Telling Time - Ecclesiastes 3:1-15
Ecclesiastes: The Heart of the Matter • Sermon • Submitted
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Introduction - A Poem About Time
Introduction - A Poem About Time
<<PRAY>> <<READ 1-8>>
Best-known part of Ecclesiastes. Another poem, like 1:3-11.
Last week, “Joys Lost and Found” - meaningful, lasting joy in everyday life can only be found in the pleasure of God.
This poem is a sort of interlude before he dives back directly into what he has investigated. Poetry is more than just a pretty way to say something. Poetry also does something. Biblical poetry often intensifies a topic, or connects ideas in unexpected ways.
This is a beautiful poem, isn’t it?
But look at the poem carefully with me for a moment. The topic is obvious: Time. It’s a poem about time.
The introduction in verse 1 says there’s a time for everything. And because Solomon did not want this poem to go on forever, he didn’t specifically name everything. But this is a poem about everything. Just like the poem that began the book, when he said, “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.” He introduced that poem with that question that haunts his every step: “What does a man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?”
And this poem, you’ll notice, is followed immediately by verse 9 - “What gain has the worker for his toil?”
It’s a beautiful poem, but is it a happy one?
Solomon has chosen seven pairs in verses 2-5, and seven more in verses 6-8, to encompass every matter under heaven.
Some point to beginnings and endings. Some point to life, love, and relationships. Some to work, politics, warfare.
Some come predictably, and some unpredictably. The time to plant is pretty clear. If you want a harvest, you’ll plant in the time to plant. And although it often comes unpredictably, the time to mourn is clear when we lose a loved one.
But what is the time to cast away stones or bring them together in verse 5?
It seems to be referring to the practice during war of ruining farmland with stones to disrupt plowing, and then gathering them up in times of peace.
25 And they overthrew the cities, and on every good piece of land every man threw a stone until it was covered. They stopped every spring of water and felled all the good trees, till only its stones were left in Kir-hareseth, and the slingers surrounded and attacked it.
Breaking down and building up in verse 3 could be pointing to warfare, too - but it’s just a fact of life that we often break something down before we build. <<CENTENNIAL VILLAGE - BURNING HOUSE TO GET NAILS>>
Winnetka - tear down two houses to build one - rich fool
v5 - Time to embrace - greetings & goodbyes, reunions & congratulations; refrain - war, covered in mud, or sick
v7 - Time to keep silence or speak -
23 To make an apt answer is a joy to a man, and a word in season, how good it is!
But there’s something more important going on in verses 1-8.
<<READ v1>>
And each of them comes to an end. Whatever is done in any season will be followed by a season when it’s undone.
The poem’s regularity, its rigidity, the repetition of the word “time” 28 times - these serve to stretch out our consideration of verse 1 and lead us into verse 9 either celebrating or oppressed by the nature of time.
And in verses 9-15, the Holy Spirit works through Solomon to get us to consider how we should think about time, and how it should affect our approach to seasons in life. So I’m going to read verses 9-15, and then we’re going to trace three themes through the whole text. <<READ 9-15>>
I. Two Ways of Looking at Time
I. Two Ways of Looking at Time
ILLUST:
Ticking clock in my office at WBC - lasted about a day.
Standing in the main office at WBC by the copier // late at night, prepping for Sunday School or preaching // hour or two, then start to notice ticking clock // pull hair, pull clock down, pull batteries.
Always said I couldn’t stand a ticking clock. Couldn’t concentrate with it
Last year, after Dad died, bro & sis asked, “Do you want Dad’s clock?” // 15th (or so) anniversary present from mom to dad // Pendulum shelf clock, was probably 100 years old back then // Westminster chimes on the quarter hour // I loved that clock, loved the tock, tock // Winding it // brought home, put in office
The sound of the clock does something very different in me //
Two very different reactions to a ticking clock. There are two ways of looking at time here in vv9-15. The first is in verses 9-10. A maddening, ticking clock.
TIME/time TIME/time
You plant, then you pluck // You seek, then you lose // You keep, then you cast // You love, then you hate // And what did you get? For all that you did?
Everything, everything, everything ends.
The business that God has given mankind to be busy with, is absurd without Him.
Even human ambition and triumph are governed by the vain repetition of times and seasons.
You don’t have to plant when it’s time, but if you don’t, you’ll go hungry.
APPLY:
Friends, if verse 1 sounds lovely to you <<READ 1>> and you don’t know God, look at it again in light of verses 9-10. The times are impersonal to you, and all your freedom is constrained by necessity to do things like everyone else, when everyone else does. Because you don’t set the times.
But verses 11-13 give us a second way to think about time. <<READ 11-13>>
Now, look at verse 1 again <<READ v1>>
Each of these times is set by God, to flower and ripen according to His good plans. We’ve said that wisdom is seeing God’s world the way he does, and this transforms the rhythms of times and seasons from vanity to a source of celebration.
Under God, if you plant when it’s planting season, you’re not a slave to necessity, but a wise person who sees the beauty in God’s orderly Creation.
22 While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”
Time is a gift to the finite. Isn’t it better for there to be a time to mourn rather than endless mourning?
Isn’t it better to know that the time for war isn’t forever?
In fact, verse 11 shows that God is the Lord over the times and seasons, and that this is part of His kindness to us.
But with God, the times and the seasons, the regularity of the universe, according to God’s creative decree, is what makes science, rational thought, planning, decision-making possible.
The times are set by the personal God.
If He had not set a time for you to be born, you wouldn’t have been. This day is a gift with a morning and an evening. And rather than an unhappy business of gainless toil, He has set you and me in the world today, on purpose. Since He has made everything beautiful in its time, then that means that your presence now rather than a hundred years ago was by design and with His beautiful purpose.
And as the Lord of the times and the seasons, He also has guided history from the beginning. And in perfect accord with His own wisdom and knowledge, after Adam and Eve fell into sin and brought death upon the world, God spoke the promise of salvation first to them in Genesis 3, and then to Noah, and Abraham and his children, to David and the people of Israel. He spoke through the prophets of the time to come when the Messiah would redeem us from the slavery of sin and death and judgment.
5 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. 6 In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’
Just a few:
33 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” 35 Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar— the Lord of hosts is his name: 36 “If this fixed order departs from before me, declares the Lord, then shall the offspring of Israel cease from being a nation before me forever.”
And
6 On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. 7 And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. 8 He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. 9 It will be said on that day, “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”
Zechariah prophesies that the Messiah would come into Jerusalem humble and riding a donkey, with salvation, and
16 On that day the Lord their God will save them, as the flock of his people; for like the jewels of a crown they shall shine on his land.
And Jesus begins His ministry with this:
15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”
And when His hour had come, Jesus fulfilled the mission for which He had come - to save us, just as God had promised in all those prophets.
6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.
And
3 In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. 4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. 6 And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” 7 So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.
And this is how we should think about time: as God’s gift, into which He sent His Son to redeem all who would believe.
II. Two Ways of Thinking about Eternity
II. Two Ways of Thinking about Eternity
The second theme for us to trace here is eternity.
In verse 11, <<READ 11>>
Have you ever tried to think, really think, about eternity? One thing that sets humans apart from the rest of the animals is that we can think about time, and we can think about it in light of eternity. That which has no beginning or end.
But while we can begin to understand the idea of eternity, a finite mind can never fully plumb its depths. We can do math with different types of infinity - countable and uncountable infinite sets, that’s what calculus is about after all - but no matter how long you try, you can’t actually conceive any infinite anything, including the idea of eternity.
And Solomon says that God has put eternity into man’s heart. And what does that do to us? Without God, it worsens the problem.
v11 - And eternity is lodged in us like a curse - reminding us that the earth will still be young when we are old, and the time to plant will keep coming around after our time to die. And what will we have gained? So without God, the incessant advancement of the times and seasons is a burden reminding us of an eternity we can’t find out.
Because you know that the world was here before you, and it’ll keep on going after you, and God made you to contemplate time and eternity. God designed you to desire something you can’t find out. And even though He has made everything beautiful in its time, when we think we’ve got it all figured out, the times and seasons turn out to be more complicated than we thought.
And verses 14-15 continue in the same direction: <<READ 14-15>>
vv14-15 - And without God, the enduring quality of God’s work is a burden. No matter how hard you try to set yourself apart, you can’t detach birth from death, weeping from laughter, seeking from losing. The hands of the clock will go around and around whether you like it or not.
But there is another way to look at eternity.
When God promised Abraham a son, he told him to count the stars, and said, “So shall your offspring be.” And you and I know that there is a finite number of stars, and Abraham could only have seen a much, much smaller number of stars on that evening so long ago.
And when Jesus proclaimed His mission, especially in the Gospel of John,
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
He has put eternity into our hearts so that we will long for it, so that we would want to know what God has done from the beginning to the end. And when we consider what the Eternal God has done, and see time and ourselves as God’s works, that we would fear before Him.
Because the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, this is the starting point to see God’s world the way He does.
Verse 15 becomes a statement of hope - the time to be born is driven away by the time to die, the time to weep is driven away by the time to laugh, but God seeks what has been driven away. He maintains the world He has created, and despite the brokenness that sin introduces to the world, despite the worst that men and women do, the times and seasons continue, so that people will fear before Him.
III. Two Reasons to Enjoy God’s Gifts
III. Two Reasons to Enjoy God’s Gifts
And I want to close by looking at verses 12-13 and how we can celebrate the Eternal God’s good gift of times and seasons. <<READ 12-13>>
I have two reasons and ways to enjoy God’s gifts.
Reason 1: It is the greatest thing you can do, according to verse 12. To enjoy God’s gifts as gifts. This is what worship - both in the gathered Body and as you go - is all about. To rejoice in your Creator - that’s why you were created.
Christians, there is an intimate connection between rejoicing in the giver and enjoying the gift. If a friend comes to you with a gift, wonderfully made by hand, it’s unnatural to reject the gift but insist you love the friend; it’s ungrateful to love the gift and reject the friend;
Instead, you take the gift with gladness, and then look carefully at it as you think of the friend’s delight in making it just for you, reflecting on their love for you, and rejoicing that you are so loved.
When we take the gift as a gift, gratefully enjoying it, we are worshiping God with our hearts.
He has made everything beautiful in its time. We are not that great at figuring out the times for ourselves. But at the right time, Christ died for us. Be joyful, my friends, that our salvation has come in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Reason 2: It’s the only way for anything we do to be called “good.”
Look again at verse 12. Remember last week, when I mentioned that Hebrew word for good - טוב. Here it happens twice in verse 12. There’s nothing better - nothing טוב than to be joyful and to do טוב as long as they live.
To be joyful in the LORD - to delight in Him - this is something that only a redeemed person can do.
Without God, a person can take pleasure in eating and drinking, but never as acts of worship. Never with true thanksgiving. But for the one who has been saved by Jesus Christ, who delights in Him, who looks at what God has done and stands in awe, that one’s hallelujahs are animated by the Holy Spirit and received by the Father with His joy:
28 Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe,
The “time to weep/mourn” is now, but will come to an end with an eternal “time to heal/time for peace” (Rev 21:3-4, 22:2-5)
The “time to die” is in its sunset because Christ died and will not die again
27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, 28 so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.
And Jesus will not pluck up a bruised reed (Isa 42:3
20 a bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench, until he brings justice to victory;
but will reap at the last day (Wheat and Tares, Matt 13; gathering etc)