Please open your Bibles to the book of Ecclesiastes chapter 3. This will be found on page 705 if you're reading the Pew Bible. We're reading verses 1 through 15 this evening together Ecclesiastes chapter 3 verses 1 through 15. Here now the reading of God's holy and inerrant word. 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 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 seek and 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. What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. 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. I perceive that there is nothing better for them than 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. This is God's gift to man. I perceive that whatever God does endures forever. Nothing can be added to it or 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. The grass withers and the flowers fall but the word of our God abides forever and ever. Let us pray. Heavenly Father we do come now before you with your word open before us. We do ask you for the aid of your Holy Spirit that we would have your word illuminated for us that we might benefit from the treasures within what you have revealed to us about yourself and your rule over your world for our good. Oh Lord would you help us this evening to attend to your word diligently that we might benefit in our very souls. Lord we ask this in Jesus name. Amen. If you've ever undertaken to put together one of those five thousand or even ten thousand piece puzzles you know some of the challenge that they present. When I was growing up I enjoyed putting some of those puzzles together as a hobby and there was an extra challenge for me because inevitably there would be a piece that went missing because we had cats. So, but I wouldn't find out until the puzzle was all put together with the one glaring missing piece at the end. But even without that, they present a tremendous challenge. You have thousands of random pieces that don't seem to really fit anywhere that you don't know where they go. You might be looking at an individual piece and it's simply a monochromatic color and you have no idea where it's going to go or what part of the final picture it's going to be. but at least you have one thing that will slowly help you figure it out. You have the picture on the top of the box that serves as a guide. You know what it's going to look like at the end of the project. It eventually makes it all makes sense. Without that picture, you'd never be able to put the puzzle together. Perhaps I think life can seem a lot like that to us at times, our circumstances and our times. are often like random, oddly shaped, sometimes misshapen, perhaps even jagged and discolored pieces that don't seem to fit together at all. They fall here or there. They seem to make no sense. And it doesn't seem like they fit rightly together. Maybe we try to force pieces together that don't go together. And most importantly, we don't have a picture on the top of the box to tell us how it's all supposed to look at the end of the day. God has not shown us how the details of the times of our life are going to work out at the end. And you add to that the things that come into our individual stories and times that make absolutely no sense. What are we to do? We don't know what the picture will look like, but God does. This poem at the beginning of Ecclesiastes chapter 3 and the explanation that immediately follows it is the beginning of a new section that's going to continue to the end of chapter 5. And this passage this evening, beginning with this poem, is going to show us that there is an all-encompassing and good plan of God. And this must drive us to love, worship, and hope in Him through all the times of our life. There is an all-encompassing and good plan of God, and this must drive us to love, worship, and hope in Him through all the times of life. I want to look at this very simply under two headings. The first thing this passage shows us is the comprehensive nature of God's plan. Verse 1 is really kind of an emphatic beginning. The first word of the verse in Hebrew is everything, which is out of order in normal Hebrew syntax. The emphasis is heavily on the fact that everything, there is a season, The word season actually is probably better translated more literally, an appointed time or a predetermined season, a fixed time or a predetermined purpose, as some have put it, on which everything depends. This is often missed in the way most people hear and understand this very famous poem. If you're anything like me, you had a hard time not having a particular guitar riff or a song pop into your head when you hear the words of these verses rattle out. This poem is often understood to be These are just different moments in life, different seasons and times. This makes up the human experience. It's just part of life. You'll hear this poetry read at funerals of people who don't know the Lord. It's just a sort of a beautiful picture of the times of life, everything beautiful in its own way. But this is not a poem about human activity or human decisions. This is a passage about God. This is God's activity underneath all human activity, before and behind all human behavior and even human choices, as Jeffrey Myers puts it, is God's comprehensive determination of all of man's times. This is an utter contrast to something that you might hear in the humanist poem, Invictus, by William Ernest Henley. It ends with the famous lines, perhaps you've heard them, I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul. And the preacher of Ecclesiastes must beg to differ. This is an unequivocal claim to the sovereignty and the infallible providence of God. The very structure of verse 1 also shows us this. There's something called a chiastic structure here. Really, you could sort of understand it like two bookends with something in the middle where our focus is. In the middle of the bookends where everything is on either end is the predetermined time for everything included. verses 2 through 8 employ a couple of other Hebrew literary devices that communicate the exact same message. They communicate the all-inclusive nature of this plan. One of them is called Brachilogy. This is a Hebrew literary device. Essentially, it's a condensed or a shortened version of a list or a sentence is designating the totality. It's an abbreviated list that designates the whole. Another one you may have heard before is merismus. These are these pairs, a time to be born and a time to die. There's 14 of these pairs. They're called merisms and they are pairs of polar opposites. And they are polar opposites that are used to designate the totality of everything in between. We hear this when we hear the Lord Jesus say, I am the Alpha and the Omega. He's not claiming to be the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. He's claiming to be the beginning and the end and everything in between. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. It's two polar expressions used to designate the totality of the whole. In addition you have 14 pairs of these making 28 times So we have, we have a doubling and then a redoubling of the number seven, which is the scriptures way of representing completeness or perfection. This is all of the times, all of the individual moments and events that make up your life in my life, your personal story, my personal story, the random occurrences, The big events insignificant conversations life altering happening Solomon's poem with all of its imagery and language and even in the literary structure of this poem is emphatically pointing out that all of life falls under the sovereign government and providence of God. The very moment and the circumstances of your own birth is determined The details of your conception, your genetic makeup, every detail was outside of your control and yet under the control and the appointed time of Almighty God. You knit me together in my mother's womb. God's sovereignty and his providence extend all the way to the limits, the birth and the death of human existence, events over which I have no control, over which you have no control. God exercises complete control. Why are we here? Because God made us. Why was I even born? Because my birth was appointed at a time by Almighty God. The set time and the moment of my birth was all part of his plan as a part of his history. The time of my death is appointed. set appointed time. Martin Luther said this, you cannot live any longer than the Lord has prescribed nor die any sooner. Verse 3, even those things which seem to be in the hands of men and nations are said to be under the providence and controlling government of God. The sorrows and verse four and joys of daily life. The happy events come from his hand at their appointed time. The sad events. Come from his hand, ordered for us according to God's sovereign appointment, calamities, wars, tribulations. We were destined for these things. According to Pastor Solomon, we know it's going to come. He's telling us. And they will come only in their appointed times for us. The list isn't really in any sort of a chronological or logical order. It seems kind of random the way these events are placed together. It's mixed up. And the times of the human experience are often like that. They seem randomly put together. We don't know what one day is going to bring from the next, whether tomorrow will be a time of weeping or a time of dancing. Often out of the blue these things happen to us. Our emotions sometimes come completely out of the blue. Not only the events that happen to us are coming to us in their appointed time, but even our emotional response to these things are coming in their appointed time. The polar expression of weeping and laughing contains the entire spectrum of human emotions and we are often a complicated mix. of emotions that we can't even figure out ourselves sometimes. A song you hear that happens to bring a flood of unexpected memories, a smell that might bring back a particular fond moment or time in your life, the unplanned memory of a loved one that pops into your head at the most random moments in a grocery store. Those are set and appointed for us. Isn't it comforting to know though that even though I can't figure out my own emotions half the time. The fact of the matter is that God knows me through and through. He knows my emotions better than I do. He understands me better than I understand me. And that is a wonderful comfort for the believer. He knows a word before it's even on my tongue. He discerns my thoughts from afar. This this knowledge is wonderful. The events of my life and your life down to the minutest detail are not random. They are ordered according to their appointed time and predetermined season. Not a contingency or an occurrence has happened outside of the knowledge and the determination of the Lord. Nothing has happened to me that has caught him off guard. such that he has to try to work some new wrinkle into his grand plan. You're in the sanctuary tonight because it has been ordained that you are in the sanctuary tonight. If you're hearing my voice this evening, it's because God has determined that this time is a time that you will hear this part of his word. The random events of life are anything but random. Listen to Martin Luther again. You should understand this poem as follows. All human works and efforts have a certain and definite time of acting, of beginning, and of ending beyond human control. It is not up to us to prescribe the time, the manner, or the effect of the things that are to be done. And so it is obvious that here our strivings and efforts are unreliable. Everything comes and goes. at the time that God has appointed. What we have in Ecclesiastes 3 is an unapologetic and unflinching declaration of the comprehensive sovereignty of God in the affairs of our life. There's a theological movement that's sort of taken place over the last several years, and some of it, even in small ways, has crept into evangelicalism. Maybe you've heard of it. It's called open theism. It's the idea that God is good, but ultimately he's not really able to keep bad things from happening to good people. It's almost like he's a frazzled chef with too many pots on the stovetop, and one begins to boil over, so he has to try to attend to that, and then the other one he has to get to but he can't quite keep it from happening. He can respond to evil and perhaps soothe and comfort those who may have experienced evil. Potentially he can come behind evil and maybe make some good come out of it. Almost like God is the frantic mother of a toddler who is cleaning up one mess while he's in another room scribbling all over a wall and then she has to go and try to fix that situation. Maybe make some art out of it on the wall and therefore bring some good out of it. No, this is the omnipotent and sovereign one who works all things according to the counsel of his goodwill. Listen to the Dutch theologian Wilhelmus Abrakel as he speaks of the complex and and interdependencies and intricacies of God's providence in our life. He says, when you perceive the magnitude of the work of creation and the innumerable number of creatures and the movement of animate, rational, and even inanimate creatures, the precise order of all things, both as to movement and the manner in which one object initiates the motion and progression of another object, one must lose himself in amazement. regarding the infinite power and wisdom of God by which all things are maintained and governed. By this power, God irresistibly executes whatsoever he wills, and no one can prevent him from doing so. Our God is in the heavens, and he does all that he pleases. And yet this is not some sort of a fatalistic determinism that Solomon is promoting here. It is providence. William Henry Green said this, it is indeed asserted that man is not the control, controlled arbiter of his own fortune. Not however, because he is a creature of fate, but because he is a subject of the wise and righteous government of God. The doctrine is not that of fate, but providence. What Solomon is proclaiming here is not just some bare power over all things, not just a robotic, impersonal determination of the events of your life that works out in some sort of a mechanistic way. Whatever will be, will be. But personal life, important personal life details ordered by God and even described here as beautiful in their time. Your story, my story, our history, This is far from a stoic fatalism or a bare determinism. It's the providence of a personal God. Listen to Derek Kidner. Instead of changelessness, there is something better, a dynamic divine purpose with its beginning and end. Instead of frozen perfection, there is the kaleidoscopic movement of innumerable processes, each with its own character and its period of blossoming and ripening, beautiful in its time and contributing to the overall masterpiece which is the work of one creator. I think C.S. Lewis illustrates this extremely well this idea of the controlling personal providence of God in his wonderful book The Horse and His Boy. Throughout the book the boy Shasta is a terribly lonely boy who from a human perspective had many experiences that were nothing but sorrows and what he considered to be very unfortunate circumstances. But when Shasta finally meets Aslan in the book, he's told by the Great Lion, who's of course the Christ figure of Lewis's Narnia world. Aslan says, tell me your sorrows. And as Shasta begins to unburden himself with all the sorrows and tragedies of his life, Aslan gently reveals to him that unbeknownst to Shasta, Aslan has not only been watching over him, but he's been personally orchestrating all of the events of his life. He had been the comforting cat beside the tombs in the lonely desert one night. He was protecting him from the dangerous cliffside and the fog when he had no idea. Aslan was watching over the boy, keeping him from danger while he slept. Aslan had even put him in danger and distress, but Aslan had been guiding and caring for him every day of his life since the very day of his birth. Aslan says, I do not call you unfortunate. You've not been the victim of some impersonal and cruel fate. You've been personally cared for and guided by God's providence where everything down to the details you didn't even know about were ordered and orchestrated by me. It's God's providence. He's not been unfortunate for all. He's been everywhere working and guiding and orchestrating all of the events of his life. And the psalmist tells us, my times are in his hand. My times are in his hand. This brings me to the second heading. I want to look at this passage under, not only do we see the comprehensive nature of God's plan, but we see the good and wise purposes of his plan. Go back to verse 1. There is a time for everything. There is a season and a time for every matter under heaven. I think the old authorized version is actually a little bit better here. There is a time for every purpose under heaven. The word used here that's translated in the ESV as matter is actually the word that's often used for delight or pleasure or goodwill. that carries the thought of divine intention and purpose and meaning. It's something in which someone takes delight. It is his business that he is about. It's the good pleasure or will of Yahweh. The times of our lives, these appointed set seasons for all of the details of our life are the business, the will, the good purpose of the Lord. And that purpose implies that something transcends human choices. It's something that is behind all these things, and it is something that has a reason. God has made everything, in verse 11, beautiful in its time. It's fitting, it's apt, it's good. We don't yet see it. He has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that we cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. It's not clear yet, but there is a grand and glorious design being worked out even in whatever times are making up our story. And the eternal one is working it out. There's a contrast here. The word time is used in the whole book 40 times. 29 of them are in this passage. And there's a contrast in this repetition of time to the eternity that God has put in our hearts in verse 11. There's a random seeming nature to all of these things that happen to us and yet we long to know the meaning. Why? What do these things mean? Why are they put together this way? What does all this mean? God has put this in our hearts. God has put eternity in the hearts of man. The fact that we're even asking the question of what is the meaning of all this is evidence of the divine imprint in our hearts. We've been made in the image of God and thus we have an innate recognition of a bigger and an eternal, Solomon will tell us, realm in which we live and move and have our being. Animals do not have this sense. They live only in the present. Well, I think you could make a case that cats sometimes plan out some devious things, but they're still doing it only for the present. Animals don't think of the bigger picture of the eternal realm. This eternity in our hearts is, it gives us a longing, a deep desire to know, to understand what is God doing in this world? What does this world mean? Why are we here? But we are finite. We cannot grasp it. We cannot see it, yet we long to. It's almost like we're standing, in a sense, too close to the mural. We can only see one tiny detail and we have no idea how it fits into the grand picture because there's no possible way we can stand far enough back to see the whole picture. The pieces of the puzzle are black and we have no idea where they go. They're the wrong shape and often jagged. Derek Kidner says this, we catch these brilliant moments, but even apart from the darkness in between them, they leave us unsatisfied for any, for lack of any total meaning that we can grasp. We are immersed in time. We long to see them in their full context for we know something of eternity, enough at least to compare the fleeting with the forever. We're like the desperately nearsighted, inching their way along some great tapestry or fresco in the attempt to take it in. We see enough of something to recognize its quality, but the grand design escapes us, for we can never stand back far enough to view it as its creator does, from its beginning to its end. And these lists of times in the first eight verses of Ecclesiastes 3, these aren't unique to any one set of humanity. These aren't something that only unbelievers experience. These aren't something that only believers experience. We all experience these 28 different times and what they represent. But only a believer can live in all of these times in light of the reality of the sovereignty of God. The answer to the question asked in verse 9, what gain has the worker from his toil, is relief and contentment. God has given us what we are to be busy with and this can only be answered by a believer because he has made everything beautiful in its time. Therefore we can rest and be busy with what he has given us to be busy with. There's faith and wisdom that is required of us when we live through these times as well. How do we live in light of the fact that God's sovereign plan includes the time to weep? It's to weep. It's not to grid it out with a stiff upper lip. The time to weep was appointed for us. We know they are coming. They're complicated, complex, often completely unexpected. And we are to live in light of knowing that life is going to consist of these times until the time for us to die arrives. But we were to do so knowing that God not only appoints these set times, but calls us to live in them with faith, and with wisdom. We're not to be emotionless stoics, minimizing our troubles. We are to weep when it's time to weep and laugh when it is time to laugh. One of his purposes in this plan is that we would enjoy what he's given us and do good. Look at verses 12 and 13. I perceived really that that's better read. I know that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live and that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in his toil. This is God's gift to man. This is not a resignation. Sometimes the language of nothing better is understood as well. What else are we going to do? It's not that at all. It's a declaration that God has given us the gift of even though we don't know what it all means yet we know that he does and he's given us this now in these times to go about our business in a manner pleasing to him. In other words one of the purposes of God's providence and his plan and the fact that we know he has one is so that we'll get busy living the Christian life the way we ought to be living the Christian life. Be joyful. eat and drink, take pleasure in your work because God is sovereign. He has appointed these times for us regardless of whether it seems inconsequential, your work, or unimportant, God is sovereign. He's putting all the pieces together and this is very freeing. Philip Rikin says this, imagine how much good a person could do over the course of a lifetime simply by putting these verses into daily practice. Then imagine how much kingdom work a church could do if it approached everything with this kind of joy, this kind of hard work, and this kind of gratitude to God. Solomon says we are to do good. It's really to be understood in an ethical and a moral sense. We are to be about good works in light of the sovereignty and the providence of God in the times of our life. We're to be doing the good works that God has set before us for as long as he's given us to do them. And as we consider that in Jesus Christ, God has forgiven all of our sins, he has reconciled us to him, he has rescued us from sin and death and hell forever. We ought to be gratefully be about the work of the kingdom. You think of Ephesians 2.10. What is the end result in our life of our salvation by grace through faith? We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which He has prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. In verse 14, he says, speaking of the enduring nature of this providential plan of God, He has done it so that people fear before Him. unalloyed sovereignty of God and his controlling government, his good government over all of our affairs ought to produce an all in us. He has all of eternity laid out as it were at his feet as if he could look at it all in a single moment. He's not limited to portions of time. Outside of time is where he exists. As we sing, he's the potentate of time. This ought to make us bow before him in holy awe. And you combine with that the fact that we are well conscious of our limited view of what any of these things mean in our own life. The knowledge that he has the ultimate view and plan, it is his purpose that should cause us to rise up and praise and thank him and be about the joyful Christian life. We are to fear before him. This is going to be a theme Solomon's going to make part of the grand central thesis of this book, to fear the Lord. This is a wonder and a reverence, and you could call it an awe-filled trust and faith in the one who is putting it all together. Walter Kaiser defines this very well, I think. This is a commitment of the total being to trust and believe the living God. Doug O'Donnell puts it very succinctly, this is trembling trust. A life of fearing God, you might put it in the way the children's song goes. Trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus. The one who fears the Lord fears displeasing this one who is putting the times of our life, ordering our times together for our own good and for his glory. He has done it, so they fear before him. It's living before the face of God each and every moment, knowing that our moments are ordered for us ahead of time. You think of the end of Romans 11, it was our call to worship this evening. It was part of our benediction this morning as Paul concludes his glorious explanation of the sovereignty of God and his gospel. Oh, the depths of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments. How inscrutable are his ways. For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. The unfailing nature, the comprehensive nature of God's plan and the goodness of his plan. In verses 14 and 15, you see that whatever he does endures forever. It's everlasting and nothing can be added to it. Nothing taken away from it. It's immutable. And God seeks what has been driven away in their last verse. I think this refers to some commentators are a little confused by what to do with this but I think this refers to and the context of what is being talked about here is God's plan for all of time as the things that seem lost to time itself from a human point of view things that have been lost but which in God's wise arrangement of events become available In the words of one commentator for God to be brought forward as a part of his wise plan or even as a witness at the last judgment in a sense then God can call back the past and those things that seem to have been lost and connect it with the future. Nothing that is past will have gone wasted. There are no loose ends or missing pieces to the providence and plan of God. This is, in a sense, a restoration or a redemption of what has been considered lost and unaccounted for. We leave matters in the unfailing plan of God and in His hands. The unchangeable nature of His plans, the goodness of His plans, The comprehensive character of his plans ought to be a relief to you and a comfort to you and to me. A relief from the burden of always having to control our situation such that nothing bad happens. A relief from constant anxiety, anxious about what is going to happen next, consumed by worries. There's encouragement here for those who are seemingly plodding away in an uneventful life. God is not wasting any of our times. The quiet, faithful, godly life of a mother, a father, a brother, a sister, a son, or a daughter will never be wasted. Whether your times are trivial or tragic or ordinary or extraordinary, there is comfort in knowing that God has appointed these things for his glory and for your good and he is bringing it to pass for these good purposes. We don't have to wonder whether we're like that feather that floated down in Forrest Gump just following whatever whim of the wind it happened to hit. He's using every one of our moments for his purposes. There's correction here for the brooding, sulking, discontented Christian. Bitterness, orneriness, acaustic Christianity is all ruled out by an understanding of God's good, kind, loving, sovereign providence in our life. This is almost like an extended Old Testament exposition of Romans 8.28. We know that God works all things together for the good for those who are called according to his purpose and verse 29 of Romans 8. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he that is Jesus might be the firstborn among many brethren. Sinclair Ferguson comments his will is good because it has the best of all possible purposes in view. his glory in our Christ likeness. He leads us by ways we could not have guessed into situations we never expected to fulfill purposes we never could have imagined. So we can look with an even greater New Testament clarity than Preacher Solomon had in Ecclesiastes 3 to the clarity of God's purposes when the eternal one for us and for our salvation was incarnate by the Holy Spirit, by the Virgin Mary, and was made man. The Eternal One entered time. Galatians 4, when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law to redeem those under the law. Jesus would speak often in his earthly ministry that his time had not yet come. And then, when the time was finally at hand, predetermined by the will of God, carried out at the hands of wicked men, accomplishing that by which we will one day realize what the eternity in our hearts longs to realize. What does it all mean? What will it all end up like? He's molding you and shaping you and me for His glory even now in all of our times. And he's coming again to take us to himself, that we might have that longing realizes those final purposes yet to be realized the final results of your life. They're still being tallied even now. And we will one day have that hunger of the eternity in our hearts fulfilled. We ought to live even now, hungering for that day, longing for that moment. I think this will be, I think John Curt is right. one of the wonders of eternity, when we will one glorious day see that everything was done by God in its most proper place and time. Who could imagine to finally see and realize what it all was about? We are in the dark now, but we will know. Corey Tenboom quoted this anonymous poem, perhaps you've heard it. using the imagery of a weaver and a loom. My life is but a weaving between my God and me. I cannot choose the colors. He weaveth steadily. Oftentimes he weaveth sorrow and I in foolish pride forget that he sees the upper and I the underside. Not till the loom is silent and the shuttles cease to fly will God unroll the canvas and reveal the reasons why. The dark threads are as needful in the weaver's skillful hand as the threads of gold and silver in the pattern he has planned. What a glorious thought the dark and they are dark things that baffle and befall us in this life one day will all be made clear and the tapestry of history not just history but your history and mine will be made clear to us and it will serve to magnify the glory of God and all of his attributes forever and ever. The strange jagged jigsaw puzzle pieces of your life baffling as to their placement that we cannot now even understand their order but the picture will be completed and he is working all things even now for your salvation. And he will one day, all the things that he has done, the things that you don't even know about even now, will be made known to the praise of his glorious grace. I love the conclusion to Lewis's final book in the Chronicles of Narnia, The Last Battle. The children, as it turns out, had been in an accident and they were finally in Aslan's country. in heaven, that is. He writes, as no one but him could do, their hearts leapt and a wild hope rose within them. Aslan explained to them what had happened and he said, the term is over. The holidays have begun. The dream has ended. This is the morning. And as he spoke, he no longer looked to them like a lion. But the things that began to happen to them were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. You cannot comprehend the glories that await those for whom God has arranged the times of our life for his glory and for our good. Believer, we are going to rejoice with joy unspeakable. What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him. A young Scottish minister, Robert Murray McShane, who would die at the young age of 29, wrote something along these same lines in the hymn we're about to sing. When this passing world is done. When has sunk yon glaring sun. When we stand with Christ in glory looking over life's finished story then Lord shall I fully know not till then how much I owe. Heavenly Father we do ask that you would help us to live in light of your. comprehensive and good ordering of our lives. Oh Lord, build up our faith in you, what you've done for us through your son, Jesus Christ, as we go out even now into your world and your week, would you strengthen us to do so, hoping, loving you with all our hearts. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen.