Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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If I had written the Book of Ecclesiastes, I would have stopped at the end of chapter 2. It would have been a very, very short book.
It would have been like 2 John, Jude, or Philemon.
Solomon has written a wonderful conclusion—for any person to find ultimate meaning in life, he has to go outside of himself to God.
Sounds like a great way to end a book to me.
Let's close with a rousing hymn and go home.
But there are another ten chapters to the Book of Ecclesiastes.
Solomon kept writing because he knew we would have a problem with God.
In some ways, we'll have as much of a problem with God as we had without Him.
That's something I love about the Book of Ecclesiastes: Solomon is brutally honest.
If we want to deal with the world as it really is, we are going to have problems with God.
When bad things occur, what are your solutions?
Do accidents really happen to people?
Is Satan the cause of every bad thing in the world?
How would you answer these questions?
Solomon shows that no matter how you slice it, the sovereignty of God lies behind everything that happens.
The existence of evil is one of the great philosophical problems of all time: How did evil come into existence from an all-holy God?
In many ways Satan is sometimes easier to understand than God.
Satan in a sense is very simplistic.
He is a being of pure evil.
That means his reasons for doing everything he does are easily understood.
God, however, is a problem.
It's often difficult to interpret His actions in the short-term.
If He's good and all-powerful, why is there so much suffering in the world?
It's this problem with God that Solomon tackles in Ecclesiastes 3.
Solomon says that however we try to resolve the fact that evil exists and God is good, we can't do it by saying that God is not in control.
In this section Solomon clearly states that God has a plan and does not waver from it.
He is the one who has made the appointed time for everything.
God is sovereign over everything.
He is not always pleased, but He is never perplexed.
No evil action skirts His plan.
No piece of the puzzle is left over at the end.
Either God is sovereign or He is not.
Solomon goes on to reiterate and explain his point.
EVERY EVENT IS PART OF GOD’S PLAN
Solomon says it doesn't matter if you're a man or a dandelion, there is a purpose for your birth, your death, and everything in between.
God has appointed a time for everything that happens.
A day will come in God's sovereign plan when you will receive a phone call telling you that your parents are dead.
Your time will be to weep.
But it won't last forever because there will be a time when you will get a big promotion or finally move into your dream home, and then you will laugh.
Solomon says life is going to be like this and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.
You'll have children and you will laugh.
Then one day you'll cry because of those children.
That's the way it is.
There are times of happiness and times of pain.
If you don't die from something unexpected, there will be a day when you will weep over some diagnosis.
All of these things are ordained.
We cannot know what life will bring.
There is a time that you destroy something by throwing stones, but there's also a time that you gather stones to build something.
There will be a time for you to embrace, but there will also be times when you don't want anyone around.
There will come a time that you will be full of hope and will want to search.
There will also be a time when you will be hopeless and want to give up.
The things you own will be useful for a while, and you will want to keep them.
But one day you will take your stuff to Goodwill; it's time to throw it away.
There will be a time for agony.
You will hurt so bad, you will want to tear your clothes.
And then there will be a time to sew up the tears because the pain is gone.
There will be times when you will want to keep your mouth shut and times when you just have to tell somebody something.
There'll be a time for love.
There will also be a time of rejection.
That's a fact.
All of these things are appointed.
Solomon says that God is not your genie.
God does not cooperate with us the way we think He should.
He doesn't behave.
As was said of Aslan in the Chronicles of Narnia, “He is not a tame lion.”
And when we realize this, it leads us to a very human response.
We say to ourselves, “Why should I work so hard when it's all going to be destroyed?
Why get married when you just end up fighting and hurting one another?
Why have a child and deal with the stress and disappointment?
Why should I go on living when I know at some point I'm going to get the twenty-four-hour stomach flu?”
Don't you just love waking up disoriented at 3 A.M. and being sick for about forty-five minutes straight?
Guess what?
Your lucky bout with it is coming!
Solomon is playing the devil's advocate here.
He is saying what all of us think and sometimes wish we could say.
What profit is there?
Everything gets undone and it's all been ordained anyway.
It is easy to get cynical.
Do you ever feel like that?
What's the use?
Why not punt?
Solomon put this into perspective.
In the first two chapters of Ecclesiastes, Solomon tells us that there is no hope unless we turn to God.
Now we have a bigger problem because we have turned to God.
We find out that He has given us this life of vanity and toil.
He has appointed everything that happens in our lives.
How do you live in a world that is out of your control?
How do you live with a God who doesn't always make sense?
Again, the Hebrew translation of “sons of men” in verse 10 reminds us of the fallen state of man.
It's just hard to be a fallen man in a fallen world.
From verse 11 to the end of chapter 3, Solomon give us a solid place to stand when life begins to shake.
It ballast for our ship of faith so that we won’t sink when the hurricane’s of life strike.
God's plan is wise.
God is wise, and even bad things have a purpose.
He makes everything appropriate or beautiful in its time.
When an appointed thing occurs, it may not seem that it has any purpose whatsoever, but God sees it from a totally different perspective.
Piano’s have black and white keys.
They are meant to be played together because neither sound as good alone as they do together.
Life is just like a song played on the piano.
It is a caricature without the black keys.
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