It was a Sunday evening early last summer. The evening service in Little Shelford Parish Church had finished. I had packed up everything, tidied up and was rejoicing in a very good day. A teenage girl had been baptised in the morning and we had all just had an excellent time in the youth group. It was a great Sunday. And then the phone rings. It is my mother. She is calling to tell me that my Gran died earlier that day. All of a sudden a time of rejoicing, became a time of mourning. A time of laughter became a time of tears and grief.
Well, we’re looking today at Ecclesiastes 3:1-11.
Ecclesiastes is a book which is all about life. But it is no rose-tinted view. Rather, it is a raw, honest look at life in a fallen world. It blows away any illusions we might have and forces us to face reality.
Today, we learn two truths about life in this fallen world:
The first is this:
We are not in control
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3:1 "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.
there is a time to be born, and a time to die,
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted."
The poem in these verses is beautiful isn’t it. It’s beautiful because it captures life. It’s not saying that this is how life should be, but it is telling us how it is. It is simply an observation of life. It is descriptive. Not prescriptive:
So there is
"a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down and a time to build up."
The haunting rhythm of the poem reflects life, with it’s ebb and it’s flow. It mirrors how life moves from one thing to its polar opposite, sometimes in a matter of moments; at the shrill ring of the phone, at the meeting of a friend, at the opening of a door.
There is
"A time to weep and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn and a time to dance."
The poem captures the rhythm and regularity of life, but yet at the same time there is a certain inevitability and a disorder.
There is
"a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing"
And these verses leave us not knowing whether these things they describe are good or bad. The events simply happen. And that’s life, isn’t it? That’s why this poem is so powerful. We don’t know whether half the things that happen to us are good or bad, positive or negative. Even out of the bad things, good sometimes comes. The events of life can’t be categorised simply. But we do know that these things happen.
There is
"a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;"
We might long for life to be full of joy and laughter. But it’s not. We don’t have to live long to realise that life is a mixture.
There is
"a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;"
So, we find this poem to be both comforting and discomforting. It is comforting because of its honesty. It proclaims life as it really is. And when, for whatever reason, we are at our most honest, it is comforting to read the raw honesty of someone else who sees life for what it is.
Yet its honesty is also why it is discomforting, because it reminds us that we are not in control. The ebb and flow of life from one thing to the opposite is not in our hands. I can’t tell what will happen tomorrow, or even tonight. As the stream of life gurgles onwards, all I know is what the poet knows :
There is a
a time to do this, and a time to do that
"a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace,"
And so of course the question arises: If we are not in control, what gain is there from the work of living?
What is the point in doing anything? If we build, there will be a time to destroy. If we give life, there will come a time where it is taken from us. What profit is there in life?
"For everything there is a season,
and a time for every matter under heaven."
[Pause]
We are not in control.
But God is. So, therefore, in verse 10 and 11, the preacher of Ecclesiastes observes that the God-given task of humanity is to be busy living according to the times that God brings us.
So if it is a time to mourn, we mourn, if it is a time to laugh, we laugh.
When the phone rang that Sunday evening, my rejoicing turned to mourning. That was right and proper, and I didn’t have to think about it. Only a fool tries to live outside of the time in which he finds himself.
The wise person lives according to the times.
So, we are not in control of life. And if we are honest, we know that to be true.
And yet,
and this is the second truth about life in a fallen world
We know that there’s a bigger picture
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The end of verse 11 says
"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."
The word for “world” is best translated as “eternity.” God has set eternity in our hearts.
He has made us in such a way that we know that there is more than just living in response to the times which come our way. So, we have this deep-seated desire to see how what we do in life fits into a bigger picture.
Yet, however hard we try, we can’t see the bigger picture. God, in his sovereignty, has limited our understanding so that we can’t understand the grand scheme of things.
It’s as if we have been dropped randomly somewhere into a maze or labyrinth and then we’ve started walking without a map, without really knowing where we are. We can see our immediate surroundings, the hedges and where we are standing; and we know where we have been and what turnings we have taken. But we don’t know where the entrance is or where the exit is. We’re not really sure where we are going. And we don’t understand how the turnings we’ve taken fit in with the rest of the maze. And yet we know that there is a bigger picture, but can’t see it.
Life’s a bit like that isn’t it.
It’s not some sort of mean trick played by God. But it keeps us in our place, reminding us that we are his creatures, and he is the creator.
But it does mean that we find that life is frustrating. We know that there is a bigger picture, but we can’t comprehend it.
So that Sunday evening in Little Shelford - somehow the rejoicing which turned to grief fits into the grander scheme of things. The baptism in the morning, the services, the youth group, and the death of my Gran: somehow they fit into the big picture which stretches from the beginning of time to the end of time. Part of me wants to know how, and ask “why?” But those are questions which I can’t answer. And they are questions for which no answers are given.
And, that is what Ecclesiastes teaches us today - it wakes us up to the reality of life: that we are not in control and yet it reminds us that we know there is a bigger picture which is frustratingly beyond our grasp.
[Pause]
“Hang on,” you might say, “that is a dissatifying sermon.”
I have tried to make it deliberately so, because the book of Ecclesiastes is a very dissatifying book. It doesn’t so much as answer questions as simply describe life in a fallen world. The book of Ecclesiastes warns us against finding simple, neat answers to the problems of life, but encourages us to find enjoyment in life where we can.
However, in highlighting the dissatifying nature of life in a fallen world, it points us forwards.
It points us forwards to the one who is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end;
It points us to him who became incarnate and experienced the frustrations and trials of this world; to him who hung on a cross deserted and cursed, experiencing the full force of God’s anger.
It points us to him, who, in new resurrection life invites us who are thirsty and dissatisfied to drink the water of life which truly satisfies;
it points us to him who has won for us an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for those, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed when Jesus returns.
It points us to the Lord Jesus. Who provides hope in an otherwise meaningless world.
But as we wait in this living hope, we must live appropriately in a world which is out of our control, with the frustration of knowing that there is a bigger picture which even now is still beyond our grasp.
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(c) N.S.Gowers, 2005
Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, published by HarperCollins Publishers (c) 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
