A Time For Everything Series

Don’t miss the word “season,” which refers to a long duration and the word “time” which speaks of a point in time. Psalm 31:15 says, “My times are in your hand…” The word “matter” refers to our desires or willful acts. This is fleshed out in Ecclesiastes 3:17: “…for there is a time for every matter and for every work.”

Let’s pull this together in one statement: “Because God has a reason for each season in our life, we can trust His timing.” The solution to finding satisfaction in life is the sovereign providence of God. The only resolution to the meaninglessness of life is to accept that our Almighty God is working His ways and His will for His good purposes, even when we don’t understand, or don’t agree with what He is doing.

The easiest way to remember what God’s providence means is to focus on the root of the word, which is to “provide.” Providence is the preserving and governing of all things under the intentional sovereign rule of God. Here’s a helpful definition: “Divine providence is the governance of God by which He, with wisdom and love, cares for and directs all things in the universe.”

As we’ve said before, God is always at work...and sometimes we get to see it. The challenge is to trust His providence even when we don’t see Him working or don’t like the situation we’re are in.

One pastor says it well: “God is in control, and in the mysterious administration of His wise providence – He permits certain things to happen at certain seasons or times. I understand that, believe that, and accept it. This acknowledgement of God’s ownership of time and the way He set this up, helps me to live here with some sense of sanity, balance, and confidence in the One who is above time…in His time, everything happens without ever taking Him by surprise.”

We would be wise to agree with Job who declared in Job 42:2: “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.” The New Living Translation reads, “I know that you can do anything, and no one can stop you.” To say it another way, because God is with you, He’ll get you through.

Because God has a reason for each season in our life, we can trust His timing.

Now, let’s make some observations.

Observations

1. This passage is a Hebrew poem. While other parts of the Bible utilize poetry, this poem is unique in three ways.

• Repetition. The word “time” is repeated 28 different times in verses 2-8.

• Parallelism. The structure of the poem utilizes antithetic, regular, and inverted parallelism, which translates easily from Hebrew into hundreds of other languages.

• Merisms. A merism is a combination of two contrasting polarities to refer to the whole. In Ecclesiastes 3, the extremes of “born” and “die” in verse 2 speak of the whole of human nature, while “weep” and “laugh” in verse 4 represent the entirety of human emotions.

2. There’s a definite orderliness to what God does. One commentator writes, “The universe has a flow and regularity to it that is beyond any human control…the wise person lives life in the light of this massive truth.” His sovereignty has a chronology, fleshed out in our times and seasons. These events come into our lives and we’re often helpless to control their arrival or their departure. Right now, at this very moment, God reigns and is working out His ways and His will in and through the seasons in your life.