And we are here to hear God's word, to profit from what he has given to us. And so I invite you to turn to Ecclesiastes chapter three. Ecclesiastes chapter three. Solomon writes, for everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven. We are not in control of our lives. Everyone tries to gain or assert, or frankly, lose control of their lives. Most of you realize, if you're realistic, that you actually have little control over the moment-by-moment flow of your life. Everyone struggles to have control over some small portion of their lives. I can control this. I may not be in control of everything else, but I can control this. Even a child who has given no choices often, well, they'll control the toys as they can. Many people are frightened. or are frustrated over this reality, they lose the sense of the significance and value of life and living. And sometimes that can lead down a deep, dark cycle of depression, and other times it leads to lashing out and anger and manipulation. But the seasons and rhythms of life give order and direction to our lives. amidst of so much that tends toward disorder and chaos. God has instituted times and seasons. There is a time, a moment, or moments for everything. There is a season, a week, a month, a year for everything. And this is not fate. This is not chance. This is not karma. This is design. This is directed. This is divine. And it is the connection of our relations that gives meaning to our lives as well. So much of the reality of our lives is embedded in relationships. We have family relationships. We have a constantly changing circle of friends. We have relationships both within and outside of our church. We have a relationship with unbelievers. And most of the time, we think of these good and strong and loving relationships. But you also have other kinds of relationships, ones that can be described as difficult, rancorous, or possibly even hateful. The relationship is filled with arguments and strife and anger. It's still a relationship. But let's listen to the beautiful poetry that is both haunting and hopeful in this song in Ecclesiastes. In the poetry you have opening the endless cycle of life. In verses 1 to 8 of Ecclesiastes 3, God designed even in the fall and the curse a cycle of life. In this world things begin and they exist And they end. This is not just a beautiful poem. It is meant to inform how we understand, interpret, and respond to life. It's a kind of beautiful spiritual realism. For everything, there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven, a time to be born. and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to break down, 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 seek, a time to lose. A time to keep and a time to cast away. A time to tear 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 for war and a time for peace. Now what is appealing in this lovely psalm, this lovely poetry? Why do unbelievers find it beautiful? This is often read, funeral of unbelievers. I wonder how many hearing it even know where it's from, particularly in this modern day. much less understand what Solomon meant for us to hear. But the balance and symmetry of life, of which time to be born and time to die appeals to people. What does the believer find beautiful in this poem? It's understandable that a Christian hears this text and is struck by the choreography of God's sovereign providences. So what do we learn from it? What can we observe from these couplets? First, there is the beautiful symmetries flowing in life. Life has an aspect of art to it. It has the ugly aspects that come because of sin and its consequence, but it also has its beauty because of God's design, and as we will find, God's doing. Fall colors are beautiful, but those colors are related to the frosts that will kill the leaves. When we are admire and amazed at fall foliage, we are seeing the effects of dying. You think this is an accident? No, not at all. Because there is a greater death which will bring a life that is pictured in that changing season. We also observe here the relentless progress of events in life. You cannot stop and rarely can alter the reality of these seasons. If you were born, you will die. There will be times like this in all our lives. These seasons and times will simply relentlessly march through the years of our lives, birth and death, planting and harvesting. killing and healing, destruction and building, weeping and laughing, mourning and dancing, throwing away and saving, hugging and not, seeking and losing, tearing and mending, silence and speaking, loving and hating, war and peace. These will never cease in this present reality. There is also the unmistakable both and of life. I've already referred to the deeply satisfying symmetries of it all. We also should observe the both and of life. These couplets go together and sometimes they feel like one is the destruction of another and often they feel like one is the restoration of another. Sometimes it's hard to know how to respond when we are experiencing both together. But life is lived in the regular rhythm and the repeated symmetry of the both and. And we also observe the tragic effects of the fall on life. Many of these opposites were designed by God from the beginning to become the realities after sin and the fall of Adam and Eve. In the garden there would have been birth and planting and building up and advances and love and so on. But the world was also designed for what life would be after the garden failed and faded. So God appointed the seasons and time to function within the world as it is now. The Garden of Eden was designed to be temporary. This world, in all its troubles and triumphs, though it feels so permanent, is itself temporary. It was God who imposed this judgment under which and in which we now live. And it is important for us to recognize the different seasons of life. To be wise and useful and compelling Christian realists in this life, we must recognize the seasons of life we are in. If we are tearing down in building up seasons, there will be conflict. If we are uprooting what was planted during growing seasons, we will have no harvest. If we are caught unaware by the troubling reality and nearness of death, we will grieve without hope. If it is a time to speak, and we don't, we may not serve one another well. If it is a time to be silent and we speak, we may cause harm. The wise Christian realist living in the world as it is now will be attuned to the times and seasons and we will not despair and we will not be depressed because of them. And finally, we observe the inevitable death at the end of life. Solomon is turning up the light on how we live in such tragic seasons, how we live with hope. We do so because we will die. The most significant thing about your life is that it will end. Understanding that Living in that reality and coming to peace with it through the cross brings a sense of significance to the moments as they fly by. Then we move from poetry to prose and in verses 9 to 15 there is the helpful challenge in living. and the light of the seasons of life and living that God has established, we must think carefully and deeply about all the way things are. Solomon is pressing us to be realistic, but in a way that does not lose meaning nor hope. And so there is the surprising meaning of our lives in verses 9 to 11. From poetry to prose, Solomon transitioned with what feels like a startling and abrupt question. What gain then has the worker from all his toil? If seasons come and seasons go, if times come and times go, if we all born and then we all die, what is the purpose? What is the meaning? What is the, well, what's the reason for all the toil of our work? He goes on to say, I have seen the business that God has given to the children of men to be busy with He has made everything beautiful in its time, in its season. 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. So what is he telling us here? Well first he's telling us that God has given us the daily, the seasonal life work we are to do. There is a season of education, of work. There are times of preparation and then seasons of producing. There are times where we wait and times where we go. God has ordained, even in the present fallenness, a predictable, useful, and even profitable cycle of life. We have seasons of rest and sleep. We have times where we establish tasks to be done. And sometimes we have freedom to choose when they are done. And sometimes we are told when they are to be done. that we live and that we do is from God and by God. It was his design from the beginning, even the warping distortions of this time under the sun. Secondly, Solomon says that God has given beauty. to the seasons of life. When we recognize and respond rightly to things in their times, there's glory, a loveliness then. Wisdom then dictates that we sync our lives to the seasons that God has established, but many do not. They resist and strain to be and do differently. Some may dance to a different drummer, but we should all move to the rhythm of God's times and seasons. And in the midst of this constant changing, temporal, fallen, cursed reality, God has placed a sense of the eternal in our hearts. Though we live in the passing seasons of life, we know that this is not all there is. It takes an enormous effort to suppress that eternity in our hearts, and many try with all different kinds of misuses and abuses. from religion to pleasure to science to philosophy, many and varied are the efforts to fill inward eternity with outwardly satisfying things. The inward sense of eternity in our hearts is meant to resonate with the outward design of God. Then, there is an inescapable sense of the divine being to whom we all will answer. And God has limited, though, that sense of the eternal. We cannot discern the purposes and plans of God from this internal disclosure of Himself. It requires an external, an objective revelation. It requires the revelation of His Son and Scripture. And so we then are given and shown the surprising meaning of our lives and it's related to God who is designed and is directing all of this and he has placed within all of this constantly changing reality in which we live a sense of the steadfastness and unchangeableness of eternity. And so then our author goes on to show us the temporal nature of our work. In verses 12 through 13, I perceived, he says, that there is nothing better for them to be joyful and to do good as long as they live. Also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil, for this is God's gift to man. Also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil. This is God's gift to man. If we understand that the seasons, the times, the work, the life we live is a gift from God, then it transforms two things. First, transforms us. We should be a joyful people. This does not mean that we do not suffer or that our sufferings are not real. But suffering should sweeten, not sour us. True Christian joy is strong enough a river to flow from the times of the blessing of rain through the drought and desert of suffering. True Christian joy is not afraid of the real pleasures of life that God has given, nor does it wither under the real pains that God allows. And we should take pleasure even in the temporary work, the temporary doing of the life we have. This is one of the clearest and yet frankly most often missed messages of Ecclesiastes. All work, all toil, all doing that aligns with God's design and direction is good. Now it may be temporary, it may not last, but since we are allowed, no, we are encouraged to take joy in the work of our heads, our hearts, our hands. Why? Because we accept them as gifts from God. When we enjoy the gifts, we are enjoying and honoring the giver. The true believer, even in the Old Testament, had a theology of work, of toil, of labor, that joined the pleasure of daily life with the eternal pleasures of God. If we accept joy and pleasure in life without acknowledging them as gifts from God, then we steal what is borrowed, deny what is real, and self-focus our joys. And then in verses 14 and 15, he points us to the eternal works of our God. These verses are startling, surprising. They say something about all our life that people often do not know, do not understand, or sometimes openly and actively deny. Listen to what Solomon writes. I perceived that whatever God does endures forever. Nothing can be added to it nor anything taken from it. God has done it so that people fear before him that which is already has been that which is to be already has been and God seeks what has been driven away our temporal passing life and all its joys and pleasure exist in the environment of God What he does is unlike our doing. His works are enduring. The significance of our lives and our works does not rest in us or in the doing ourselves. It rests in the context of God. What we are doing is significant because in some way it is enfolded into and becomes a part of the greater eternal doing of God. God has designed what He does to draw out fear and reverence and respect. The fear of the Lord is the fountain from which all flow, all of pleasing God. Listen carefully. Earthly pleasure without the fear of God subverts the purpose of joy in God. Reverence for God elevates our human joys to heavenly pleasures, but to enjoy all that God gives without honoring and respecting Him is to corrupt. and possibly even contaminate these very joys. And secondly, moral good without fear of God subverts the purposes of pleasing God. Reverence for God ensures that pleasing God is not a matter of law but of life. Moral obedience to God without a loving fear of God is simply conforming to legislation. Respect and submission to God go together. Pleasing God soars on the two wings of respect and submission. So God has set history in motion. and he is driving it toward his ends, verse 15, thus the seasons of life ebb and flow in the stream of God's divine providence. How do we think about these things? How do we respond to these things? First, let us not forget, let us gladly affirm that this is God's world. Fallen, broken, cursed, full of dangers and delights, it is still His design. Christian realism affirms God's purposes. the pains and pleasures of living in this world under the sun. And even the unbeliever lives in God's world, not most denied. Denying it does not change the fact. Just because the person is blind does not mean that the sun is not shining. The poetry and prose of this text, like the poetry and prose of life, give us common ground to point unbelievers to God. There is both the common rhythm of life that we all experience, but that sense of eternity in our heart commands us then to respect and reverence God. And both lead us to the larger story, the greater real. And while it is hard to understand, the temporal work and doing of our lives is intertwined with the scarlet and purple threads of God's redemptive and ruling purposes. Our passing life and somehow a part of God's eternal, an unchanging doing. So that leads to a couple of questions. Do you respond to life God's way? Do you think of its endless round of pain and pleasure as, well, just empty and meaningless? Or do you move through it all with a deep inner joy knowing that you are dancing to God's music? Secondly, do you respond to God with respect and submission? Not the servile, cowering fear and compliance of false pagan religions. Rather, with a glad and humble bowing to such a wonderful, amazing God who designed and implemented the world we live in. That amazing, wonderful God has filled our hearts with eternity. and He has revealed Himself in His Son and through His Scripture. To everything there is a time and a season. In that rhythm of life, today is the day of salvation. Believe and bow to the Lord. To everything there is a time and a season, a time to be born, and a time to die. Will you be ready? Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for its beauty, its directness, for the way that it causes us to think, imagine, causes us to examine, to look deeply at ourselves. And not just so that we will be unhelpfully self-critical or self-diagnostic, but rather in a way that causes us to look to you. to believe in you, to bow to you. Whether this is at the beginning of faith journey or whether it is in a continuing moment by moment, time by time, season by season, believing what you say and bowing to who you are. Thank you for what you have done and what you are doing. And we thank you that we are able through the words of scripture in our heart to imagine and hope beyond this passing temporal world. May your glory shine deeply by grace into our hearts. In Jesus' name, amen.