Mark Medley: Ecclesiastes chapter 3, starting at verse 1.
Mark Medley: For everything there is a season and a time, for every matter under heaven.
Mark Medley: A time to be born and a time to die.
Mark Medley: A time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted.
Mark Medley: A time to kill and a time to heal.
Mark Medley: A time to break down and a time to build up.
Mark Medley: A time to weep and a time to laugh.
Mark Medley: A time to mourn and a time to dance.
Mark Medley: A time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together.
Mark Medley: A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing.
Mark Medley: A time to seek and a time to lose.
Mark Medley: A time to keep and a time to cast away.
Mark Medley: A time to tear and a time to sow.
Mark Medley: A time to keep silence and a time to speak.
Mark Medley: A time to love and a time to hate.
Mark Medley: A time for war and a time for peace.
Mark Medley: What gain has the worker from his toil?
Mark Medley: I've seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.
Mark Medley: He has made everything beautiful in its time.
Mark Medley: Also, he has put eternity into man's heart.
Mark Medley: Yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end, I perceive that there's nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live.
Mark Medley: Also, that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all this toil.
Mark Medley: This is God's gift to man.
Mark Medley: I perceive that whatever God does endures forever.
Mark Medley: Nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it.
Mark Medley: God has done it so that people fear before Him that which is already has been, that which is to be already has been, and God seeks what has been driven away.
Mark Medley: Well, I admire the brilliance of God in putting different types of wisdom literature in the Bible.
Mark Medley: There's a lot of different kinds of it.
Mark Medley: He doesn't just say his wisdom in one way.
Mark Medley: You have the Psalms, and the Psalms are like wisdom in song form and it's real life and it's emotional and it's very relatable.
Mark Medley: So for those of us who need to connect emotionally, psalms are awesome for that.
Mark Medley: Proverbs are these pithy little sound bites, right, like I don't need your emotional, just give it to me straight, just give me the headlines, give me wisdom and enough sound bite.
Mark Medley: That's Proverbs Even puts wisdom in a love song.
Mark Medley: But but please, yes, these are really unique kind of wisdom.
Mark Medley: It's different wisdom and it's for different people.
Mark Medley: It's a it's cynical wisdom.
Mark Medley: Can you guess who it's for?
Mark Medley: It might be for you, well, it is for you for sure.
Mark Medley: It's like everything's everything is meaningless.
Mark Medley: But let's talk about it, because this is also an honest observation of a man who had experience not just opinion, but real experience in these kind of matters.
Mark Medley: And so Solomon is a man who's wrestling with life and trying to find meaning in it.
Mark Medley: And so Solomon is a man who takes time to go deep with the things that we don't usually take time to go deep about.
Mark Medley: To be honest, we don't think that deeply, not this deeply.
Mark Medley: Most of the time.
Mark Medley: Solomon is thinking about deep matters while we're watching TikTok videos or Netflix or whatever, but he's boldly going into these places that we're either like too lazy to go or too scared to go or too distracted to go.
Mark Medley: But he's asking hard questions and he's doing it honestly.
Mark Medley: The Greek philosopher Socrates famously said that the unexamined life is not worth living.
Mark Medley: But actually, 600 years before Socrates, solomon's writing these words, Solomon is thinking the same thing and he's examining life and he's asking the hard questions.
Mark Medley: If this Hebrew Bible was actually translated into Greek during Socrates time, it would have been pretty cool, because Socrates could have learned some things from Solomon, but thankfully we have it today in English, so we're going to learn from it today.
Mark Medley: So what have we learned so far that Solomon's told us about his search for meaning?
Mark Medley: He said that there's no real fulfillment in different types of gratification, so in money, or in sex, or in even in your job.
Mark Medley: There's some fulfillment there, and all of these are gifts from God.
Mark Medley: But there's still something gnawing at our souls and I think of it like so I'm grateful that I'm generally a healthy person, but one of the quirks of my body is that I am extremely allergic to poison ivy.
Mark Medley: Anybody out there, oh man, I feel you.
Mark Medley: I'm so sorry.
Mark Medley: When I was a kid I was a kid and a teenager.
Mark Medley: All those years I'd get poison ivy and I would have to go to the doctor and they would have to, like you know, give me special medicine.
Mark Medley: They would wrap my legs up, you know, with special solution, and it took weeks to heal.
Mark Medley: And you know, while it's healing it's itching and you can't really ever get away from the itch.
Mark Medley: It just keeps going.
Mark Medley: It just has to be.
Mark Medley: You know, when it goes away when it's healed, that's when it goes away it's like oh, and I think that's kind of like what Solomon is saying.
Mark Medley: Here we have what amounts to a bad case of poison ivy in our soul.
Mark Medley: There's something itching all the time and it's just keeps itching.
Mark Medley: It doesn't matter how you scratch it.
Mark Medley: It needs to be healed.
Mark Medley: That's what he's talking about.
Mark Medley: He's grappling with this, and when you're grappling with life and you're trying to find wisdom, you inevitably come around to the subject of time, because time is a master to all of us.
Mark Medley: I mean, we are all subject to time, whether we like it or not.
Mark Medley: We're under time and we see these words.
Mark Medley: Here he uses the word time and season, and eternity and forever, and that which has been and that which is going to be and that which is now, and so it's like.
Mark Medley: It's like there's a, there's a connection between wisdom and time and, more specifically, there's a connection between wisdom and our seasons, because this word he uses for time 30 times.
Mark Medley: I think I counted 30 times.
Mark Medley: Here he uses the word time 30 times.
Mark Medley: That word time is the word that really means an appointed time, like in a season.
Mark Medley: It's an appointed time, and so understanding your season is crucial to living a life of wisdom, and we can see that because the scripture says that the descendants of Issaqar in 1 Chronicles 12, men who had understanding of their times and they knew what Israel should do.
Mark Medley: Okay, I know what I ought to do because I understand my season.
Mark Medley: Do you see?
Mark Medley: There's a, there's a link there.
Mark Medley: If you, if you need guidance for your life, you're not sure what you're supposed to be doing right now.
Mark Medley: Think about this what is your season?
Mark Medley: What season is God got you in?
Mark Medley: Because seasons change and different seasons require different responses, and sometimes we'd rather just like why does everything have to change?
Mark Medley: Why can't we all just get it?
Mark Medley: We control freaks, right, we want it.
Mark Medley: Why can't we just get all right and then everything is right, and then just like hold your breath and don't move, nobody move.
Mark Medley: Let's keep it like this.
Mark Medley: But life is not like that ever.
Mark Medley: It changes, and so our seasons have to.
Mark Medley: Our seasons change, so our understanding of what we need to do changes, and Moses understood this too.
Mark Medley: Moses wrote a whole song about time.
Mark Medley: It's Psalm 90 and.
Mark Medley: And Moses, who actually lived more time on this earth than anyone here is likely to live, although Jack is approaching Moses.
Mark Medley: I don't know if you're trying to beat Moses or not, jack, but you're doing great so far.
Mark Medley: He lived longer than any of us, right?
Mark Medley: And here's what he said In Psalm 90.
Mark Medley: He said teaches to number our days are right, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Mark Medley: And I think that's really fascinating because he's saying God, I need to be taught.
Mark Medley: Teaches is not something that we have in our Self.
Mark Medley: We don't have this, this understanding, in our own ability.
Mark Medley: God teaches, teaches what to number, to number, and that word means really to get perspective on it, means Numbering, means to count out and to it has this, this connotation of order, ordering your days, like there's a right perspective, there's a right order, there's a proper godly order that we should have in our lives.
Mark Medley: Teach us to order Our time and time.
Mark Medley: It's interesting about time because time we use, we understand we have a limited amount, right.
Mark Medley: It's a commodity, like money.
Mark Medley: You get a limited amount of it, right.
Mark Medley: So you have to budget it.
Mark Medley: We spend, we spend time, we spend money, we invest time, we all these are like money terms, right.
Mark Medley: We invest time, we spend time, we waste time, we redeem time.
Mark Medley: It's like we use these economical terms when we talk about Time because it's a commodity and Moses is saying God teaches to count those days and the next word is to number our days.
Mark Medley: A right One version says correctly, a right, in other words, is a right way to do it.
Mark Medley: And it says teach us to number our days, because days are what we need to focus on, because if we get the days right, we get the years right, we get the life right.
Mark Medley: So it's not just look at your whole life, but look at your days and teach us to number our days so that we can Get a heart of wisdom.
Mark Medley: So there's this connection, right, wisdom, time, seasons, understanding time is part of getting wisdom.
Mark Medley: So this is a pretty well known passage in Ecclesiastes.
Mark Medley: Maybe you've heard of it before, maybe you've heard it preached from before.
Mark Medley: But there's a really a beautiful, some symmetry to this passage.
Mark Medley: There's a, it's a poem, it's the first actual poem in the book.
Mark Medley: It's actually a poem and it's like poetic magic.
Mark Medley: There's like there's 14 pairs of opposing events that all happen in the context of time.
Mark Medley: So this is like a poetic device.
Mark Medley: It's called mirrorism, where you list an extreme and another extreme and the.
Mark Medley: The idea is, the implication is everything involved In the middle is also.
Mark Medley: This is true about everything in the middle as well.
Mark Medley: In other words, everything in between those extremes is included.
Mark Medley: There's two sets of seven pairs.
Mark Medley: Seven is the number of completion.
Mark Medley: And so what's happening is, solomon is poetically given us this message that these truths are universal.
Mark Medley: They imply they apply to every aspect of our lives and, strangely, the conclusion that he comes to is that God makes everything beautiful in its time.
Mark Medley: It's he has both.
Mark Medley: There's both futility and there's wonder, wrapped up in this passage.
Mark Medley: It's really a Little bit strange and a little bit beautiful.
Mark Medley: And Solomon tells us your gifts, your seasons, your times are gifts from God.
Mark Medley: Really, all of them I Mean like the one you're in right now is a gift from God.
Mark Medley: Really, yeah, this tensions that you see in this poetry Are like, or they hit home, because life is full of tensions, right, life is full of these kind of tensions that he's communicating here, and so we tend to, we tend to think that one is better than the other.
Mark Medley: Right, because laughter is better than weeping, surely, right?
Mark Medley: Yeah, yeah, surely, being born is better than dying, right, loving is better than hating, is that right?
Mark Medley: But Solomon saying no, there's more to it than just that.
Mark Medley: It's not that simple.
Mark Medley: It's not as simple as polarizing your times, good and bad.
Mark Medley: We may need to adjust our thinking here, and so there's struggle and there's beauty.
Mark Medley: In all of our times, including the time that you're going through right now.
Mark Medley: There's struggle, but there's beauty.
Mark Medley: So when I began to sense that God might want me to write a book about how he's teaching me to handle grief in a Positive way from the Psalms of lament, I Just really couldn't see a way to write it.
Mark Medley: And, by the way it's in, that book is in the last stages of editing right now.
Mark Medley: My publisher is working with it and so it should be out later this year.
Mark Medley: But starting to write it was the was the hardest part, because how do you?
Mark Medley: I I couldn't see a way to write this book at all, because this is so deeply, intensely emotional.
Mark Medley: How do you write about what's Crushing you and pulling your heart into pieces?
Mark Medley: How do you write about this?
Mark Medley: How do you?
Mark Medley: And I'm a teacher and I see this pattern in the Psalms but how do you write about it?
Mark Medley: How do you write a teachy book about what you're feeling so deeply?
Mark Medley: Right, it's like this is there's no way.
Mark Medley: This is not even, because when you're in the depth of that grief, you, even you even kind of know that it's not as simple as just little steps to getting out of grief.
Mark Medley: There's something way deeper than that.
Mark Medley: So I, I didn't.
Mark Medley: I Didn't know how to do it.
Mark Medley: Yet I saw a pattern and I know the Lord was trying to, he was leading me to write it, but I couldn't see my ache.
Mark Medley: I'm a teacher and my ache is not academic.
Mark Medley: Does that make sense to you?
Mark Medley: My ache is real.
Mark Medley: It's like real.
Mark Medley: How do you do this?
Mark Medley: I don't like it, I don't want to do it.
Mark Medley: And then I took a bike ride on a brilliantly sunny afternoon by the river and over the ridges of my beautiful native East Tennessee, and by the end of that bike ride I felt like the Lord was was showing me a way that I could write this book, because the beauty of East Tennessee was affecting me.
Mark Medley: But the beauty of East Tennessee is not just the natural beauty, it's also the beauty of the people and it's also the beauty of the struggle, and I thought about my own family and the struggles that I heard from my, my ancestors, and how they Went through so many difficult things to stay here, to live here, to settle here, and also Melissa's side of the family.
Mark Medley: And so it's the beauty of the struggle and I began to see there's beauty in struggle and there's beauty in struggle because there's presence of God there.
Mark Medley: There's beauty in struggle because there's kindness there and there's strength there and there's deep roots in Jesus in your current struggle, in your time.
Mark Medley: God is sovereign over our times.
Mark Medley: Brothers and sisters, we tend to polarize our seasons though, like Complain to God about the bad times and then we kind of ignore the good times, like like we, we don't say much about the good times, we kind of expect them, like we're entitled to good times.
Mark Medley: But he says for everything there's a season, there's a point in time.
Mark Medley: How can that be?
Mark Medley: How is there a time to kill?
Mark Medley: How is there a time to break down?
Mark Medley: How is there a time to weep and mourn?
Mark Medley: Is it?
Mark Medley: Is there a time to hate?
Mark Medley: Is there a time for war?
Mark Medley: Solomon is observing.
Mark Medley: These things happen in a wonderfully beautiful but tragically fallen world, their Tensions.
Mark Medley: That's what he's saying and he's not ignoring it.
Mark Medley: Okay, so let's think about a minute.
Mark Medley: So just a few of the things that he says.
Mark Medley: He says there's a time for war, there's a time for peace.
Mark Medley: Is there a time for war.
Mark Medley: Does that mean God ordains war?
Mark Medley: That's a good question.
Mark Medley: I Think times of war and hate and death do not mean that God is God is any less present or any less Good or any less kind.
Mark Medley: In Ukraine I saw the effect of war on every level.
Mark Medley: I saw it a national level, I saw it on a community level, I saw it in a church level, I saw it in families, I saw it in personal people, in individual people.
Mark Medley: I saw it Economically, I saw it psychologically.
Mark Medley: War affects everything and I was trying to imagine a world without war and it will be a reality someday.
Mark Medley: Someday everything's going to be redeemed.
Mark Medley: But in the midst of that war and that struggle there was beauty, there were beautiful things being done by heroic people, and war can afford the opportunity for the most beautiful and brave and heroic actions that could never happen in the time of peace.
Mark Medley: My friend Marek is one example.
Mark Medley: Marek is the man who owned the property where we had this songwriter camp in Poland, and Marek is probably my age and his family and his wife's family during World War II were killed during the Nazi occupation.
Mark Medley: But they weren't killed by Nazis.
Mark Medley: It was all a big mess in that part of Poland and Ukraine.
Mark Medley: It was a big massacre of Ukrainians, or by Ukrainians on Polish people.
Mark Medley: These Ukrainians just rose up and killed their Polish neighbors by the thousands, even while the Nazis were taking over.
Mark Medley: It was a big mess.
Mark Medley: It was a big mess, but this is horrible atrocities that the Ukrainians did on the Polish people.
Mark Medley: And yet, my friend Marek, when the war broke out and these millions of Ukrainians came across the border in weeks, he immediately opened up his place.
Mark Medley: He can house over 50 people there.
Mark Medley: He immediately opened it up to Ukrainians and there were Ukrainians staying there.
Mark Medley: While we were there still, there were eight of them staying there still.
Mark Medley: Why would you open up your house to people whose descendants may be the very people who killed your descendants?
Mark Medley: Why would you do that?
Mark Medley: Well, we ask him why did you do this, marek?
Mark Medley: Why did you do it?
Mark Medley: And you know what he said If I don't forgive, I will not be forgiven.
Mark Medley: I thought well, this man's following Jesus.
Mark Medley: That's exactly what Jesus said.
Mark Medley: Anyway, further he said I can forgive because I have been forgiven.
Mark Medley: Beautiful things can happen in the midst of the tragedy of war and Solomon is simply observing here.
Mark Medley: Okay, there's a time for war, there's a time for peace, it happens.
Mark Medley: This is what he's saying Doesn't mean God is absent.
Mark Medley: He says there's time to mourn, and a time to dance Is one of those better than the other?
Mark Medley: Mourning and dancing?
Mark Medley: Well, we think so, don't we?
Mark Medley: Well, in a few weeks somebody's going to be preaching to you from Ecclesiastry 7, but I want to give you a little hint here, because here's what Solomon said it is better to go to the house of mourning than the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart.
Mark Medley: Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad.
Mark Medley: What the heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.
Mark Medley: What is this man talking?
Mark Medley: Is he not confused?
Mark Medley: What is he even saying?
Mark Medley: How can this be?
Mark Medley: He's saying there are things that we learn in the school of sorrow that we can never learn in the other way, and I can tell you that that's true.
Mark Medley: And I'm talking about foundational things, things that become a rock for your life, things about God, because grief is a great revealer.
Mark Medley: Grief just rips open the curtains and shows what's there in your own heart.
Mark Medley: It reveals what's in the heart of people around you.
Mark Medley: It reveals, most importantly, what's in the heart of God.
Mark Medley: You began to see God as you never saw him before, in the middle of your grief.
Mark Medley: It's a great teacher, and if we're going to live with understanding in any kind of light or wisdom in this world, we have to listen, even in times of sorrow.
Mark Medley: There's a time to mourn.
Mark Medley: There's a time to dance.
Mark Medley: God's present in both of those.
Mark Medley: Sometimes we mourn and dance in the same season.
Mark Medley: Well, he also says that there's a time to keep and a time to throw away.
Mark Medley: And I think I can almost hear some of you saying to your spouse see, the Bible says we need to have a garage sale, and that might be true.
Mark Medley: There's a time to get rid of it because it's cluttering your life.
Mark Medley: Right.
Mark Medley: But this is not just a garage sale mentality Might be, but it's more than that.
Mark Medley: There's a time to hold on to truth.
Mark Medley: That you know.
Mark Medley: I mean to wrap your arms and your legs around it and say I'm not letting this go, no matter what is being talked around.
Mark Medley: This is true and I know this is true.
Mark Medley: There's a time to let go of, throw away my own false ideas about myself or my own ideas about you that are not informed by the gospel, that I believe there's a time to throw away ideas because they're no good, they're not right, they're not, they're not God's ideas.
Mark Medley: There's a time to keep, there's a time to throw away.
Mark Medley: Paul said there's a time to put away childish things.
Mark Medley: I was a child and I spoke like a child and I behaved like a child.
Mark Medley: I understood like a child, but there was a time I became a man and I had to put away childish things.
Mark Medley: Sometimes it's time to grow up, brothers.
Mark Medley: It's time to grow up and be a man.
Mark Medley: There's a time Then he says there's a time to break down and a time to build up.
Mark Medley: I love it because it's a construction metaphor and every house flipper knows that you have to tear it down a little bit to build it back up.
Mark Medley: You can't make it what it is, what it could be, and less changing what it is right.
Mark Medley: You have to do that.
Mark Medley: But what if I don't like what's being torn out of my life?
Mark Medley: What if what's being torn out of your life is the very thing that's going to make you more like Jesus?
Mark Medley: Maybe what you're going through is not killing you, it's killing what's killing you.
Mark Medley: It could be so that you can actually live.
Mark Medley: What if I can't be built into what I could be without some of the things first being torn down?
Mark Medley: And construction is all about the end result.
Mark Medley: I actually was at one point in my life project manager of a $4 million building project and I learned a lot.
Mark Medley: Part of what I learned was it's not a big project, it's a whole bunch of little projects and a whole bunch of little projects that are moving toward one big end, and the end is always in sight.
Mark Medley: You have to start with the end in sight always, but the end product is always what the construction workers are working toward, right, the contractors working toward the end.
Mark Medley: Jesus is also working toward a finished result, right.
Mark Medley: He's walking with us relationally through processes, but there is a place he's taking us to.
Mark Medley: He's taking us to a place of maturity and is forming Christ inside of us, and tearing down is not always the enemy.
Mark Medley: That's what I'm trying to say that construction is messy and it's uncomfortable all the time.
Mark Medley: All right, some of you weren't here last week and you didn't hear the announcement that, because of the great growth that God's given us, we're going to two services.
Mark Medley: Derek mentioned it September 17th.
Mark Medley: We're gonna go to two services and, if we're thinking right, there's no way to see this but blessing, because the things we prayed for for years God's giving us and we're living in his blessing.
Mark Medley: But score require changes.
Mark Medley: So I heard something from pastor Ray Hughes one time that will help us a lot in life if we understand it.
Mark Medley: So actually, you might want to take a picture of this or take some notes.
Mark Medley: This is really good.
Mark Medley: Healthy things grow, growing, things change, changing things challenge us.
Mark Medley: It's challenging.
Mark Medley: Things drive us to God.
Mark Medley: Going to God leads to trusting God.
Mark Medley: Trust leads to obedience.
Mark Medley: Obedience makes us healthy.
Mark Medley: Healthy things grow, growing things change.
Mark Medley: Changing things challenge us.
Mark Medley: It's, it's a big cycle.
Mark Medley: Growing into maturity is a cycle, but if you know it, if you're, if you see the big picture, it doesn't surprise you when it happens.
Mark Medley: You don't freak out because you're challenged by something and Something is driving you to God.
Mark Medley: This is this is really important.
Mark Medley: You know, if we're going to grow, there's a constant cycle of change.
Mark Medley: There's a time to tear it down, there's a time to build up, there's a time to go to services.
Mark Medley: I Through that in there, but I think it's true, but here's what.
Mark Medley: Here's the thing.
Mark Medley: Solomon says all this about time and then he says this.
Mark Medley: He says God has made everything beautiful in its time, in its time.
Mark Medley: Okay, and I thought, what?
Mark Medley: How do you?
Mark Medley: How do you understand that?
Mark Medley: Well, I can understand it pretty easily, because what I love about summer in East Tennessee is Ripe fruits and vegetables are like one of the great joys of life.
Mark Medley: All right, I ate a tomato last week.
Mark Medley: It tasted like a tomato and they taste good when they taste like a tomato.
Mark Medley: I Came back in time to get like the end of the peach harvest one of my favorite things.
Mark Medley: Man, I had a cantaloupe last week.
Mark Medley: That was the sweetest thing, it was great.
Mark Medley: I've got some apples on my tree now and there there is so laden down, it's like there's it's a bumper crop, but if you try to eat them right now it's not gonna be pleasant, really bitter.
Mark Medley: So when they're not ripe yet, it's bitter.
Mark Medley: When they're past ripe, it's rotten.
Mark Medley: But in the middle there's a beautiful season In season is beautiful, right.
Mark Medley: There's a window of beauty and I love that.
Mark Medley: And if God is sovereign over our seasons, do you believe that he is able to help you to see the beauty in your current season.
Mark Medley: Do you believe there's?
Mark Medley: There's beauty there in your current season?
Mark Medley: And I'm speaking, maybe, to some people who are in a difficult time.
Mark Medley: We were praying this morning with the pastors, and, and John prayed especially for people who are going through rough times and I think this might be, this might be a good.
Mark Medley: You know, this might be a reason we're in Ecclesiastes 3 today, right, because we have to understand God's.
Mark Medley: We have to understand God's the sovereign.
Mark Medley: He's sovereign over our seasons, and last week Kelly said he mentioned that phrase carpe diem sees the day, you know, and I just kind of like to expand it a little bit and say we have to seize our season.
Mark Medley: Yeah, seize the day, make the most of the day, redeem the time is how the bible puts it.
Mark Medley: Right, but seize your season.
Mark Medley: God is always acting, he's always moving for his purposes.
Mark Medley: So I need to not only endure my seasons, like my difficult seasons, not just endure them, but press in and listen, actively listen, learn and grow from them.
Mark Medley: Seize your season, because Solomon says it's a gift from God.
Mark Medley: Even this season it's a gift from God and if you got to go through it, at least learn something from it right, redeem it Wherever you are.
Mark Medley: That's where you are, and so you got to be all there.
Mark Medley: That's pretty profound, isn't it?
Mark Medley: I should have put that on the screen.
Mark Medley: Can't change the past, we can't control the future, but we really, all we really have is right now.
Mark Medley: So how are you stewarding right now?
Mark Medley: How are you stewarding your today?
Mark Medley: That's the thing, because God's God says it's a gift to you.
Mark Medley: And yet Solomon doesn't stop there.
Mark Medley: He talks about time and everything.
Mark Medley: All these things have their time, but there's more than time.
Mark Medley: There's eternity.
Mark Medley: And this is what makes this passage so profound to me is that it's a realistic look at the time, but then it's like also a realistic look Like lift your heads up a little bit from present circumstances, because there's there's eternity as well.
Mark Medley: And Solomon makes this statement, this declaration, which is really profound, that God has put eternity in our hearts.
Mark Medley: God's put eternity in our hearts.
Mark Medley: There's something inside of us that translates into our hearts.
Mark Medley: There's something inside of us that transcends time and deep inside of us we know that there's something more than what we experienced by our senses.
Mark Medley: We know that that's the itch right.
Mark Medley: Things that are limited to time and our finite earth can never really Satisfy us, because we're created in the image of eternal God and he's put eternity in our hearts.
Mark Medley: So we have to add something outside of time to our lives in order to be fulfilled.
Mark Medley: We have to add something outside of time to our lives in order to be fulfilled.
Mark Medley: Cs Lewis said it this way I find in myself a desire.
Mark Medley: If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
Mark Medley: If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud.
Mark Medley: Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.
Mark Medley: I think that's what Solomon is really saying here.
Mark Medley: God has put eternity in our hearts.
Mark Medley: The CS Lewis is saying the shadow proves the sunshine.
Mark Medley: That's what he's saying.
Mark Medley: He's saying the emptiness proves the fullness is what we were made for.
Mark Medley: So when Solomon says everything is meaningless, he's saying that every endeavor we put our hand to on this time-bound earth is not enough to scratch that itch of an internal being, that thing that God's put in our hearts.
Mark Medley: So the question is today, what am I looking to fulfill my life.
Mark Medley: All these things have their time, but do I think they can fill the void in my life?
Mark Medley: And this is where the book points to Jesus?
Mark Medley: And because the fullness that fills our hearts came to us from eternity.
Mark Medley: It came to us in the fullness of time.
Mark Medley: Paul put it this way in Galatians 4.
Mark Medley: But when the fullness of time had come, god sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoptions as sons.
Mark Medley: The fullness of time this is what our time-bound hearts are longing for is eternity stepped into time.
Mark Medley: And the very last verse of this book, or the last few verses of this book, solomon kind of gives his whole statement on the meaning of life and he says this is the conclusion of the matter Fear God, keep His commandments, because this is the whole duty of man.
Mark Medley: And the problem with that is we all know that none of us have fully kept the commandments of God.
Mark Medley: None of us have done our duty, and there's a problem there, right?
Mark Medley: But there's one who perfectly obeyed all the commandments of God, living a sinless life, and he broke into time from eternity with eternal life, and he offers it to us today.
Mark Medley: Even this book is pointing to Jesus.
Mark Medley: Jesus submitted himself to time in order to free us for eternity.
Mark Medley: In Jesus' ministry there was a time he plucked up, there's a time he planted.
Mark Medley: There was a time that he gathered and there was a time that he scattered.
Mark Medley: There was a time that he spoke and it was a time he kept silence.
Mark Medley: It was a time he was a prince of peace and it was a time he went to war on our behalf.
Mark Medley: In Ephesians 1, paul said it this way God revealed his hidden design to us, which is according to his good will and the plan that he intended to accomplish through his Son.
Mark Medley: This is what God planned for the climax of all times, the time of times.
Mark Medley: This is what God planned to bring all things together in Christ, the things in heaven along with the things on earth.
Mark Medley: Time wraps up in the eternal one, jesus, and it's always been God's plan and we're part of it today.
Mark Medley: So even this journey through meaninglessness is pointing us to Jesus Christ.
Mark Medley: I think we all understand the itch and we all understand the life apart.
Mark Medley: I don't know, you guys, what we're going to sing that song this morning, but it's you kind of saying part of my sermon life apart from God is meaningless.
Mark Medley: But God is calling to us in our time-bound, meaningless life, pulling us, drawing us into an eternal existence, the life we were meant to be created.
Mark Medley: In Jesus.
Mark Medley: We have life and we have it to the full, and that's beautiful.
Mark Medley: So what does it mean for us?
Mark Medley: I think there may be three things we can do today.
Mark Medley: So, once you stand up, and maybe whatever applies to you, you can pray this If an unexamined life is not worth living, then let's examine our life today.
Mark Medley: Okay, for those of us who trust Jesus Christ as our Savior, maybe the question is are we frustrated because we're searching for fulfillment in the things that can never fill us?
Mark Medley: Are there things that we're looking to for satisfaction, for identity, for significance, for security or for provision that only can come in Him?
Mark Medley: He's the only source of it.
Mark Medley: Maybe that's a point of repentance for us this morning and also for those of us who know Jesus.
Mark Medley: Let's don't forget that people we meet every day have eternity in their hearts.
Mark Medley: I'm not saying they have eternal life, I'm saying that they have eternity in their hearts.
Mark Medley: They have something that wants eternal things.
Mark Medley: Whether they show any interest or not.
Mark Medley: Deep down inside, they know there's something more that this life just doesn't fulfill, and many of them are so ready to hear the good news.
Mark Medley: Let's not forget that and let's just offer it.
Mark Medley: Let's offer this eternal to all these time bound people around us right and to those who are not following Jesus.
Mark Medley: I just want to remind you the last verse that we read today.
Mark Medley: The very last verse in our passage said God seeks what has been driven away.
Mark Medley: God seeks what has been driven away.
Mark Medley: I don't know.
Mark Medley: I don't know if you feel apart from God, maybe distant from God.
Mark Medley: Maybe there's something you feel like has pushed you away or driven you away from God.
Mark Medley: Maybe there's something in your past or your family or your church experience or your personality, or you just feel like you're away.
Mark Medley: I just want to tell you that God is seeking for you this morning.
Mark Medley: He is seeking for those who are driven away.
Mark Medley: So, father, thank you for your word, and I know that there's so much more in it than we can deal with this morning.
Mark Medley: But I also know that you want to challenge us.
Mark Medley: You want to comfort us, you want to point us in the right direction, but you also want to challenge us and draw us up into a place of deeper relationship with you.
Mark Medley: So, lord, I want to pray for all of us, but I pray for all of us who trust Jesus Christ but maybe don't see the ways that we are looking for fulfillment and stuff that can never fulfill us.
Mark Medley: Lord, would you help us, would you turn our hearts away from that?
Mark Medley: Lord?
Mark Medley: We don't want to be the ones who forsake the living water and hew out for us ourselves these broken cisterns that can't ever hold water.
Mark Medley: Lord, we don't want to be those people.
Mark Medley: We want to turn to you the living water, and we want to drink deeply of you, lord.
Mark Medley: So teach us, lord, teach us, show us where we don't see these things and draw us into that place where we're always drawing from you.
Mark Medley: Lord, that's what we're praying, god.
Mark Medley: I pray for those people who are around us this week and I pray for divine appointments this week, and you would give us the boldness, lord, to push past any timidness or any thoughts that maybe these people don't want to hear what I have to say that we can see people and have a love in our heart for them, so that we can see that they're hungry for what's eternal, and give us grace to offer them what's eternal, lord, and let people be born again this week.
Mark Medley: God from us and Lord, also, I want to pray for the people who feel like they've been driven away or feel so far apart from you, lord, when I ask that they would be able to feel your heart for them and sense your drawing to them, that you're drawing them to yourself and that you long for them, that they would acknowledge this eternal that's in their own hearts, god, and that they would turn to you, lord, and pray for that.
Mark Medley: And, lord, I just want to pray also that you would take these words and that you would do what you want to in our hearts this week with them, that you bring them back by your Holy Spirit to our remembrance and teach us and I pray your blessing on this congregation, lord that you would bless everyone, that you would keep everyone, that you would cause your face to shine on everyone, that you would be gracious to everyone and every household, lord, that you would lift your countenance up on each of us.
Mark Medley: God, you would give peace to everyone.
Mark Medley: I pray this in the name of the Prince of Peace, jesus, amen.