand that while us meeting together again is important, your safety is our top priority.

We are praying about when and how and will communicate with you as we have more information.

Please be praying for Miki, Gene, and Caroline.

Gene is very sick and they have not gotten his Covid test back as of Saturday afternoon.

He is self-isolated in their home but isn’t feeling well at all.

He did test positive for pneumonia which will make Covid much worse if He does have it.

So, pray for healing for their family.

As you may have read online, Carlee Norman is on the mend, but please continue to pray for healing for her as well.

Last week we looked at the beginning of Ecclesiastes 3.

We are going to pick up where we left off last week.

We talked last week about the fact that there is an appointed and suitable time for everything.

Because God is sovereign over our lives, we can have hope knowing that He is in control.

And as we submit to Him, we gain a perspective that is bigger than our own.

We are going to continue these ideas today as we dig into the next section.

We will see that even though things don’t always make sense to us, God is in control and as we lean on Him we will discover that His eternal works are what bring us satisfaction, joy, and hope.

Today we will start by reading verses nine through fifteen.

Ecclesiastes 3:9–15 ESV

9 What gain has the worker from his toil? 10 I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. 12 I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; 13 also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man. 14 I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. 15 That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away.

In our passage we see that the preacher begins this section by asking the same question that he asked in the last chapter.

Ecclesiastes 2:22 ESV

What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun?

He is pointing, again, back to the garden and specifically when God told Adam and Eve that they would not only have to work for their food but that it would be incredibly difficult.

Genesis 3:17–19 ESV

17 And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; 18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

He isn’t asking this question again because he still doesn’t know the answer.

He is using the truth that God has already revealed to show how God works in our lives.

We need to make application of the truth that God reveals.

The preacher is making a confession of faith!

He has realized that he cannot accomplish anything that lasts, but because of what he has experienced, he trusts that God can!

He says in verse ten that he has “seen” the results of God’s judgment on the human race.

He is pointing back to what He discussed in the first chapter.

Ecclesiastes 1:13 ESV

13 And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.

We are seeing the application of what the teacher has been learning.

He found, through seeking, the problem and now he is sharing with us the answer to that problem.

What he is communicating is something that we talk about often and we are getting to see an awesome example of that idea.

He has experienced the results of the judgment that God placed on Adam and Eve by seeking God for an answer to why we toil endlessly.

The preacher has worked to gain wisdom and enjoyment and found that it is all temporary.

In that search, God has revealed to him that all our toil is like vapor.

I want to remind you that this section is not about what Man does, but rather what God is doing.

The preacher brings it back to that point in verse eleven.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 ESV

11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

In this statement, we see the shift in the preacher's perspective.

God has revealed to him and he has begun to understand what we talked about a few weeks ago.

Our work is not the end, but the means by which we come to know God.

We have to allow God to changer our perspective that what we go through in life is not the end.

Those life experiences are not about things happening to us, but rather, about God revealing His purposes to us.

He now sees that even though we toil endlessly, it is not without purpose.

Our work is soiled and empty.

However, God’s work is beautiful and everlasting.

There is a clear distinction here.

We are not the ones that make things beautiful, but God, as He works in and through us, for His purposes.

We will never be satisfied with what we can accomplish in our power.

God has put eternity in our hearts and because of that temporary things are never satisfying.

What we seek and long for are things that last.

Often we experience frustration and heart break because things don’t work out the way we want or worked for.

However, that doesn’t mean that those experiences are pointless.

Because we are not God, we cannot understand or know all that He is doing.

Job 5:9 ESV

9 who does great things and unsearchable, marvelous things without number:

Romans 11:33 ESV

33 Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

Not being able to see beyond our timeline limits our knowledge and understanding without God’s revelation.

This is a huge blessing because we can’t know unless He tells us.

That may not seem like a blessing, but as a good friend of mine often says, “success is obedience.”

If we obey what God tells us, then we have accomplished what He has asked of us.

This also means we are not responsible for trying to explain why things worked out the way they did.

Take a minute and think about that.

When we experience good or hard things, one of the first things we try to figure out is why.

Often we cannot know those things because they are beyond our perspective.

So rather than stressing and wasting our time and energy trying to figure it out, we can simply ask God.

Side note, we must also be okay with His response even if it is silence.

In previous chapters, the preacher talked about how our work is like vapor and he is showing us that God’s work is not a vapor.

God is able to not only gather the wind, but He can also control it.

That means that no matter how out of control our lives seem, God, has promised that He is able to make everything beautiful.

“The point is that God does indeed have a plan and that everything He has done is in keeping with that plan. That means that everything, birth and death, war and peace. No matter what it is, somehow it fits in to God’s plan.”

Can we take just a moment and let that truth sink in?

Whatever has been weighing you down recently, take a moment, give it to God, and in faith, confess that you believe that He is in control and even though you can’t see it, you believe that it will be beautiful.

What has been heavy on your heart lately?

How does the truth that God can make it beautiful make you feel?

Our experiences and faith allow us to live in the moment and know what is good.

Experiences and faith are two vastly different things, but in order for us to know God and experience what He has for us, we need both.

Ecclesiastes 3:12–13 ESV

12 I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; 13 also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man.

The teacher has gained knowledge and now KNOWS these things.

The word that the ESV has translated as “perceived” is a very important one.

Think about what it means to perceive.

When we perceive something we see it and then understand it.

What the preacher is “seeing” isn’t from a distance.

He is seeing as he is living in it.

He is learning these truths as he is experiencing God’s work in his life.

He “sees” it because he has put himself in a position to be in the middle of God’s activity.

Remember, he has made it his life’s work to gain wisdom and is seeking it under God’s direction.

There is a lesson for us in this.

If you are struggling with what God is doing in your life, you must ask, have put yourself in a position that you can see what God is doing?

You need the proper perspective and as we have already discussed, only God can give you the eternal perspective.

The second part of this is faith.

Hebrews 11:1 NLT

1 Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see.

Faith is confidence in the fact that God will do what He says even if we can’t see it.

Faith is built on trust that is cultivated by our experiences.

It allows us to step beyond what we know by experience, and into what unknown.

If we are living in the past, consumed by something that happened there, we will miss what God is doing today.

The inverse is true as well.

If we are looking to the future to some event that will happen and focus all of our energy on hoping for that day to arrive, we miss out on what God is doing today.

Both of those strategies are our attempts to do an eternal work.

Living in quarentine is a great example of that.

If we spend all our days wishing things would go back to the way they were we will miss what God is doing today.

Or if we spend all our days hoping for what will come when it it over, we miss what God is doing today.

It is important for us to understand that our desire to know those things is placed in us by God.

It isn’t wrong or sinful to want to know what is going on.

But it is sin when we take control.

If we are trying to arrange the events of our lives in a way that makes sense to us with the information that we have, that will always lead to frustration and an incorrect resolution.

God is the only one who knows those things

Rather than seeking those things out on our own, we need to ask God to reveal His work to us.

The teacher tells us that he knows that the best thing for us is to be joyful and do good.

This is not an instruction to put on a brave smile and work hard for God.

In fact, it is just the opposite.

These are instructions to live in the moment and walk in obedience to what God is telling you today.

That doesn’t mean that you circumstances will change, but by allowing God to work in you, the way you see those circumstances will.

That will lead to joy and because you are doing what God has instructed, you are doing an eternal, Godly work with God.

The preacher also says that we should eat and drink and take pleasure in our work.

This is a gift from God.

Once again we see the preacher pointing us back to the garden.

He is reminding us why we were created.

We were created to live in relationship with God and one another.

As part of that creation, God gave us great food and drink.

He made the act of eating and drinking pleasurable experiences.

Therefore, we need to accept this good gift that God has given us by taking the time to enjoy these things with one another and with God.

As we do these things in communion with God and one another, we experience what God has always wanted for us.

God’s desire is for us to know Him.

By enjoying God’s gifts, as He intended, our understanding of the world we live in will widen just like it did for the preacher.

We will gain, by experience, the understanding that the preacher did.

God’s work satisfies the longings of our hearts.

You may have noticed in verses twelve and thirteen there is an element added to the purpose of man, that wasn’t there when we looked at this same idea in chapter two.

In verse twelve, the preacher adds an element of morality to that which is a gift from God.

However, we are unable, because of sin, to be good.

He is pointing us back to God by revealing that the thing that will make us happy, that which satisfies, is not found in us.

Because of sin, we are not able to do anything that is good.

We may try, but sin always prevents any of our attempts from reaching that mark.

The teacher recognizes both the need we have for joy and our inability to get there on our own.

He has learned that only God can bring that satisfaction.

Ecclesiastes 3:14–15 ESV

14 I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. 15 That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away.

Again we see that word perceived and we understand that he knows this by experience, that what God does is good and lasting.

What we try to do on our own is not good and also not lasting.

“From a human point of view things are lost - time is lost, people are lost, opportunity is lost, jobs are lost, wives are lost, husbands are lost - all of these things are chased away and lost in the past, unrecoverable for us.”

However, what God does is good and last forever and this is good news for us because it frees us from trying to attain godhood.

This is good news because we were never intended to try to take on the responsibilities of God.

It was true for Adam and Eve in the garden and it’s true for us as well.

When we try to accomplish things on our own and take control we are trying to take God’s place in our lives.

That isn’t fair to us or to the people in our lives.

We are setting ourselves up for failure.

When Adam and Eve choose to separate themselves from God by disobedience, they took the weight of a burden that wasn’t intended for them.

We have an advantage that the teacher didn’t which is Jesus.

Removal from the garden and God’s presence placed the burdens of the world on our shoulders, but God takes that burden from us and places it on Jesus.

It is only through a relationship with Jesus that we are able to experience true joy.

Knowing Jesus, by experience through obedience is the way in which we learn what it means to be truly satisfied.

What we have learned as a church is that as we walk with Jesus, we are continually drawn back to the Father.

We fall deeper in love with Him and are able to worship Him because we know God the way we were intended to know Him.

The last phrase in verse fifteen says that God seeks what has been driven away.

The teacher is talking about us.

We were driven from God’s presence by sin, but because of Jesus, a way has been made for us to know God.

Not only did God make a way for us to know Him, but He seeks after us.

Because you and I know God and have experienced His goodness, we have the opportunity to share this good news with this broken world.

We get to point people to Jesus and help them to see that He has been pursuing them.

Not because they are good, but because He is good and He loves them with a love that they have never experienced.

We get to help them see that even though this world is broken by sin, God is still working.

We may not understand much of it, but we have faith that in God’s time, He will make all things beautiful.