SPEAKER_00: Good evening.
SPEAKER_00: I am gonna be in Ecclesiastes chapter three, verses one through fifteen.
SPEAKER_00: Uh that is in the Pew Bible and on page six fifty-seven.
SPEAKER_00: I want to join everybody else.
SPEAKER_00: Uh if some of you guests may not know this is the fifth Sunday, so they invite some of us hacks to uh get up here and try to carry a night to give uh our very valuable preaching staff a night off, and so I'm glad to do it.
SPEAKER_00: But um please bear with me.
SPEAKER_00: If I fall down, I will get back up again.
SPEAKER_00: Um we are gonna again be in Ecclesiastes, so I probably ought to get there too.
SPEAKER_00: And um we do encourage our visitors to stick around after services.
SPEAKER_00: We do like the opportunity to visit with you, just find out kind of a bit about you and let you know a little bit about us.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Uh first thing I want to do is just kind of a little backstory on me.
SPEAKER_00: I grew up also in a non-Christian household, and uh I I would say very openly anti-Christian in my early life.
SPEAKER_00: Um, so that was the paradigm that I grew up in, and that was incorporated into my young life.
SPEAKER_00: Um there were things that came along in life that changed that, and praise God for that because it has completely turned my life around 180 degrees, and I am so thankful for that.
SPEAKER_00: Um I'm gonna give a little backstory.
SPEAKER_00: We had a uh workshop here, George Loomis, one of our associate preachers, taught about uh giving a lesson, and since I was interested in possibly doing that as I go forward in my journey, um I participated in that.
SPEAKER_00: So I'd already been working on this idea for several months now.
SPEAKER_00: So again, please bear with me if it's not quite as brushed up on as uh I would like it to be.
SPEAKER_00: But um being 64 now, I know it's hard to tell, but I am.
SPEAKER_00: Every year of it, I promise.
SPEAKER_00: And they say it's not the years that get you us the miles anyway, and I've driven many millions of miles professionally as well as personally.
SPEAKER_00: So um I get to thinking about the seasons of life.
SPEAKER_00: Um, obviously, I'm gonna say I'm still in the fall part of it.
SPEAKER_00: Um, I know winter is coming, but I don't think I'm there yet.
SPEAKER_00: Um when you start thinking in those terms, I start thinking about okay, how does that relate to life?
SPEAKER_00: So, first let's break down the seasons.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, spring is new beginnings, that's a fresh start.
SPEAKER_00: Uh that's the sewing, so to speak.
SPEAKER_00: That's during your infancy stage.
SPEAKER_00: They say you're gonna learn more in your first two years than you will the rest of your life, which I find hard to believe, but they said it, so it must be true.
SPEAKER_00: Um then summer, that's the time of maturing, it's a time of uh differentiation, it's when you start becoming your own person, uh and all of the things that come with that.
SPEAKER_00: That's also uh I like to think of that as the season when we have to do some weeding because there's a full growth um part of our life.
SPEAKER_00: Uh the fall, and again, this is when your career and your family start becoming tantamount to you if it's not already, and you um are kind of winding down from your working years.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I'm still partially working, and uh that's a blessing, but I am so glad that I don't have to get up every morning at three in the morning like I did for so many years, because I got really old.
SPEAKER_00: But glad to be here.
SPEAKER_00: So that's the part of the life that is fullness of life, I believe.
SPEAKER_00: That's the celebration of the harvest.
SPEAKER_00: Uh then winter is when we go into a dormancy.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's the promise of renewal, it's the rest.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I know we have farmers in this congregation, they know you have to let this the soil rest.
SPEAKER_00: Um, so it's before the new cycle.
SPEAKER_00: So going through that, I started thinking, okay, um, what would be something that would relate to that?
SPEAKER_00: And Ecclesiastes 3 came immediately to mind because it spells all this out.
SPEAKER_00: So I want to read that.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, if you would join me in that.
SPEAKER_00: Uh little background on it, real quick.
SPEAKER_00: I did want to say, but it's uh tradition holds it's written by King Solomon around the years 935 or so BC, so over 3,000 years ago, which is just mind-boggling to me that we still have that record that we can refer to these days.
SPEAKER_00: But um, scholarly and critical will say that it's probably written more in the range around uh 250 BC by a Jewish teacher due to the linguistic differences attributed to uh later uh cultures that came in contact with the Jewish culture.
SPEAKER_00: Uh so I'm gonna start off in uh three in verse one.
SPEAKER_00: For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven, a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to break down and a time to build up, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to seek and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to cast away, a time to tear and a time to sow, a time to keep silence and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.
SPEAKER_00: Uh this beautiful prose, and uh I come from a background, uh my mother was a reader, she read to me very early.
SPEAKER_00: I was reading before school, so I read a lot.
SPEAKER_00: Um I was struck by the beauty of this, it could stand alone on its own purposes besides being the wisdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: Um it covers most, if not all, of the situations that an ancient person would find themselves, whether it was 3,000 years ago or 2300 years ago, whatever the math works out to on that.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and we have to put ourselves into that different time and place uh so that we begin to understand the paradigm that they were viewing the world in.
SPEAKER_00: Um it was more fundamental to the Jewish faith than modern people would hold it.
SPEAKER_00: And I I hope that we can change that.
SPEAKER_00: That's Art's mission in life, I believe.
SPEAKER_00: And that's um one of the things that I believe if we can relate this to the people that are lost out in there in the world, that they will, as I did, want to seek, because I believe we're all born with that inward seeking where we want God to whether we can identify it as God or if we just identify as a longing for something.
SPEAKER_00: That's how I felt to me personally, but until I realized, yes, that was a big hole in the middle of me was a God-sized hole.
SPEAKER_00: So he filled it perfectly once I got into the waters of baptism, and I am thankful for that to this day.
SPEAKER_00: Um I I think about um well, I'm gonna go ahead and go into uh Ecclesiastes 3, 9 to 11.
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna start in nine.
SPEAKER_00: What gain has the worker from his toil?
SPEAKER_00: I have seen the business that God has given for to the children of man to be busy with.
SPEAKER_00: He has made everything beautiful in its time.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna go ahead and stop there.
SPEAKER_00: Um, as a result of this ordering of things, we see God's plan, uh, as it mentions in Romans 12 2, is his good, pleasing, and perfect plan.
SPEAKER_00: Um with the will of God coming to fruition and the beauty which he designed, everything in its time so that it endures forever.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm also now I'm gonna go to read Ecclesiastes 3 12 and 13.
SPEAKER_00: I perceive that there is nothing better for them to be joy than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live.
SPEAKER_00: Also that a man should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil.
SPEAKER_00: This is a gift from God.
SPEAKER_00: A gift, God's gift to man, excuse me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm reading from the ESV, by the way, so if I throw in something wrong, it's not the ESV, it's me.
SPEAKER_00: So God tells us to be joyful in our labor and to do good in our life, and that that is a gift from God.
SPEAKER_00: So I know in my experience when I was living life outside of that plan, uh I had no good, pleasing, and perfect uh part to my life.
SPEAKER_00: And I regret having spent so many years in that, but again, it took what it took to get where I am, and I thank God for that every day.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm gonna now read from Ecclesiastes 3, 14 and 15.
SPEAKER_00: I perceive that whatever God does endures forever, nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it.
SPEAKER_00: God has done it so that people fear before him.
SPEAKER_00: That which is already has been, and that which is to be already has been.
SPEAKER_00: And God seeks that which has been driven away are of note because I was like, I don't understand what that means.
SPEAKER_00: But it uh down here it says in Hebrew, it says, What has been pursued, and that made a little more sense to me in the context.
SPEAKER_00: Again, I'm still trying to kind of work through that.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, anybody that knows what it means, please get with me afterwards.
SPEAKER_00: I'd love to find out.
SPEAKER_00: But um, what I took from it is God's provision endures forever, and he is in control.
SPEAKER_00: Past, present, and future.
SPEAKER_00: So there's no reason to be regretful of the past, to be fearful in the present, and to be scared of the future, because um God's got a plan for us.
SPEAKER_00: We may not understand what it is, and we may not like it in the moment, but he's got a plan, and we are to live in that to the best of our ability, is what I believe.
SPEAKER_00: So, no matter what season of life we're in, whether you're a youngster in that fruitful stage of growing your family and getting your career going, or whether you're in the fall section, I'm gonna consider it about whole 15 out of 18.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm still doing okay here.
SPEAKER_00: Um, we are to be grateful and to live in a life of service, and that's what I hope that I have been able to do for y'all tonight.
SPEAKER_00: So thank y'all very much.