This afternoon's message is entitled, A Sermon for Year's End. A Sermon for Year's End. It is December 27, 2015. And I don't expect to see you again until next year. So being that especially this is the afternoon service, this is the very last sermon I believe I'll preach in the year 2015. So New Year's is just around the corner. And I don't know about you, but I think it's probably true for many people that with the transition from one year to the next, we give extra time just thinking about time, the passage of time, the years of our lives. And that is reasonable. I think it is as it should be. It's my experience, and I think many others would affirm this, that also the older you get, the more you pensively reflect on the years of your life and what time you may have left and what it's all about. This is all good. We should be very thoughtful in general about what's happening and where it's headed and why things happen and so forth. What's our place in it all. In fact, everybody should be that way. One of the memorable sayings from the 90th Psalm is in verse 12, where the man Moses who wrote the Psalm said to the Lord, teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom. Teach us to number our days. And so being that this is the last time for me to preach to this congregation in 2015, I thought this was a fitting subject, a sermon for the year's end that is really an exposition of that beautiful text in Ecclesiastes chapter 3, the first 11 verses. This will help us, I think, to think about time, especially with respect to unfolding events through time and God's relationship to them. What is the relationship of God to the events of our lives and of all history? There is a special term, that is very well known and commonly found throughout the writings of Christian theology over the centuries, that basically means that. It means God's relationship to time and events. It's the word providence. And I believe that at least one legitimate way to look at the verses of Ecclesiastes 3 is that they teach us about Providence. And from this text, we learn that Providence is all-inclusive, beautiful, attractive, and inscrutable. That is ultimately beyond our comprehension. Providence is all-inclusive, beautiful, attractive, and inscrutable. So Without any further introduction, may I ask the congregation please to stand for the reading of God's word in this place. Hear what the Holy Spirit is saying in these moments to us. To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted. A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to break down and a time to build up. A time to weep and a time to laugh. A time to mourn and a time to dance. A time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together. A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. A time to get and a time to lose. A time to keep and a time to cast away, a time to rend and a time to sew, a time to keep silence and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time of war and a time of peace. What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth? I have seen the travail which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it. He hath made everything beautiful in His time. Also, He hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end. Amen? Amen. Please be seated. Now, strictly speaking, the word providence does not appear in Scripture. It's not for that reason illegitimate. Our talk about God and His ways would be immensely impoverished if we were limited to the exact words that the Bible uses. I sense that there is a fairly common hostility to theological terminology in many professing Christians and they complain about words like this. But providence is a great word and I'm not willing to let it go. It is really shorthand for a great truth. the truth of the reality of God's relationship to his creation after he created it, which is essentially the relationship of an almighty king to his kingdom. That is, God sustains and governs all his creatures and all their actions. I found the most helpful paragraph in a, in the new Bible dictionary about providence that I would share with you. Um, and I read, now this has many parts to it. Uh, and, and I'll want to, uh, have you notice in particular the list you're about to hear, but it starts with a definition. Providence is normally defined in Christian theology as the unceasing activity of the creator, whereby in overflowing bounty and goodwill, he upholds his creatures in ordered existence. guides and governs all events, circumstances, and free acts of angels and men, and directs everything to its appointed goal for his own glory. Now that's the definition. If you think of all of creation and its course through time as a big locomotive on the tracks, Providence is the doctrine that God is the engineer with his hand on the throttle. God is the one that causes all things that happen ultimately to happen as they do. Now, what I like especially about this quote from the dictionary, the theological dictionary, is this next part. It says, this view of God's relation to the world must be distinguished from seven false teachings that are in the same general topical area. And there's a technical term for each of them. So if you take a note, this is a good list to take. I'll just give you the seven names. Pantheism, Deism, Dualism, Indeterminism, Determinism, Chance, and Fate. These are alternatives to providence. that people hold. Pantheism is that philosophy that absorbs the world into God. You know, the basic idea of pantheism is all is God and God is all. There's no real distinction between God and the creature. Secondly, deism is that which cuts the creation off from God. It's the analogy that the creation is like a great grandfather clock that God made in the beginning and wound up so it would work. And then by this infused energy and the natural law that is inherent in the creation, God is able to remove himself from interfering with the creation, and it sort of runs by itself without God's involvement. That's deism. Thirdly, dualism, which divides control of creation between God and another power, usually the devil. And so when people are dualist, they think, well, God's in control of all the good things and the devil does all the bad things. So there's this, it's like having two engineers fighting for the controls of the locomotive. That's a heresy as well. Then there is indeterminism, which holds that the creation is under no control at all and anything might happen. Next determinism, which posits a control of a kind that destroys man's responsibility. Um, That's not scriptural. Man is a responsible being who freely chooses among options in the biblical worldview. And then the next error is the doctrine of chance, which denies that the controlling power is a rational power. And then finally the doctrine of fate, which denies that the controlling power is a benevolent power. So those are the popular alternatives to the doctrine of providence. And if a person really understands something about this and with conviction holds to the biblical view of providence, then this is a distinguishing mark of a discerning Christian. This doctrine of providence affects everything. This is, this is one of the most significant ideas. It's more than an idea. It's a, it's a complex truth about God and his relation to the creation that has the most practical implications for everyday life, for your state of mind and how you think of God and why things happen the way they do. So now having heard a somewhat of a technical description of the doctrine of providence and the alternatives, let us revel in the grand biblical passage before us, which is so beautiful. and so profound in its teaching, namely Ecclesiastes chapter 3. I prepared in the sermon outline three points. First of all, the statement of providence in verse 1 Then the scope of providence in verses three to eight. And last, the suggestions of providence in verses nine to 11. The first verse is kind of a banner over what follows. It's almost like a title for the rest of the poem that is here. And this is not a rhyming poem, but it is, the word poem means literally a work. And this is carefully crafted speech. It's in the form, especially in the Hebrew original of wisdom literature and specifically Hebrew poetry. It's not poetry because it rhymes, it's poetry because of its structure and its evidence is particularly careful crafting on the part of the writer starting with verse two when it says a time to be born and a time to die but before you get to those repeated phrases a time for this and a time for that you have this header statement in verse one to everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven and this is a verse that is appropriately thought of in terms of two lines, two lines of, of, of text. Uh, the lines are obvious because they are parallel in thought. Uh, and, and the basic idea of the lines I submit to you is that every event occurs just as God planned it. So the two lines, if you would arrange them that way, would look like this. Line one, to everything there is a season. Line two, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. And it's clear to see how there is parallelism in these two lines. First of all, in line one, you have the mention of a season, which is substantially the same as the idea behind the word a time in line two. Secondly, you have the statement there is, which is explicit in line one and implied in line two. It's not necessary to be repeated because every reader supplies it, whether he realizes it or not. It could be like this in other words, to everything there is a season and there is a time to every purpose under heaven. You think that way when you hear it, even if you don't consciously supply the first, the phrase there is. It belongs properly in the idea of each line. And then there is the corresponding phrases, everything in verse one and every purpose in line two. To everything there is a season and there is a time to every purpose. And then line two does something which Hebrew poetry often does. And that is, it elaborates a little further on the idea that was introduced in line one when it is repeated in line two. And that elaboration is in the phrase, under the heaven. There's no corresponding phrase in line one for that. It's new in line two. Line one only says everything. Line two says every purpose under the heaven. And this phrase under the heaven, I think clearly emphasizes the comprehensive scope of what is being considered under the phrases, everything and every purpose, everything and every purpose under the heaven, which is to say in God's creation. And it also subtly suggests God's rule over things under the heaven. I was reminded of the verse in Psalm 115, which says, our God is in the heavens. He has done whatsoever he please. The Gentiles worshiped gods, quote unquote, that were in earthly temples. And they were making fun of the Jews because if you went to the temple at Jerusalem, you couldn't find God there. There was no statue or image of God like the pagans had. And they would ridicule the Jews and say, huh, where is your God? Well, the reason that the Jews had no idol representing God in the temple is because he had forbidden it and the true and living God unlike the the gods of the nations is an invisible deity who makes his throne in heaven so to speak that is above all so that everything under the heaven is under his authority and under his power. So the phrase here under the heaven has the strong suggestion, in my thinking at least, to God's absolute sovereignty over the whole created realm. Now there are other renderings of the Hebrew text naturally in other translations of the Bible, The 1560 translation that came before the King James, called the Geneva Bible, put it this way. To all things, there is an appointed time. To all things, the King James says a season, the Geneva says an appointed time. The Tanakh, which is a respectable English translation by modern Jewish scholars of the Hebrew, puts it this way. A season is set for everything. A season is set for everything. A time for every experience under heaven. And then the today's English version, also known as the good news Bible put this this way, everything that happens in this world happens at the time God chooses. Now that's loose, that is a paraphrase, but I don't think it misses the mark for the doctrine of the text. Everything that happens in this world happens at the time God chooses. So it gets back to what I was saying. The basic idea is that every event that occurs, absolutely every happening occurs exactly as God planned it from eternity and causes it to occur. Do you believe God is the ultimate cause of creation in history? that if you do, you're with orthodox Christian theology and the doctrine of providence. This is not a reformed teaching as opposed to some other Christians either. I found a rather good description of Providence with which I agreed in the catechism of the Catholic Church when I was checking on this. In other words, this is Catholic doctrine with a small C. This is universal doctrine that all Christians of whatever stripe or denomination historically have generally held the doctrine of Providence. I'm afraid it's being lost even within the church to some extent these days. Um, but, um, consider this, it's not lost in the general culture. Um, I think that. And again, this is this is speculation on my part, but I suspect from what I observe that most people we know whether they claim to be Christians or not would probably agree in general with the idea that God runs the world. The gods in charge that God runs the world. Wouldn't you say so? Listen, if you said. If you reminded somebody of that song, he's got the whole world in his hands. I think most people would agree. Well, that's true. Do you remember that song? He's got the whole world in his hands. You can get a lot of people to sing along with you. He's got the little bitty baby in his hands. People would generally nod their heads in agreement. How about this slogan? Everything happens for a reason. You know, I hear that all the time. Just in the news, in the last 24 hours, we learned that tornadoes touched down in Texas and at least eight people have been killed. Probably more, the death toll is probably higher than that by now. And many people have lost their homes. And people will find a psychological refuge in this truth. Everything happens for a reason. Lots of people subscribe to that. How about this one? This is actually sort of a quote from the Bible. All things work together for good. Again, people who are not particularly good theologians are still able to affirm that that's true. It's actually taken out of context in Romans 8.28. It says, we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose. So it's not generally true of all people, but it is true for Christian people. And then the saying, which again, a song has been written about. Que sera sera. You know that phrase, whatever will be will be. It said that, in other words, the future is determined. If it's going to happen, it's going to happen. Do you believe that the future is already determined? I do. There was a woman once came, it is reported up to Mr. Spurgeon and said, sir, I've heard that you believe that whatever will be, will be. And he said, madam, do you mean to tell me you believe that whatever will be, won't be? Of course, that's true. So, you know, we're not starting from scratch when we talk to others about providence, not completely, but I think that few people, relatively few, really appreciate this truth with its immense practical implications. Many people seem to embrace the idea that God is at work somehow in everything that happens, but they're uncomfortable with absolutely everything being planned from eternity by God, including man's free choices so that history is inexorably fixed before it happens. I'm comfortable with that idea that the end is already determined from before creation, but, and everything in between is determined by God and his plan. But I find people are uncomfortable when you start to talk to them about how that relates to them and their choices or bad things that people do. But if everything that happens has its time in God's purpose, as this verse says, then it was certainly predestined according to his wisdom and sovereign pleasure, right? The only alternative I can think of, if you say you agree with Ecclesiastes 3.1, that everything that happens in this world happens at the time God chooses, You have to believe in predestination unless you think that God kind of wings it as he goes along. That maybe God doesn't know what's going to happen. but he gets on sort of creation like a cowboy gets on a wild Bronco and God holds on to see what happens and then makes adjustments and corrections as necessary with the unfolding of events. That is an utterly unworthy caricature of the God of the Bible. Look with me at Ephesians 1.11 for the biblical truth. Ephesians 1.11, what a crystal clear statement. of God's absolute sovereignty. It says in this verse. That in Christ. We who believe have obtained an inheritance. And then it says. Being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will. Now, the first thing that's in view is the destiny of those in Christ for a great inheritance by the grace of God. And we are in Christ for this inheritance because we are predestinated by God. But instead of simply saying we have been predestinated to this great inheritance in Christ, By God, Paul elaborates on God himself and calls him the one who works all things after the counsel of his own will. There's no limitation to that. All things in this passage means absolutely all things. Everything about creation and its course of events is according to the purpose of Him who works according to the counsel of His will, which is the same thing as to say according to what seems best to Him, according to His pleasure and His plan. God works according to His eternal plan, which was fixed from eternity, which is to say before the time in the Bible known as the beginning in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. Do you believe that this is, this is really the faith, the Catholic faith of the church through the ages to believe in the sovereignty of God and the doctrine of divine providence. And the reason it's so universally known in general throughout the church of the ages is because scripture's testimony to this is so crystal clear in general. So I take Ecclesiastes 3.1 as a statement of providence. To everything there is a season or an appointed time or yes, a season or an appointed time. And there is also, which is to repeat the sentiment, a time to every purpose or experience or matter under heaven. There's no qualification necessary or appropriate for this broad sweeping statement of God's providence. And we need to come to grips with this all encompassing divine providence. So the next part drives home the point. It is somewhat of an abstraction to say in verse one, that there's a season or purpose for everything and for every purpose. Somewhat of an abstraction. But verses two to eight digress from the abstract statement of truth to specific examples of the things that happen in God's creation by God's plan and each one having its appointed time or season. So really, verses two to eight, pick up on the season and time language and elaborate the particulars of the everything or every purpose under heaven. And everybody knows, I'm sure that, This passage in the Bible has entered into the pop culture in a song called Turn, Turn, Turn, I think's the name of it. There'd be a lot of people that recognize these words from the radio more than they would from the Bible and might be surprised to find the lyrics right here in the Bible. But I assure you, they weren't written in the 60s. It was the reverse. But what we have then in verses 2 to 8 is 14 pairs of opposites. And there are two pairs in each verse, each of the seven verses, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. So seven verses, each one has two pairs or four things in it. And it's very repetitious. And in this way, it's really poetically beautiful. That is, there's a time to be born and a time to die. So that sets the pace. And then there are these opposite ends of the spectrum, so to speak, in each of these pairs, which form a powerful rhetorical method to suppress our thought of possible exceptions to providence. And I've been shocked even lately to learn that in places you wouldn't expect, dear Christian brethren, think that there are exceptions to providence. Well, yes, God is in control of much of his creation, but not everything, not absolutely everything. I had somebody give me an example once. Well, what about if a, If a woman was mugged and abused and murdered in the park, and this person said to me something like this, surely God's sovereignty stops at a certain point and man's autonomy takes over then, right? No, everything that happens is under the umbrella of Providence. Everything that happens is the outworking of God's sovereign plan. Everything that happens, absolutely everything that happens can be traced back sometimes through secondary causes to the ultimate cause, which is God, the creator himself and God, the sustainer of his creation. But this is where we are. We are tested and we are challenged about whether we really believe the doctrine of Providence or not. We happily praise God for blessings, but we halt in seeing miseries as God's doing, don't we? We can easily say when there's, you know, a great harvest in the fall, look at the blessing of the Lord. The Lord did that. But when there is tornadoes in the Midwest and people are killed, if anything, people would blame mother nature as if that were a God that we should worship. Mother nature is a myth. Mother nature has no real existence. God is the one ultimately who causes tornadoes and death. Did you know that read the story the book of Job he had 10 of his children his all 10 of them killed in a mighty wind that blew down the house where they were gathered probably to celebrate somebody's one of their birthdays there and just like that. the children were killed and God, the Lord, in the story of Job, in his discussion with Satan says, you moved me against him. That is against Job in these things. God takes credit for being the cause of the death in Job's family. And there are many other passages. I could show you that God is the one who kills and makes alive. We're all in his hands. So this poem in Ecclesiastes three says that there is an appropriate time. for all things and by appropriate time or appointed time, the idea is it's God's time. When God wants things to happen, that's when and how things happen. And that is an all encompassing statement about the entire history, the sweep of it down to the minutest details of it. So in the 14 pairs, we have these opposites, birthing and dying, okay? So that's the beginning and the ending of a human being's life. We have sowing and reaping, that's the beginning of the harvest season and that is the sowing season and then the harvest season at the end. We have killing and healing. When people get sick and die, when people draw near to death and then they get better, that's what's in view here. We have breaking down things and building them up. Weeping contrasted with laughing. Mourning against dancing. Scattering stones with gathering stones. Clearly opposites. Embracing and not embracing mentioned. Seeking things and losing things. Keeping things and throwing things away. Some of us who have a tendency only to keep stuff and not throw it away need to remember that. There's a time to throw things away. Tearing and sewing together, keeping silence and speaking, loving and hating, fighting and getting along, war and peace. All of these are opposites and they're all in his plan. And the Hebrew device that's being used here probably has a technical term, which I don't know off the top of my head, but by designating the extremes of a thing in the Hebrew manner of speaking, everything in the middle is included by implication. The very first verse of the Bible uses this linguistic device when it says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, what's up and what's down. And that, that means everything all together. That's the whole creation is designated by the phrase with two opposites mentioned that way. And so it is here. And there are 14 of the pairs, which is seven doubled. Seven is a number of completeness and the Hebrew uses repetition for emphasis. So we have two groups of seven pairs, one after the next, which is to provide a strong emphasis on the completeness of everything that is within God's plan and occurs at the appointed time. And these things in the list run the gamut of virtue and vice. It's not just, you know, honesty and love and valor and faithfulness, but also sinful things like murders, for example. One of the worst sins a person can commit. In the list, we also have natural phenomena. We have mundane events listed. We have life-changing moments. We have everyday things. We have emotional highs and emotional lows. The people are at their lowest emotionally. They're mourning. When they're excited and happy, they break out into a dance. Those are the extremes of emotional human experience. In other words, absolutely, Everything that happens is what God meant to happen. Right? Do you believe that? I grow weary of feeling like I'm some kind of heretic just to say that God is God and he controls his creation and everything that happens is the outworking of God's plan down to the details. Every Christian should readily confess that because it is the manifest testimony of Holy Scripture. The whole Bible is saturated with this worldview that we call providence. In fact, it's so ingrained in the records of Holy Scripture that I'm convinced the human writers were speaking in a way that suggests providence is true without even being conscious that they were doing so. It's just the way that the prophets And the apostles and the inspired writers of Holy Scripture thought about the world and its relationship to God. If we were to make an exhaustive list of every at least subtle hint, besides explicit statement, of God's providence over creation in the whole Bible, it would be quite a long list indeed. But I want to show you a couple of things that might be surprising. It certainly they are. If we tried to do our theology and based on our intuition, the first example is in Genesis 50, where, uh, Joseph has been reunited with his brothers who sold him into slavery. And they are really afraid now that Joseph is a man of power and influence that he's going to punish them for what they did to him 20 years earlier. But Joseph doesn't have any intention to punish them. He says, Don't be afraid, verse 19, because am I in the place of God? It's not my place to punish you for selling me into slavery like you did. That was a really mean and cruel and evil thing for you to do, but I'm not God. You have to give an account to God for that. God is the one who will deal with you, whether in justice or in grace, that's God's place. And then Joseph says, but as for you, You thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good to bring to pass as it is this day to save much people alive. Now, listen, that is to say, when Joseph's brother sold him into slavery, God ultimately caused Joseph to be sold into slavery. That is a necessary conclusion because there's no way that we can understand the language. God meant it for good. If God wasn't the cause of what happened, how could God have any intention behind Joseph brothers being sold into slavery? If God had nothing to do with it. It's a profound statement. When Joseph was sold into slavery, his brothers sinfully sold him into slavery and were to be blamed for it. But God caused Joseph to be sold into slavery. And God is never to be blamed for anything because he is righteous and has good reasons and wise reasons for everything that he does. But yet in that very sinful act of brotherly betrayal, God was at work in causing it to happen. You meant it for evil, Joseph said, but God meant it for good. Here's one that you may not have ever come across or at least thought in these terms about Psalm 105 verse 25. Psalm 105 verse 25. This is praising God for his work in Israel's history. And here, about the Lord, the psalmist wrote, he, that is the Lord, turned their heart, that is the Egyptians who are in view, he turned their heart to hate his people, to deal subtly or cunningly with his servants. This is referring to the time when the Israelites were slaves in Egypt. It came to be known, their experience there came to be known as living in the iron furnace that was so miserable. especially when Moses came on the scene. And you remember the Pharaoh was annoyed by Moses and said, take away the straw for the people making bricks and still require them to make the same number of bricks. It was unreasonable. It was oppressive. And the psalmist is crediting God with turning the hearts of the Egyptians to hate the Jews, antisemitism. God inspired the antisemitism in the Egyptian souls so that they would mistreat the Jews for God's wise purposes. This one really, really is stunning to me. God turned the Egyptian heart to hate his people and to deal cunningly with his servants. The very existence of wicked men ultimately is because of God. Proverbs chapter 16, verse four. The Lord hath made all things for himself, yea, even the wicked for the day of evil. The Lord has made the wicked for the day of evil. That's what it says here. Everything that men do is ultimately traceable to God. Proverbs chapter 16, verse nine. A man's heart deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth his steps. In other words, you think to yourself, I'm going to do such and such. And you may be able to do it or you may not be able to do it. Sometimes people can't carry out the plans they think of in their minds. So it's up to a person to plan his way. He thinks about what he's going to do and attempt to execute it. But whatever the man does or doesn't do, it's really a matter of divine providence. Whatever he actually does, it's the Lord ultimately that is directing his steps. You know, Businessmen in the New Testament epistle of James are rebuked for saying arrogantly, we're going to go to a certain city and we're going to do business there for a year or so. And we're going to make a lot of money. And James says, don't talk that way. You ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. In other words, there ought to be a humble recognition that ultimately everything depends on divine providence. And I hope you take that exhortation to heart. You ought to say, if the Lord wills, in your letters and even in your common talk, when you speak about your plans and your intentions, it is a reverent thing to say, well, this is what I plan to do. We'll see whether I actually do it because it all depends on the Lord's will that is controlling all things that happen. Proverbs 21.1. The decisions that kings make is really God's doing. The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord as the rivers of water. He turneth it whithersoever he will. Now there's no one more powerful in the world than a king. And so by mentioning the king as one who is in the Lord's hand and God rules in the king's heart and causes the king to to King's heart to turn this way or to turn that way. That is to make one decision or make a different decision. That is to say in a very powerful way that God is controlling all the decisions everybody makes around the world. If he's doing it in the King's heart, he does it in everyone's heart. Proverbs 16.33, even so-called chance events are really the outworking of God's providence. 1633, the lot is cast into the lap. This is basically the equivalent today of rolling dice or drawing straws, something like that. The lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord or from the Lord. Now, you know, dear, if we're ever playing a game with dice, and I get doubles again, you should know the Lord gave me doubles and you shouldn't complain about it because everything like that is directed by God, right? The lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing of it is from the Lord. How about every catastrophe? Amos chapter three, verse six. Hosea, Joel, Amos. in the Old Testament. Amos 3.6. Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? And this is a rhetorical question and every ancient person who was familiar with walled cities and their defense system would know the answer is no. Shall a trumpet be blown in the city and the people not be afraid? No. It's something like if any moment now, if we heard a very loud siren, like an air raid siren come on through the walls of this building, Whoop, whoop, whoop. It'd be like that. We'd all be afraid because what's happening? Are we under attack or something? That's the idea here. And then we read, shall there be evil in a city and the Lord hath not done it? And the implied answer is certainly not. And the term for evil here has a marginal reading, I thought. Well, it doesn't in my Bible, but the idea isn't depravity, it's catastrophe. It has to do with situational evil. If there is a catastrophe in a city, The Lord certainly has done it. How can the prophet say the Lord is ultimately behind every any catastrophe except for the fact that the Lord is behind every catastrophe? Do you follow the logic? If if if there as a so as the prophet Amos says, If there is, if the Lord has done any particular catastrophe that occurs in a city, you can't say that generally, unless the Lord is behind every single catastrophe that happens. And that is a matter of theological fact. And this next thing is to me, absolutely the clincher. and on the doctrine of providence being altogether comprehensive. It's the way that the early church understood the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Acts chapter 2 verse 23, there was never a more catastrophic event an unjust crime that was ever committed in the history of the world than the murder of the Son of God. And yet even here, the early church understood that to be God's plan working out and God's doing through wicked instruments. Acts 2.23. Jesus being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain him. So Peter's preaching to the murderers of Jesus. for their conversion to Jesus. And he says to the murdering Jewish leaders, you were wicked when you crucified him. But even when you were doing that, you didn't realize this and you weren't trying to do this, but you were carrying out the determinant counsel and foreknowledge of God. This is what God had planned from eternity to happen. It doesn't make them innocent at all, but it makes the crucifixion of Christ something that was certain to happen before it ever happened, because it was God's plan. And look at chapter four of Acts, verses 27 and eight. This is the early church at prayer. And they say to God in heaven, For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, that is you God anointed him, both Herod and Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles and the people of Israel were gathered together for to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done. And again, Herod and Pontius Pilate, the Gentiles and the Jewish leaders, they didn't know what God's plan was. They weren't trying to honor God or please God or fulfill his plan when they crucified Jesus. They were doing what their wicked, sinful hearts compelled them to do under the circumstances. But in the expression of their hatred and unbelief and apostasy and irreverence, When they were gratified in murdering Jesus, the church understood that even then they were just pawns on the chessboard of providence. And God was the player moving the pieces. They were the ones who were just doing what God already determined by his wisdom and pleasure was going to happen in human history. And looking back now, we can see what a great thing it was that God planned the incarnation of the son of God leading up to his crucifixion, death and burial and resurrection from the dead, because that's the foundation of our salvation to the glory of God. But how hideous and senseless it must have seemed to the loving disciples of Jesus on the day that it happened. So the beautiful poem in Ecclesiastes 3 that pairs these 14 opposites against each other is a much more lovely and winsome way to say what the theologians have faithfully taught us in their technical terms, namely, that everything that happens is God's plan. And when things happen and how things happen is simply by the direction of God in heaven that rules over all. Do you believe that? I hope you believe that. This is no small part of what it means to believe in God, the God of the Bible as the God of providence. Well, now we come in conclusion to the suggestions of providence. We've seen the statement of providence in verse one, the scope of providence in verses two to eight and the suggestions of providence. And, uh, here the good preacher, the, the, the preacher who wrote Ecclesiastes, uh, makes practical application of the doctrine. And, um, It's not easy to interpret what these verses mean by what they say, but I'm going to take a crack at it and let you judge me in my interpretation. The first point of application from comprehensive providence is in verses nine and 10. Here's the text, the part of the text that says this, what profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboreth. I have seen the travail which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it. Now, again, it helps if you're a sensitive reader of literature like this to understand the drift of the question in verse 9. When the wise man asks, what profit does a man have who works in all of his toilsome labor? It's not expecting an answer. Well, there would be this advantage and that advantage. That's not the point of the question. It's rhetorical. It's to say, There's no profit in it. It's useless. It's vain. It's empty, even though it costs the laborers blood, sweat and tears. What use is all his work? There's no no use to it, at least not anything beyond this life. Or in this except, yeah, anything beyond this life. And that this is the proper interpretation is more apparent from verse 10, where he makes the observation. I have seen the travail, the margin of my Bible says distress or trouble, which God has given to the sons of men to be exercised in it. The word travail in an English dictionary means irksome labor. And so all of it is, is saying that in the light of providence, what use and what good is there for people in all the irksome labor and trouble of this life, if they are living life under the sun, that is without reference to God. The Book of Ecclesiastes might be one of the most significant passages in all the scripture for the modern man to read. Everybody ought to read this book, all 21st century folks, because it is such an expose of the emptiness of secularism and living for time and earthly things. The wise man here is saying that without reference to God, working in this world is something like Sisyphus in Greek mythology, who was eternally rolling a very heavy boulder up to the top of a hill only to have it roll back down again and require being pushed up the hill again. It's the ancient metaphor for irksome, useless labor. This is a recurrent theme in the book of Ecclesiastes. That's why you don't have to be particularly bright to pick it up here. Look at Ecclesiastes chapter 1, verse 12. I, the preacher, was king in Jerusalem and I gave my heart to seek out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven. This sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith. I have seen all the works that are done under the sun and behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit. or all is trouble, distress, and affliction. Chapter two, verses 22 to three. The book of Ecclesiastes says, for what hath man of all his labor and of the vexation of his heart, wherein he hath labored under the sun, for all the days of his life are sorrow and his travail grief, yea his heart taketh not rest in the night this also is vanity i heard a similar modern saying that's pretty comparable to this life is hard then you die that pretty much sums it up life is hard then you die that's the perspective the proper and wise perspective on the godless life it is vain empty, futile, frustrating, it's wacky, it doesn't make sense, it's not worthwhile. You know, there are some atheistic philosophers that came to this conclusion on their own, and I'm talking about people like Hume. And they basically came to the point where they realized there's no reason to continue living in this world particularly. And I believe some of the philosophers have come to the point where they committed suicide because of this very vexing realization that life under the sun is useless. The doctrine of providence teaches us that to try to consider the world and its happenings apart from God is a vain and fruitless quest. It's meaningless. Now we come to the practical application of the doctrine in verse 11. And this, this might be summarized this way. This is the way I'm going to interpret it. that verse 11 teaches us providence is beautiful attractive and inscrutable or beyond finding out. This verse I discovered in my study is notoriously difficult to translate and interpret. The scholars argue about even the translation into English, much less what the English words mean when we have them translated. But let's suppose that the ESV gives us maybe the best translation or one of the best. The King James is very good here, but there's a significant difference in the ESV. It reads like this, referring to God. He has made everything beautiful in its time. In other words, the events of human history may look like a chaotic jumble and there are many ugly things in and of themselves. But when, if we could see the wisdom of God's plan that encompasses all these parts, we would see that his plan is a thing of beauty. It's the analogy is probably trite, but it's sort of like a, a, a, a carpet that's hand woven. And on one side, it looks great. On the other side, it looks just like a bunch of knotted thread with no rhyme or reason to it. We're looking at the backside of the carpet, not at the side that God sees. Providence is beautiful, attractive, and inscrutable. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart. Now the King James says, he has set the world in their heart. I'm not enough of a Hebrew scholar to tell you this is better, but I think it may be. He has put eternity into man's heart. And if that's accurate, then it seems to suggest to me that life under the sun being so miserable is such that anybody would like to escape it. And there is something about God and his ways that resonates within us. Augustine put it something like this. We have a God-shaped hole in our soul and only God can fill it. He has put eternity into man's heart. And then finally, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. That is to say, none of us have enough knowledge or capacity really to comprehend providence and why God does what he does. It's beyond us. So these three statements justify my three adjectives. Providence is beautiful, attractive, and inscrutable. The wise admire God and His ways, give thanks in everything, 1 Thessalonians 5.18. Pursue Him, the Eternal One, and confess that His ways are higher than our ways, Isaiah 55.9. And His ways are past finding out, is the words used in Romans 11. And this, if we have this perspective, look brethren, this is what God calls us to do, to think this way, to think in terms of providence and to know by faith, God's ways in the world are beautiful ways. And that part of the satisfaction of life is growing to know God and His ways in the world. But however ardently we pursue Him and understanding of God, we'll never be able fully to grasp how God works and why He does what He does. But we know this, He's in charge. And he makes all things work together for good to those who love him, who are called according to his purpose. This inspires nothing less than the faith of Job in us. Job 13, 15, maybe it's definitely one of the pinnacles of Job's faith in the book. Job said in that passage about the Lord, though he slay me, I will trust him. Though he slay me, I will trust him. To conclude, I want to say this to you. Whatever 2015 has brought to you, and I know some of what we have experienced together and what some of you and your families and individual lives have experienced. And some of them have been wonderful things and some have been very hard things. Whatever 2015 brought to you in the providence of God, Your calling as a Christian is to kiss the rod and celebrate the blessings. Kiss the rod of God that has made your backside smart and celebrate the blessings. And let this govern you in 2016, whatever happens. It is our Father's doing. And if we love Him, it is for our ultimate salvation. Well, that is my sermon for year's end. And may the Lord be pleased to give us a clear grasp of the truth of His word and let that clear thinking about God and His relationship to events affect everything about how we think and feel in this world. Amen. Let's pray.