Who Controls the Clock?

Ecclesiastes 3:1–9 NIV

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. What do workers gain from their toil?

4 - https://skitguys.com/videos/a-time-for-everything

Introduction: From Bore No More 2 - Share with others right now what season of life are you in right now. Is it a time to weep? a time to laugh? a time to keep? a time to throw away? a time to be silent or a time to speak? Why are you in that season?

8 - How Much Control Over the Clock Do We Really Have?

15 Most Effective most proven Time Management Techniques.

Plan your Day - Goals, to do lists.

Limit Email Intake

Find your productivity Zone

Eat the Frog - “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.” 

Take Regular Breaks

Say No and Delegate

Focus and Block Destractions

Set Goals

Stop Multi-tasking

Allocate Your Time

Create a Morning Routine

Exercise

Use Time Management Tools

Reward yourself

Communicate

Time Management is not a bad thing, but why do we do it? - We have goals, we want to accomplish something, we have agendas, As we look at New Years resolutions, it’s because we want to make changes.

According to Ecclesiastes it is all a “Vapor.”

We strive to acheive our goals, but when we die they are forgotten, and what we have built is left to someone who may not steward it well.

1. In Nicholas Pegg’s book The Complete David Bowie, the singer, looking back at his 1971 song “Changes,” is quoted as saying, “I guess it was me being sort of arrogant. … It’s sort of baiting the audience, isn’t it? It’s saying, ‘Look, I’m going to be so fast you’re not going to be able to keep up with me.’ It’s that kind of perky arrogance of youth. You think you can get away with anything when you’re young” (Nicholas Pegg, “Changes,” The Complete David Bowie [London: Titan Books, 2011]). Yet in that very song, Bowie sings, “Time may change me / But I can’t trace time.” Time is one thing that human beings cannot produce or increase; we must live with time and the changes that it brings. We do not have control. That can be unsettling.

Peter Seeger’s Turn! Turn! Turn! hit takes up Ecclesiastes 3’s words. Music journalist William Ruhlmann has pointed out that the song's plea for peace and tolerance struck a nerve with the American record buying public as the Vietnam War escalated. - And this was the point of the Song was a call to strive for Peace, In other words, Peter Seeger was suggesting that the time for War is over, it is now a time for peace.

That may have been truthful, but this passage is not about us discerning what is the best time for what

The Point of this passage is....

9 - God Controls the Clock.

Ecclesiastes 2:11 NIV

Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.

Repeats this refrain over and over again.

But then...

Ecclesiastes 2:24–26 NIV

A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment? To the person who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

To this Conclusion, the writer says, for everything there is an appointed time - God appoints the times. God is in Control of the Clock, we are not.

vs. 10-15: God’s planning endures, but it is mysterious to humans, we don’t get it.

It’s Like this: We strive, but then one of God’s timings hits us in the face, and then our striving feels like a vapor, we struggle to attain it.

Why when we were starting to plant churches - Ben gets Leukemia

Why when we start planting Missional Communities - COVID hits

The first caused me to put my striving in context - What is really important in life.

The second is helping me take the learnings of the first and ask the question, “God what are you doing here?”

1. Old Testament scholar J. Stafford Wright writes, “Man is to take his life day by day from the hand of God (2:24–26; 3:12–13), realizing that God has fitting time for each thing to be done (v.1)” (J. Stafford Wright, “Ecclesiastes,” in Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, & Song of Songs, Expositor’s Bible Commentary 5, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1991], 1160). In the midst of change, Christians should recognize that each moment is God-given and should be lived in recognition of that fact.

So how do we live knowng God is in Control of the Clock?

10 - Can We Trust God with Our Time?

11 - https://skitguys.com/videos/gods-doing-a-new-thing.

12 - This sense of Determinism may make us wonder, why do time management, why even strive, change, why grow? If everything is a vapor, meaningless.

What Solomon did not have is the Gospel of Jesus. Jesus’ story of coming means God cares about us and we are meaningful, Jesus’ Death Redeems our lives so that we may belong to God, Jesus’ Resurrection means that the meaningless of death an our lives and work carrying forward is null and void, what we do matters, Jesus’ ascension means that he has control over the clock and bringing all time and history to its full meaning, and He sends his Spirit to direct our work that we might participate in what Jesus is doing. In Jesus what was a Vapor to Solomon, becomes a solid meaningful foundation for our life.

We may still not get what God is doing in the changes of this world, but we come to the same conclusion and even more so becuase of the Gospel.

Ecclesiastes 2:24–26 NIV

A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment? To the person who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

1. It can be easy to put off until tomorrow what we should do today. But change is going to happen. We can put off fully following God, assuming that our life will stay the same, but who knows what tomorrow will bring? The question is, are the changes in life going to bring us closer to God or take us further away from him?

Our Church is engaging in this Season in God Dreams. And our Question is not, “What can we strive to do to find meaning as a Church?, But Rather what is God doing in this time? What is he calling us to do to join him, and how can we enjoy the journey of walking with him as we do.

I think the same questions you can ask yourself. Lord, What are you doing in my life? How can I be a full participant in that work in this season of life, and How can I enjoy you as I do.

Conclusion: So work on your time-management skills, make your resolutions, but ask the Lord first and be led by the Holy Spirit as you do knowing ultimately he is in control of the clock.

Reference the Reformed Confessions: The Reformed Confessions are statements of faith written to clarify the Gospel at times when the Church was in crisis. Heidelberg Catechism: Q&A 26-28, 125 Belgic Confession: Articles 12, 13