Chase The Wind Or Stand On The Rock

Chase the Wind or Stand on the Rock

Text: Ecclesiastes 3:1-17

THANKSGIVING AND PRAYER

If you will, take your Bibles this morning and open them up to the Book of Ecclesiastes.

I’ve been looking a lot at the wisdom literature from Scripture recently, and I don’t know about all of you, but in these times that we’re living in, I know that I personally need a lot of wisdom. I need wisdom to understand, to discern, and process the information that seems to flood our ears and overwhelm our minds. I mean, let’s just be honest here. There’s a lot of darkness and wickedness out there in the world today. A lot of lies and falsehoods, and misinformation being pushed around by so called experts, and the talking heads of news corporations, and even in the Church, we have leaders who are pushing Marxism, and false doctrine… Wolves in sheep’s clothing is what the Lord called them. And every day, there seems to be some new, world shattering event that is going to lead to our destruction, or our demise.

And it’s been that way for some time, but it’s ramping up it seems.

In 1971 scientists were saying it’s going to be global cooling, and in 77’ they said we’re just a few years from another ice age. In 1999 it was global warming, and in 2001 they said in about 20 years or so parts of the east and west coast would be under water.

In 2001 scientists were warning us of West Nile Virus, then in 2003 it was SARS (which is actually the first strain of Covid), Swine Flu in 2009, Bird Flu in 2015, Zika in 2017, and now Covid – 19. We’ve got wars and rumors of wars… China moving towards global dominance and the US seems to be in its pocket. We’ve got 20 years in Afghanistan and the Taliban are now back in control of that country and our government is negotiating with them as if they were a legitimate state.

What I’m trying to say is that we live in a sinful and fallen world, and all of creation is groaning for the Day of Redemption. It seems like everything is moving so rapidly and changing so fast that it’s impossible to keep up with it all. And in the last year or so, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard politicians, or the so called experts say something like, “Well we’ve got to get so many vaccinations in order to return to normal.” Or “wearing masks is the ‘New Normal’”. And before that, it was “We’ve got to address the grievances of BLM and Antifa, to get back to normal.” And before that it was something else. Let me just tell you all something. All of that – everything I just mentioned is the result of a fallen world. And it should make us all – if you’re a Christian… it should make us all, long for the Day of the Lord. It should make us all long for the Day when Jesus returns and sets all things right once more. It should make us all uncomfortable and realize that this world is not our home… our home is with Jesus.

And that’s why I wanted us to look at this text this morning, because I believe that it will help us not only understand that change is all around us, but that Jesus is still Lord and that He’s still in complete control.

So let’s turn to Ecclesiastes 3:1-17 and follow along as I read from God’s Word (READ TEXT).

A couple of weeks ago, I was watching the livestream of the G3 Conference, and I was listening to Voddie Baucham preach from the Book of Revelation. And he said something very interesting. He was talking about the rhythm of the book. We see the number 3 used over and over again. We see the number 7 used over and over again. We see the number 12, and its variations used over and over again.

Well… we don’t see that here in Ecclesiastes chapter 3. In-fact; there’s no discernable pattern in birth and death, in killing and healing, weeping and laughing, or war and peace. Instead; what we see is that change is always happening around us, and there’s really not a whole heck of a lot that we can do about it. In-fact; Solomon even says that in verse 11… he says that, “God has made everything beautiful in its time, and yet man cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” I mean…we can know that change is happening, and that change is going to come… but we really don’t know what type of change is going to come do we?