February 21 | What God Does Endures

Good morning Prior Lake Baptist Church.

Do you believe what you just saying? Those words are true. Sometimes we sing better than we know we're going to be something better to filter down. But true. We do have a God who is absolutely in control and will see that and turn their weekly to Ecclesiastes chapter 3. I know we've been kind of sitting in some of the heaviness of this text over the past couple of weeks. But I hope you understand that is the Solomon if you need is the author I think he is.

To help us see how life really is. He's he's sticking to reorient us as it is and a Sam has encouraged us to look for Redemptive hints throughout this text while today in our texts. We have even more than just hint. We really land on some Redemptive true that we need to see to help give us in our lives and in our stinking to help reorient just here before I jump into any further when we pray and ask for God's help. If you look into this morning father. Thank you for your gracious kind. Sometimes jarring words that you have for us, but Lord, your word is truth, and it comes to us from a gracious God if you had not revealed yourself to us, we would not know you But you have revealed yourself to us so that we may know you may have confidence in you in the midst of this crazy mixed-up World in which we live. In which Our Lives we find ourselves in Daily father. Would you help us to see you in the midst of our days? So that we would have to have all confidence in you moving forward you accomplished that even in our lives today to give you the things in Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Vanity of vanities all is Vanity. What is the life to which the author of Ecclesiastes points of see what they can get us reoriented. Even this passage in Ecclesiastes 3. I thought maybe you might help us out. I love this resource the big picture story Bible and I'm just going to read from chapter 3 chapter of one is called God's very good the very good beginning part to a very sad day and chapter 3, I think which Hudson has read through multiple times already life outside the garden. Sears how this chapter begins do you remember why God's people had to leave God's Place God drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden because they disobeyed him and rejected him as king and everything. God has warned them about disobeying his word came true Adam and Eve were now separated from God and began having difficulty with each other raising children with hard finding food with even harder and they're coming death was now beginning to make their bodies grow older outside the garden parable. Is to life outside the garden that the author of Ecclesiastes is speaking. We no longer live in this world in which we imagine Adam and Eve know after leaving the garden was kind of looking at each other and say Why didn't you? Where is God? What now?

And the author of Ecclesiastes ask that question to now we're outside the garden where is meaning in life to be found. Now you may not be asking that question this morning, but you probably have some impulses as to where the answer lies. Where is meaning to be found and I'm going to say this in the garden of our minds the Seas that our culture sews often take root and got his kind of has given us text like Ecclesiastes chapter 3 to kind of uproot to pluck up some of these we see life from a Biblical perspective and life biblical perspective has God right at the middle of it. That's where we want to go this morning. So let's take a look at some of the problems of life outside the garden at the preacher brings up here. We look at number one. That's the problem of the complexity of time the problem of the complexity of time that's in verses 1 through 8, and maybe when you see this text me for some of you or remind you remind you of a 50s or perhaps a 60s rock song Because Peter Seeger took his lyrics right from this ecclesiastical 3 verses 2 through 8. But let's see what this poem has for us. You know, I'm not a poet okay fire to be but I'm definitely not so me trying to diagnose his poetry. I need all the help from the outside here in 3 1 through 8 is a bunch of couplets 14 of them to be exact opposites. The Opposites are sometimes and sometimes a little bit like Curious like what's going on meaning of that? I mean, when can imagine though that may be in in some in some type of life. You would have Farmers clearing his field. He's throwing the stones out of the out of the field.

All the things that go on in life.

Really? That's the key that all of the events here are kind of all encompassing all of life because there are 14 different that I be born a time to die. There's one couplet and there's 14 of them. There's two groups of seven.

I haven't seemed to be just an important number for God in his plan end in the Genesis account. He created the world in 7 Days of completion and hear you kind of have a poem about the whole completion of Life. All of the events of Life are kind of summed up in this one poem. Josh events of life we see these are human activities. We see maybe maybe here even in the end of verse 5, we see something for extroverts. There's a time to embrace embracing. Okay, but we have this cheeky there. We actually just really emotional times going through a time to weep A Time To Laugh A Time to mourn and a time to dance. My mind is going to John to Pixar's movie up those first three minutes of that movie. When you have the old we had that the young couple meeting and falling in love going through life together with no words just the music playing in the background noise of the sadness of being told you can't have kids but still finding joy throughout life and then all of those memories that they both made together both of them holding onto in the end you have just a man sitting there now holding onto the memories that they boast that they both used to hold on to. That is what life looks like.

describes it as though it's so orderly describes Greatsword or to it, which

Provides the contrast your because isn't that how our lives work do we feel the orderliness? And you know, we don't see that at all our lives experience when feels like sometimes. A time to be born and a time to die. We would take the time to die would be when I'm 98 years old after having lived a full life and die in my sleep. That would be the perfect time. But life doesn't work. That way Austin death comes out time to do just so unexpected and so jarring. Not to mention even all the other things some of these things in the list are things. We don't want to be part of our life. We think they don't belong moreover. We don't want them to be alone. Yet this complexity of life is precisely what life outside the garden looks like difficult.

Suffering is precisely what life looks like an often. We we chase at that and let me ask you when the the complexities of Life. Come your way. Do you ever find it? Tempted to think that God does not care or that God does not know. Is God only present at the signing of the new of the home loan for the new house? If he not present when the Foreclosure papers are delivered?

Life outside the garden can be messy and complex. Which is why the author in moves from here to give us a perspective he wants us to have proper perspective of life outside the garden, I believe that's what God wants us to have this morning. So where is Solomon go here? Look at nine. What game has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with he has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart yesterday. He cannot find out what God has done for the beginning to the end. There is nothing better for them than to be good. As long as they live in soil is God's gift to man. The perspective of Eternity that the author brings here is really helpful here in its really this is middle section 9 through 15 will give us the ability do it doesn't start that way cuz he starts by saying.

What do Ginger people get in their work has given people working busy with?

God has given us working too busy with but yet there's no gain in our work. That's the tension in which we live and yet the author here doesn't really fix the tension. He doesn't resolve the tension instead us perspective. Adjust our perspective Solomon 26th to a God who stands? above time even outside of time Who is working? Guiding time orderly and purposefully, even though we live outside the garden a world under the curse is marked by frustration yet. God is at work bringing beautification. Even though sometimes we can't see it very well silver ican says when he preacher says that God has made everything beautiful in its time. He is not just talking about the way that God made the world the first place but it's about the way that he is ruled it ever since and we can still see that there's Beauty in the world that God has created even though we live in a broken in a fallen world that we can still appreciate the beauty of a sunset that God has given nearly every night. We have a gorgeous picture outside of her window, even in the middle of winter sometimes in our drive to school. We look at the trees outside of and sometimes those trees painted white gloss of fraud.

But it's not merely just a beauty of creation Beauty. In the way in which he is ruling this world is Providence.

Don't always see it. Okay. Someone has use the illustration of life outside the garden looks like a tapestry, but we kind of see the back of it. So all we see is if these lines of thread going this way and that way from the other side if we're slipping around we could see the beautiful picture of working all the difficulties of life. You're suffering in his wisdom Providence.

He is leaving and making beautiful things. and maybe sometime maybe a big scale of things, but it doesn't feel like

sometimes feels like he's actually distant and maybe not present and doesn't care.

But we re Christian weary Christian. Do you see? I need to trust in The God Who is working all things and making things beautiful in the right time. In the right time. Do you need that reminder this morning?

God sent over and above time working all things and listen to this not only has he not only is he working all things beautiful this time yet that perspective of Eternity. Listen even to the first XI. He has placed eternity in our hearts.

Not a point where we can figure out what's going on. Okay, we may be outside of Eden. But we still hear its Echo. Still feel it's causing. We still know that there's something something out there that we that we are that we're missing out on that. God has placed enough. What does it look? Like? What is that feel like maybe I should point you to Tom?

I remember hearing this interview on TV after he had won his third Super Bowl ring do now seven. He said why do I have 3 Super Bowl rings and still think there's something greater out there for me. I mean, maybe a lot of people would say. Hey man, this is what it is. I reach my goal my dream my life me I think got to be more than this. I mean this isn't this can't be when it's all cracked up to be when pressed further. What did that say when you're asking what's the answer Brady responded? I wish I knew I wish I knew I loved playing football in love with being quarterback for this team. But at the same time, I think there are a lot of other parts about me. I'm trying to find If having three didn't solve it will adding four more problem. If something is bigger out there I can direct us to a film-maker Woody Allen. You could always go this route to run a cynical is the cynicism. He said the universe is indifferent. So we create a fake world for ourselves and we exist within that fake world a world that in fact means nothing at all when you step back, but it's important that we create some sense of meaning because no perceptible meaning exist for anybody. Wow. Depressing if that were true. But you even see like it seems like it for all the wrong reasons. We're his quest for self-created meaning has misled to ruin. Is there a Better Way Forward? Yeah, there is a Better Way Forward. God has restricted our ability.

I don't get what's going on in life. That's okay. Because in not knowing and not being able to figure it out. every opportunity a trust

and not just trust your notion of who you think is got trust this guy who has spoken trust in this God who is active in our world trusted this guy who is active in your life. Trust this God who is making all things new and is moving history forward as he stands outside of time directing all things toward his desired end. He has a purpose Old Man River Park on your little more later, but I got to move on. Trust him trust him more time. trust him and Steve received the life that he has given you. I just gift. A few years back when you're kind of struggling through with all the the curve the curve ball that life had thrown at us a friend had posted this quote by CS Lewis on Facebook. That was that just gripped my attention. He says the great thing if one can is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of One's Own or realize the truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one real life. The life. God is sending one.

That's true because the light that you have foot doesn't mean he doesn't look like what you expected it to look like but that's all right, because there's a God who stands behind us and behind all of life. And so this text fries us it frees us from living anxiously is us if you can feel the freedom it offers the trust that it offers the freedom to live life as a gift. Not as yet the point, we sometimes try to get out of this life. You never intended to make life to try to get something because it was never intended for that. Good God love giving good gifts. He loves to have his people live in joy.

Which is why? Convert 12 where does Sullivan land so I perceived that there is nothing better for them than for them to do good as long as they live. One author O'Donnell the said if you have summarized as by saying God wants you to be happy and holy live life with joy. All right, but guess what? You have a few minutes of quiet that maybe you'd win bacon to your daily life wants to help loved you. Anyway good intense for you, even when we can live in we can live in Drink and take pleasure in all your work. You can enjoy the good gift of Life. Yes, go to master Noodle and enjoy it or if one box of macaroni and cheese and show you that even enjoy your work.

man goes around you at your job, or maybe just I mean today when they walk in and And it's like here we go again another week just living for Friday living for the weekend, or maybe there are others who just go there because they are gifts received them and receive them with an open hand. You guys place them in there Rejoice if it's good, if it's his good pleasure to take them away. All right takes them away receive them from him with an open hand.

But this is this is this is meant to help us build confidence in a god-given verses 14 and 15 while our plans often just going to go up and smoke and don't return and don't materialize plans endure forever and there is no other God like this. You can take all the messiness of the world and bring good out of it the mechanism of your life and bring the madness of my own life and bring good.

Vicious Fishes silence us And worship to say Lord only you. only you and it's of that perspective of having of having a god-centered this year that that helps the author move forward that helped us move forward even to this next section where there's more problems under the sun. He's giving us perspective in are these problems that happened under the sun in verses 16 through 22. We see the problems of Injustice and the problem of death.

Injustice and death are what characterized life outside the garden and if I were to give you exhibit a to Injustice and death, I think I should just throw out. Yes last year's calendar 2020 in all reality didn't witness the problems of Injustice in the problems of death.

The problem of evil in the wrong places. We want people who write the laws and enforce the law to do. So with fairness and righteousness don't we that doesn't happen. There's something wrong that happens. We want Justice in our laws to be freed from wickedness, and let's be honest. That's not always the case. Even though even to the laws that are seem to be heading our way is like 17 spare.

Is it helpful for you to see that? The problem isn't just in our time? Tell him it's looking out over the time back. Then the same problem still persist they exist here.

Because the lights outside the garden stinks. Even in places that should promote righteousness Even in our churches even their wickedness.

And that can lead us either to be able to become cynical in one hand and say yeah, so what hope is there?

Well, good question. What hope is that where should the problem of Injustice and wickedness even in places? That should be righteous? Where should it lead you where we're at least looking for 17 in my heart. God will judge the righteous and the wicked. Where there's a time for every matter? He said in my heart God will judge.

You know what? That stabilizes my heart. stabilized yours recognize it in the in justices of the world. I am free from trying to wring my hands and say but that's not fair. Free from having to try to to work situations to bring about a fairness that will fit. It doesn't mean I throw my hands and not try to work for for righteousness or Justice. the end of the day I'm trusting in a faithful Creator who will bring about who doesn't miss anything at all and he will render Justice. DC the Injustice that happened our country he snow is the Injustice has that have happened to you. And he doesn't forget. And maybe even think of the end of Exodus chapter 2 where it says a God saw his people in bondage and God knew. Which game which gives us hope that God will act.

To ultimately where we find peace where do our hearts find stability is a knowing that God judges. There is a final Day of Reckoning Justice on this Earth will be met out.

So be free be free from the anxiety of trying to bring it about in your own the problem of death in verse 18 interesting in my heart. God is testing that they may see that they are but beasts. Problem of death Even in our world is not outside of God rather. God is wielding death recognize. We don't have it all figured out. I mean, we got it all figured out you think you know so much.

What happens after you die?

We have this great big? Right in the middle of our lives that we all face. What happens after death?

You can't say as he says you were like how do you know if the spirit of the man goes up and the spirit animal goes down, but you can't test it. How do you actually know? Like how do you know that all dogs? Don't go to heaven. How do you know that that when you die, you don't just get reincarnated and you keep coming back. How do you know that you won't come back as a frog or a dog or a cat or a bad and always recycle your matter like that. How do you know if I got like, dr. Seuss, but worse.

How do you know how do you know if I'm going to trust a guy said he spent an hour and a half ago after that. We need something better.

We need someone outside of time to tell us about what happens after death moreover. We need someone to save us from it.

That is where the author of Ecclesiastes play the trews that come out in Ecclesiastes find our fullest expression as we move forward into the New Testament. Because we see that in the New Testament the judge who is established who will one day judge. The world is none other than Jesus Christ. God has committed judgment 2nd Timothy 4:1 Christ Jesus, who is the judge the living and the dead Christ is the judge who will bring all things to account. But there's more over and above time outside of Time of Dying history tortoise fulfillment did something remarkable? because in the fullness of time God sent forth his son born of a woman was born into time born under the law for the purpose of redeeming those under the law. God's purpose of redemption

and to two people living life under the sun. When did Jesus walk this Earth? He gave us a glimmer that time to the other side of the tapestry. Do people confuse of living in life under the sun? He steps to give Clarity to those wondering why why does person born with disability disability of blindness? Why was he born this way? Jesus gave Clarity the other side of the canvas reset. Neither neither this person said nor nor his parents, but the worst foot so that the works of God might be displayed in him.

To a to a woman suffering from The Unexpected unexpected illness and unexpectedly spent all of her money trying to cover but only got worse.

Jesus steps in And her story now becomes one of his power and her face.

He has shown his ability to take what is broken and crooked and make it beautiful. Even though it'll happen in his time. Can you trust that? Can you trust that his time may not be your time and that's okay. And if there's any event in the New Testament that point us to the reality and to the power of God to be able to take a really bad circumstance and make it beautiful.

Is there is there anything greater than the cross? At the cross got the most heinous act of betrayal and murder and threw it worked Redemption for repentant Sinners and the cross for the son of man was lifted up now forever displays the glory in the beauty of Christ sacrificial costly love for you. for you and it's God who loves to give good gifts now has given us the gift the gift of eternal life through his son to repentant sinners. The Christ the judge was judged for since he did not commit to that you might be declared righteous and stand before this God no longer an object of Wrath, but an object of love. This is amazing love it. So that your sins will either be judged in Christ. He taking the punishment for you or they will be judged by Christ.

But make no bones about it here at the last day. It will be playing to everyone what God does indoors forever because at the last day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. God is working all these things. So he is good and friend, aren't you glad are you part of this reality? Even further all of these good things don't just come in the future even though that is good promises for you. For those who are his God is not taking the difficulties of life outside the garden and now working them for your good. That's a true the Romans 8:28. Struggling Christian if you're struggling with how that works right now and don't hear me saying I'm not calling you this morning. I'm trying to figure out how that works for even or even Comfort Inn that I'm supposed to believe it. You don't see it. I get it.

Becky's in the midst of your pain God is working these things to accomplish his good in your life. Because we had a God who loves to make beauty from ashes. Friends are more. Our work is marked by Vanity. But what God does endures forever Kingdom indoors forever. And invites us to participate in that Kingdom work. I need the lights to give that Kingdom that cannot be shaken to his own by grace through faith. So yes, eat drink and enjoy life, but don't worry about eat or drink or all that. God has given us to do.

Life Under the Sun is messy but God has made it that way so that we might honor and trust him. Only pray this texting in for us in closing. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father we thank you. Oh Lord. I Thank you that you are working all things for good your skovron care.

Evident in our world sometimes not seen by us. But father you make all things beautiful in your time, which is the right side. We confess that we can always see how you're doing that the Lord our our our brains are too small and our time. But Lord help us to trust you. We don't have a perspective that you do. We are often frustrated by the things of life and yet Lord you ordained these difficulties for our good and your glory. So I asked could you please humble us? humble and you invite us to trust you father lift our eyes off of ourselves. And let us receive life from you as a gift that you are providentially over and father. What is Hope in Christ for your work and Christ and doors forever. You are establishing a kingdom that cannot be shaken. So father would you help us to fix our eyes on you and to get busy with the task at hand that you would show Astley giving us to do father accomplish that in their hearts this morning in Jesus name. I pray amen.

Invite you to stay and rinsing the song A Christians daily prayer.