Everything God Does Lasts Forever

Join us as Pastor Tyler continues in the sermon series, Ecclesiastes - The Joy of Pursuing God - Everything God Does Lasts Forever - Ecc. 3:1-15

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Scripture that we're going to be focusing on this morning in the sermon and in our scripture reading is Ecclesiastes 3, 1 through 15, Ecclesiastes 3. So if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn to Ecclesiastes 3 with me as we read these 15 verses. Verse 1. There is an occasion for everything and a time for every activity under heaven. A time to give birth and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill, and a time to heal. A time to tear down, a time to build up, a time to weep, a time to laugh, a time to mourn, and a time to dance. A time to throw stones and a time to gather stones. A time to embrace and a time to avoid embracing. A time to search and a time to count as lost. A time to keep and a time to throw away. A time to tear and a time to sow. A time to be silent and a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate. A time for war and a time for peace. And what does the worker gain from his struggles? I have seen the task that God has given the children of Adam to keep them occupied. He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has put eternity in their hearts. But no one can discover the work God has done from beginning to end. And I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and enjoy the good life. It is also the gift of God. Whenever anyone eats, drinks, and enjoys all of his efforts, I know that everything God does will last forever. There is no adding to it or taking from it. God works so that the people will be in awe of him. Whatever is has already been, and whatever will be already is. However, God seeks justice for the persecuted. This is the word of the Lord. Today we are looking at in Ecclesiastes, continuing our series, the joy of pursuing God. We're looking at everything God does lasts forever. Everything our God, Yahweh, does lasts forever. Even this past week at the end of VBS, there were some sad faces on Friday because it was coming to an end. You know, as human beings, we are uh nostalgic by design. We have this ability to look with fondness on the things that have taken place, even to the point where we forget even some of the challenges along the way. Uh it's it's interesting the amount of families you talk to. They've had babies before, but it's almost like you forget all of the pain of having a baby by the time the next baby comes along. But we're like that. We look back with gratefulness, with fondness. Sometimes we can forget the challenges, the difficulties. Things coming to an end and changes in the seasons of life can be painful. They can be difficult, they can be challenging, they can also be exciting. Because life is full of these seasons, isn't it? Or even like in today's passage, we're going to see these extremes. If you think about it, we live a lot for the extreme. We live for the one part of the story and the next part of the story. There's things that happen in life that surprise us. We'll find in today's passage, Yahweh, though, he's unchanging. And this should bring us comfort to know that our God doesn't operate in changing extremes. He's not flip-flopping between one and the other. He is who he is, and he does what he does, and it's always done with an eternal significance and of eternal importance. And that's what Ecclesiastes 3 helps us see. So we're going to look at two things briefly this morning, and that is God rules over the time of everything, in verses 1 through 8, and then we're going to see that God's actions always have an eternal purpose, verses 9 through 15. So God rules over the timing of everything. Everything has a beginning, everything has an end. Everything has its time, everything has its place. And this is what this whole section is all about. And verse 1, there is an occasion for everything and a time for every activity under heaven. Koholet, or if you want to, you can also pronounce him kolate, depending on if you want to pronounce it the Hebrew way or the English way. But he is describing this cycle of life that God has orchestrated for all of us. If you've lived any significant amount of time, you've been through these kinds of cycles. You know these cycles probably pretty good. And even as you're reading it, you could see yourself planted in one area of these cycles, depending on whatever it is you might be going through. But really, what's happening here is there's an important way for us to process this passage. And that is instead of wishing that our life would be fitter, instead of wishing that our life would be faster, would be slower, would be better, would be less stressful, would be more stressful. I don't know who's wishing for that, but maybe somebody is, we should ultimately be asking ourselves questions like: how am I living in the goodness of God today? How is God's goodness playing out in my life today? How am I thankful for what I have today? Am I enjoying what He's established to be good for me? Or am I chasing more? Am I chasing after other things? You know what this cycle does in these verses? It shows us that there's this uncomfortable middle that exists between each of these extremes. There's an uncomfortable middle. And trusting God's timing teaches us to live in the uncomfortable middle with God and ultimately with Jesus. Verse 2, it begins this way, showing us these extremes in this cycle. A time to give birth and a time to die. He begins with the broadest of all encompassing extremes, the broadest of all pictures. You're born and you die. And everything in between, all of life. This is your dash on the gravestone. You know, I've been thinking about this recently, especially as you study church history, you see this, but it's really too bad that churches don't have graveyards like they used to. If you drive through some small towns in Ontario or even in different places, they've got these small old churches, and what's right beside that small old church is a graveyard. And there is a day when people that would be going to that church, they would bury their family in that graveyard. So as you're arriving to church, you're reminded of the faithful saints who have gone before you, who are now with the Lord in eternity. And as you're leaving church, you're reminded of the faithful saints who have gone before you, and that someday you will join them in that graveyard. And we in our lives and in our culture, like we've desensitized death. We've tried to do away with death. We've turned a funeral that's for mourning and grieving, death and sin into a celebration of life. But this verse, I love how this verse just all-encompassing birth and don't forget death. There's a time to plant, there's a time to uproot. And verse three, he continues, and this is where we we exist in these uncomfortable extremes. We we start to see this. There's a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build up. Um we see this in Israel's own history: a time to kill and a time to heal. Where the law of God required them to punish things accordingly, to punish sin accordingly. A time to kill and a time to heal. You know, this reminds me of a story that I was told uh years ago of a Canadian World War II soldier who was wounded overseas only to be saved and treated by a German soldier. And that man lived to tell that story. The Lord used the most unlikely of person in the most unlikely of situation to heal this man. But we live in those uncomfortable extremes of life, right? Kill, heal, tear down, build up. We celebrate when buildings are built, and we watch them as they disintegrate over time, and then they are torn down. All of this is what happens in life. And then we see in verse 4, he continues a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn, and a time to dance. This reminds me of Romans 12, 15, rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep, rejoicing and weeping, loving, laughing, mourning and dancing, all of these are God-given times designated in our lives. Did you ever think about that? The grief we experience, God has given that to us as a time of our life to experience. The laughter, the dancing, we saw a little bit of dancing up on our stage this morning. All of these things, God in his fullness and his greatness, has given us these times. And verse 5, a time to throw stones and a time to gather stones, a time to embrace and a time to avoid embracing. Now, this is uh described, this whole uh stones, gathering them, throwing them and then gathering them, um, is described by a commentator as this standard practice that would take place in the Old Testament times for conquering enemies, both to scatter stones at their neighbors in their enemies' fields to make them unproductive. So they would throw in scatter stones. We see this happening in 2 Kings 3 and Isaiah 5. And then what they would do is they would gather stones for the purpose of preparing a highway to advance of uh for the for the advancement of the victorious soldiers, and we see that in Isaiah 62. So there is a there's a time to gather stones, there's a there's a time to throw stones. And then it continues here in verse 5 um a time to embrace and a time to avoid embracing. You know, some of us are huggers, you know, uh, some of us aren't huggers. And I always love seeing those two people meet. I remember uh we were at a church years ago doing ministry, and uh we were greeted by uh this lovely lady. She had a name tag, the Minister of Hugs, Sunday morning. I mean, even just remember uh hugging during COVID? Oh wow. Um Pastor Jack will be handing out hugs following the service. But be careful because he might see it as a time to throw stones. So but there's so much wisdom to this. That there's a time to embrace, there's a time to avoid embracing. So let's not be offended either way. And then verse 6 continues this thought. There's a time to search, there's a time to count as lost. You know, there are some great spiritual applications here, even to that statement. If you just you just think about it, how God seeks to save the lost. We think of Luke 15, but he also hands sinners over to their sin in Romans 1. Have you ever lost something? Only to give up looking for it, and then months or maybe even years later you find it under the couch? Well, sometimes there's a time to just okay, can't find it. It's time to move on. This is um, and then we see this uh a time to keep and a time to throw away, verse six. This is for all the uh people out there the oh uh I'm gonna use that someday, kinds of people. Just remember there's a time also to throw away. Verse uh verse seven, a time to tear and a time to sow. A time to be silent, a time to speak. A time to tear and a time to sow. Be silent and speak. Reminds me of James 1.19. Slow to speak. James 3.8 calls the tongue a restless evil full of deadly poison. And in the many proverbs we have in the book of Proverbs that are given about us being slow to speak. I love what Ambrose of Milan talks about, uh one of the church fathers from the fourth and fifth century, he says this. He says, How many have I seen to fall into sin by speaking, but scarcely one by keeping silent. And it is more difficult to know how to keep silent than how to speak. I know that most persons speak because they do not know how to keep silent. It is seldom that anyone is silent, even when speaking profits him nothing. He is wise then, who knows how to keep silent, who knows how to shut his mouth. You know, silence is golden, but it can also be cowardly. And so that's why our teacher, preacher here, um, Kohelate, that's why he gives us this extreme. There's a time to speak, but there's also a time to be silent. And we have to use our wisdom in knowing what is what. And what I love about this is this displays for us God's perfect wisdom and the perfect balance that he brings to everything he does. And verse eight, there's a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. And the idea here is that as people of God, we would love the right things and we would hate the right things. We would hate the things that God hates, love the things that God loves, we would hate things like sin and injustice, senseless destruction, but we would love and cherish the things that he does. The Bible, the Word of God, it's packed full of examples of this, but we love the Bible, we love the Lord, we love Jesus, we love salvation, we love his church, we love one another, we love the things that he loves, we hate the things that he hates. And the Bible also shows us this balance in this time for war and a time for peace, as we're reminded of examples throughout scripture of times of war and examples of times of peace. And each are part of God's amazing plan in the cycle of life that He has brought together for us. But like I said earlier, these things are difficult for us because they're nuanced. They require discernment. They're not black and white. And some of us really struggle with that. We want things to be more plainly black and white in Scripture. And so, do you know what we do? We find preachers or teachers or whoever, people that will be black and white, but not in areas that scripture is. And we'll be drawn to that. But there's so much that just that just isn't. And that's what the teacher is showing here. There's times to love and times to hate. There's there's times to kill and times to heal. Much of life is lived in the uncomfortable middle. It's not about knowing what time it is, but knowing whose time it is. And who is there with us in those times is the Lord our God. He exists with us in the uncomfortable. We struggle with this because we long for control. We long for predictability. And whenever our kingdoms or our control or our predictability are threatened, we lose our minds. We live for his kingdom. This is his kingdom. We find our wisdom. It's him being with us. Us being with him daily. And this is what the uh author, uh, Kohlate, he gets into here in verses 9 to 15 and goes on, God's actions uh always have an eternal purpose. And so he's bringing these things together. God's actions always have an eternal purpose. You know, one of the most difficult theological things for us to accept as Christians is that we don't see the big picture. I'm convinced of it. It's probably the most difficult theological concept. We pride ourselves in knowing all of this knowledge about theology and God and studying church history, and it's amazing, it's wonderful, I love all that stuff. I bring Up often. I study it often. But you want to know the stuff that we really struggle with? Do I actually trust God? Do I accept that I don't have the big picture, but he does? Everything God does has an eternal purpose. Most things we do serve only this temporary purpose, right? We talked about last week. We go to work, to make money, to eat, to sleep, wake up the next day, we do the same thing. We are like living every day just to just to like survive. But that's not how God plans things. That's not how God thinks about things. You know, we we yearn to know God's eternal plans, but here's the problem: we can't. We can't. But we strive. We just want to know. We want to understand, but we can't. And this isn't cruelty on God's part. It's a reflection of our own limitations because of our sin and our fallen condition. And it should be a humbling thought for us. Lord, I can't understand it all, only you can. I need to trust you with this. You know, trying to explain God and his eternal plans to us is like trying to explain advanced physics to a two-year-old. We've raised a couple two-year-olds. They can be brilliant sometimes. But two-year-olds are two-year-olds. The problem isn't with the teacher, it's with the limitations of the two-year-old. And God in his grace and mercy has revealed himself to us through his word. He's brought it down to a level for us to get some understanding. We're going to understand some things. But look at how the author, how he just, he really explains this for us in these verses. Starting verse 9, he says, What does the worker gain from his struggles? I have seen the tasks that God has given the children of Adam to keep them occupied. He has made everything appropriate in its time. God has given these things. Did you see that? He's given us things just to keep us occupied. Wow. In uh the CSB, it says God gave children of Adam. In other translations, like the ESV, it says children of man. Well, Adam, man, it's the same word in the Hebrew, means the same thing. So it's really uh whenever you see man, you get you think connection to Adam. Okay, now we don't get that until we get the Romans, but anyways, just another point for uh learning Hebrew. But you see the connection to man. So most literally, um uh the most literal translation of this is children of Adam. Now here it says God gave man a task to keep him occupied, to keep us occupied, children of Adam. And if you think back to Genesis 3, 17 to 19, you know, right after the fall of Adam and Eve, and God says, okay, well, this is because of what you've done, this is now uh what's going to happen. And what does he tell Adam? He basically just says, you know, get used to pulling weeds. It's gonna be hard work. Um, he gives Adam a bunch of work. Did you ever notice that? Gives Adam a bunch of work to do. And I and I wonder if there is something here more to the hard work God instructed Adam, um, more than just a punishment. Was it just a punishment? Or maybe, you know, there's some real wisdom here, knowing that it would be good for Adam to work. Yes, consequence of sin, but don't be idle. We see this in 1 Timothy 5, 13, 2 Thessalonians, Proverbs 10, Proverbs 12, Proverbs 19 hints at the importance of working with our hands, being busy. So there are some, as we know, there are some real spiritual and emotional benefits to being occupied with what the Lord has called us to do. See, we, if you think about it, we are dependent on the work God has assigned to us to keep us occupied, but also to keep us alive. We need to eat, we need clothes, we need to sleep. We're gonna repeat the cycle. Verse 11, he uh he goes on, he has made everything appropriate and it's time. So we get this idea, nothing that God does is ill-timed. So back to that question: how are you with his timing? With trusting. And then he's put eternity in our hearts, in us, not in animals, but in us, in humans. And um, or cole again, however you want to pronounce it, goes on, and he brings this up further in chapter three and in chapter four. The idea that we are made with eternity in our hearts. Just think about that. God has made you and I with eternity in our hearts. That He, we are special to Him. He hasn't put eternity in the heart of anything else but humanity. And He's put eternity in your heart and in mind, being an eternal God, that's important. Because that means He wants us around. But no, He put eternity in your heart. And then he goes on to say, even though you have eternity in your heart, no one can discover the work God has done from the beginning to the end. So just think about the track with me on this one. Even with eternity in our hearts and eternity on the horizon, eternity isn't enough for us to learn about our infinite God. We'll be infinitely, eternally learning about Him. There is no promise in Scripture that once we get to heaven, all of a sudden everything's gonna be enlightened for you. You're gonna understand all these things. But rather, what the writer seems to be acknowledging here, like you're gonna be learning about God for all of eternity. We're not told we'll be able to ask questions. Maybe we will, we don't know. But we know one thing, and it's important. We're even learning about God for all of eternity. Eternity can't even capture our God. That's how amazing He is. And then verses 12 to 13, I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to enjoy the good life. It is also the gift of God whenever anyone eats, drinks, and enjoys all his efforts. If that's eternity and we can't completely understand God, then what about now? Well, enjoy life. All the gifts that God has given. And again, we saw this last week, repeated here. Enjoy eating, enjoy drinking, enjoy working. And then it goes on, verse 14. I know that everything God does will last forever. There is no adding to it, there's no taking from it. God's work, God works so that people would be in awe of him. Everything God does is eternal, but it's for an eternal purpose. You and I have no influence on what God does. But he does all things so that we would be in awe of him. Did you see that? He does everything he does so that we would look at him with wonder and with awe. He does everything he does for us, but nothing we do impacts what he does. This isn't this kind of awe or this fear that avoids him, but it's an awe. It's a fear that's drawn to him. And Paul Tripp talks about it this way in his book, Awe. He says, only when awe of God rules your heart will you be able to keep the pleasures of the material world in their proper place. You see, when we see God, we see his wonder, we see his beauty, we see the greatness of his work, and we're humbled, and we can't help but look at him. This is an awe in which we would enjoy him, finding comfort and hope in him, being amazed by him. We are not the masters of the universe. You and I are not the orchestrators of our own destiny. Yahweh is. We can't reverse what he's ordained, we can't supplement what we believe may be missing or lacking. And he closes this section with verse 15. Whatever is has already been, or whatever will be, already is. However, God seeks justice for the persecuted. Do you see the heart of God there? Seeking justice for the persecuted. Yes, all of these things he's decided independently of us, but he has a heart of justice, he has a heart of love, he has a heart of care, and he has a heart of compassion. We have eternity in our hearts. The rest of chapter 3 and chapter 4, we learn more about this justice and how the justice even has an eternal purpose. That just as the animals, or even beasts, as some translations put it, or cattle, as other translations put it, all those are good translations of that word. We too are made from dust, and we live and we die. But death is different for us because as the writer will go on to explain, we have eternity in our hearts. We will be judged. Animals aren't being judged, humans are. The ones with eternity in their hearts. Judgment is waiting. The Lord seeks justice for sin. He seeks justice for the sin we've committed, but Jesus. And that's what we're gonna celebrate in the Lord's Supper today. But Jesus took on our judgment in our place. Galatians 3 13. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. Because it is written, Curse is anyone who is hung on a tree. Animals die, there is no judgment. We die, and there is. Chapter 4 will describe that there's no comfort, there's no rest. We experience loneliness in life. Just again, highlighting this whole thing. Nothing in this life can bring satisfaction to these things. But Jesus does. He's our comfort, he's our hope, he's our rest. He's the answer to these cycles of life. He lives and exists with us in that uncomfortable middle. He wants to live and exist with us for eternity. He wants to give all of us what we need to live as being people in awe of our great God, enjoying the life that He's given. So we're gonna celebrate that in just a moment in the Lord's Supper. Let's pray, Father. We thank you for your great love and your great care. We thank you that everything you do lasts forever. Our salvation lasts forever. You put eternity into our hearts, our souls last forever. Being the eternal God, you want to be with us. So you put eternity in our hearts, Father. How grateful and thankful and how in awe we are of you. As we draw near to you now at the Lord's table, we celebrate with one another. May our hearts just be drawn to your goodness and your grace in our lives. We pray in Jesus' name.

unknown 35:39

Amen.