This sermon was preached for Grace Church, Guildford remotely from Capitol Hill Baptist Church, Washington DC. The full video recording of the service can be found below along with the transcript.
Do you know what time it is? I’m sure that is a question you hear frequently. Right now, with you in Guildford, it is around 1130 AM. However, here in Washington DC, it is currently about 1630 PM. The time this side of the Atlantic is different, because I’m in different time zone. In our passage, we find out that time zones not only set the hands of our clocks, but also shape the circumstances of our lives. If you are unfamiliar with the book of Ecclesiastes, let me briefly introduce it to you. Turn to 1:1. There we see it records, ‘The words of the Teacher, son of David, King of Jerusalem.’ We never find out exactly who this ‘Teacher’ is, although many suggest it is King Solomon. However, what is clear is the book records the author’s attempts to understand the meaning of life. In it he wrestles with perplexities and problems, searching to make sense of it all. Our passage is a great example of such a struggle. It begins in 3:1 with the Teacher telling us the main principle he will explore: ‘There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven’. This principle in 3:1 is then proved through a poem in 3:2-8. It is here that the Teacher tells us of the different kinds of time zones that we might find ourselves living in. While there are only four seasons each year, here we see there are many different seasons in life. I’m sure some of you are familiar with this poem. It is a passage that is often read at funerals, and I can understand why. It explains that there is something fitting about a funeral. That there is a time to die, to weep, to mourn. In such moments it reminds us life isn’t a stroll from one period of prosperity to another. No, there are hard periods to pass through. There are storms that must be weathered. There are seasons that are more like winter than summer. While his truth acts as a warning if you are enjoying summer’s sun, I trust it is heartening if you feel like you are enduring an unending winter. Yes, it tells us there is a time to weep, but it also says there is a time to laugh. There is a time to mourn, but there is also a time to dance. Friends, your season may soon change: no matter how long or how cold winter is, it always turns into spring.
This poem can certainly comfort us. And yet, this isn’t the Teacher’s conclusion. The principle in 3:1, proved by the poem in 3:2-8, leads to this prompt for the rest of the passage in 3:9: ‘What does the worker gain from his toil?’ The teacher wonders, if there is a season for every activity, what control can we have over these? Are we just the toys of time? Subject to whatever way the winds blow? These are the implications that leads one writer to entitle the poem ‘The Tyranny of Time’. Its rhythm reminds us that time waits for no one, its repetition helps us realise that none of us can turn back the clock. When you hear tick-tock, that is like the drum beat that we are all marching to. Indeed, life is really one slow, forced march through time. There may be different stops on our journey, seasons for us to either enjoy or endure. However, we are on a road we cannot turn off: time is a river that only flows one way, it is slowly sweeping us all out to sea. This march we are all on is ultimately a death march. Dr Who may have his Tardis, Bernard may have his watch, but we are not so fortunate. None of us can control time. None of us pick the period in which we live. We don’t select our birth-day and we don’t decide our death-day. No, as the first line in the poem tells us, "There is a time to be born and a time to die". We are powerless over the parameters of our lives. In the same way, the rest of the poem implies we do not pick the periods between our birth and our death. Friends, for everything you can influence through hard work or careful planning, there are countless outcomes outside your control. At any moment an unfortunate accident, a tough redundancy, a terminal diagnosis, a global pandemic could strike. As much as Time is a healer, he is also a dealer. Time deals the cards that we all find placed into our hands. We are as powerless to change the periods of our life as we are the seasons of the year. We are fixed in time zones that are not altered by getting on an aeroplane. When we grasp this truth, we are left asking the question of the Teacher. If the tide of time is sure to sweep in, why bother building sandcastles? Why expend all this energy today, when it will be undone tomorrow? If you have joined us this morning but are not a Christian, how do you answer such questions? What hope do you hold onto against the harshness of life? Can I invite you to listen as we consider what Christianity has to say? For after telling us the problem in 3:1-9, the Teacher tackles it in the rest of our text, 3:10-22. These are the verses I want to spend our time on. We shall see that in them the Teacher does not provide a full answer to his question. However, he begins to lay foundations that the rest of the Bible will build on. Look at 3:10-22 with me. In response to his question in 3:9, the Teacher tells us two things about time. He introduces us to these two truths in the same way. In 3:10, he begins, "I have seen...". Similarly, 3:16 starts, "And I saw something else...". What are these two observations about time? First, he tells of The Beauty of Time (3:10-15). And then he tackles The Brokenness of Time (3:16-22).
1. THE BEAUTY OF TIME- Time is planned by God, but we cannot perceive it perfectly in the present
Have you ever played a small part in a big project? Perhaps, like me, you were entrusted with just a handful of lines in the school musical. My short time in the spotlight as Potiphar in our adaption of Joseph may only have lasted a moment. However, I’m sure at the time my mother told me I was integral to the story. Or maybe you have helped experienced this at work. As a lawyer in London, I was often surprised to learn the quick piece of advice I provided over the phone, enabled my client to go and achieve an important goal. The small parts we play can contribute to big projects. In 3:10-15, we see that our lives are a small part of a much bigger project. Continuing the theme of time, the Teacher tells us in 3:11 that God, "has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end." The Teacher causes us to consider not just the length of our life, but the expanse of eternity. Not simply what we do in our own time, but what God is doing across all of time. What is God doing from beginning to end? Well, as we shall see, the Teacher can’t tell us. However, in 3:14, he can tell us this: "I know that everything God does will endure for ever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him." Here is a truth that provides light in the darkest times. In 3:14 we see God has a plan that is permanent "everything God does will endure for ever", perfect "nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it" and purposeful "God does it so that men will revere him". Friends, that drum we are all marching to is part of an orchestra that God is conducting. That river, which is sweeping us all along, does not cut its own course, it is commanded, it is controlled by the Creator. As one preacher has put it, there is only one Time Lord, and it isn’t Dr Who. You have already declared this truth in song this morning, and you will do so again at the end of our service, when we sing: "Crown him the Lord of years, The Potentate of time; Creator of the rolling spheres, Ineffably sublime". Friend, Scripture tells us: Time is planned by God.
Christian, can I remind you just how comforting this truth is? Every night you go to bed, you can’t be certain where the next paycheque will come from. You can’t be sure what the next scan will show. You don’t even know if you will wake up the next morning. And yet, when there is terror on every side, you can say with the Psalmist in Psalm 31, "I trust in you, O LORD; I say, "You are my God." My times are in your hands...". As a small child looks to its earthly father to tell it the time (when to get up, when to go to school, when it is the holidays, when they must come home) we can look to our heavenly Father to tell us the time.He knows when it is time to be born and to die, time to plant and to uproot, time to weep and to laugh, time to search and to give up. He sets all our seasons, plans all the periods. Our lives are threads in God’s great tapestry of time. When I say tapestry of time, I want you to realise God is weaving a work of art. It is not that God has just made everything functional, designed our lives to be boring cogs in the machine of his universe. No, God has made everything beautiful. Every period we pass through is a beautiful brushstroke in God’s eternal masterpiece.
There is a beauty to time. And yet this comes with a burden. Did you notice that is how the Teacher begins this first observation in 3:10? "I have seen the burden God has laid on men." What is this burden? Well, 3:12-13 tell us that though God has made everything beautiful in its time, and put eternity into our hearts, we "cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end." By putting eternity in our hearts, God gives us an awareness of its breadth, and yet it seems we cannot appreciate its beauty. We have a sense that God is doing something, but are unable to see it from beginning to end. As the Preacher points out later in 3:22, we cannot see what will happen after us. We cannot tell the future! As characters in the story, we do not know how all the parts of the plot will pan out! The burden we must bear is that we are blind to much of time’s beauty. Like a toddler trying to read, we cannot work out all the words. Even when we gain insight into God’s intentions, we must confess with Job that "these are but the outskirts of his ways". There is a depth to his plan no man can perceive. Isaiah 55 tells us his ways are higher than our ways, his thoughts than our thoughts. Romans 11 explains his judgments unsearchable, his ways inscrutable. Time is planned by God, but we cannot perceive it perfectly in the present.
I’m sure at some point you have skipped to the last chapter of a novel to see how it works out. But have you ever taken a book and randomly started reading it in the middle? How likely is it that you will understand everything that is happening? In the same way, da Vinci’s paintings are fine to look at in their final form. But if what if you saw them before he had finished? Friends, the same is true of God. How could we fathom all he is doing from beginning to end? We are living halfway through his story, he is still working on his masterpiece.
What circumstances in your life are you struggling to see as beautiful? Is there a difficult work relationship that is draining you? Uncertainty about the future that is unsettling you? A memory from the past haunting you? Are you passing through a period in which you cannot perceive God’s perfect plan? I’m sure that is how Joseph felt as he languished in that Egyptian jail, sold into slavery and falsely accused, could he have conceived of that period becoming beautiful? How his suffering would save his family? Or what about Jonah in the belly of the fish? Could he have perceived that God would use that period to put him back on the proper path? Or think of Job under affliction. Family lost, possessions taken, health failing. I’m sure he felt the weight of this burden, a blindness to the supposed beauty of that season. And yet, just as we only witness snowdrops towards the end of winter, there are colours to God’s character that can only be seen after a season of suffering. When passing through these periods, we cannot perfectly perceive what God has planned. However, in time we begin to behold its beauty. How Joseph’s slavery led to Jacob’s salvation. How Jonah’s imprisonment led to his improvement. How Job’s suffering led him to see God. Friend, even if you cannot see how a difficult season is beautiful in its time, at the time. You can be sure you will behold it as beautiful in time, at the end of time. Our God is great enough to work all things for the good of those who love him. Our God turns tragedies into triumphs. Even if you miss Joseph, Jonah or Job, look at Jesus. Is there a more shocking sight than the Son of God suffering on a cross? And yet, is this scene not beautiful to us who believe? For his death leads to our deliverance. No matter how things may seem to us now, in the end we will see that no thread in God’s tapestry of time was misplaced. When God’s masterpiece is finished, we will all behold its beauty. On that day, as strange as it seems now, we will look on all he has done from beginning to end, including the times of trial and tragedy, and say with the Psalmist in Psalm 118:23, "This is the LORD's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes."
2. THE BROKENNESS OF TIME - Time seems jumbled to us, but God will judge it fully in the future
Have my comments so far struck you as a little too hopeful? Are you concerned that the ‘can-do-positivity’ of our American cousins has started to rub off on me? That they have transformed a British Eeyore into an American Tigger? If you read through the rest of Scripture, I trust you will find it contains the same hopefulness I have spoken of. As Paul writes in Romans 8:18, "the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed." However, is this what we learn from the Teacher? As I explained in the introduction, Ecclesiastes doesn’t give us the full answer, however, it does begin to build the foundations for it. It contains the first rays of dawn, with the full sunbeams of noonday appearing later in the Bible. If you are struggling to perceive God’s plan in the present, I think Ecclesiastes is a great book for you to read. It may not give you the answer, but it will help you better understand the question. With only 12 chapters, why not read it over the next 12 days? If you have questions about what it says, you can ask another member or an elder at Grace Church. Talking together about God’s Word is a key way we grow in faith and help others do the same.
If you do decide to read through the book of Ecclesiastes, you’ll see the Teacher isn’t some deluded optimist or idealist. He realises the raw reality of life. Though blind to time’s beauty, he does not turn a blind-eye to time’s brokenness. His second observation is a great example of this. Despite describing The Beauty of Time in 3:10-15, in 3:16-22 he deals with The Brokenness of Time. 3:16 begins, "And I saw something else under the sun: In the place of judgment—wickedness was there, in the place of justice—wickedness was there." Here the Teacher faces up to the honest truth: wickedness is where it should not be. This observation isn’t unique to Teacher. Injustice inserts itself into all our lives. The evening news is often one long list of injustices: family abuse, workplace bullying, police brutality, government bribery, bouts of violence. Everyday sin and suffering are set before our eyes. What can we say when we see the wickedness of this world? What should we do when justice is denied? Sin unaddressed? Suffering unalleviated? How can Christians respond to this?
Here in Ecclesiastes, the Teacher gives us two answers. One looks to the present; the other to the future. One is about what man should do; the other what God will do. [Later this afternoon, if you look over our passage again, you will see these two answers actually appear twice in our text. 3:17 starts, "I thought in my heart...". As we shall see, this thought corresponds with what the Teacher tells us he knows in 3:14-15. Similarly, 3:18 starts, "I also thought...". Again, the Teacher repeats what he says he knows in 3:12-13.]
What are these two thoughts? How does the Teacher process in his mind what he perceives with his eyes? First, the Teacher reminds us of the joys we can experience in the present. Back in 3:12 he wrote, "I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil—this is the gift of God." He says something similar in 3:22. While he shows we are conscious of eternity and will face eternal consequences for our lives, in 3:18-21 he points out that in the end, we have no physical advantage over animals, time sweeps our mortal life away just like theirs, and so he concludes, "I saw that there is nothing better for a man than to enjoy his work, because that is his lot." The Teacher has asked what do we gain in life? One big answer is that God gives us the gift of joy! For all the seasons we must suffer through, there are many seasons to savour. Family, friends and food are gifts from God. Rewarding work and relaxing holidays are good things we can enjoy. In difficult seasons, try to do what the Teacher does, turn your thoughts towards our good God and the good gifts that he has given. [Even when enduring difficult seasons, there will be good gifts that we can enjoy. We have already said that no matter how long winter is, it always turns into spring. But also remember, every winter has a Christmas: a time to enjoy the good gifts of family, friends and food, and more importantly, think of and thank the God who gives it all].
However, this hope for the present isn’t all the Teacher has to say. His lesson isn’t simply that we should eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. Yes, we should recognise there is joy in the present. But we should also remember that there is judgement in the future. This is the first thought the Teacher has in 3:17. He writes, "I thought in my heart, "God will bring to judgment both the righteous and the wicked, for there will be a time for every activity, a time for every deed."". Back in 3:1 he stated that there is a time for everything, and in 3:2-8 he took us on a tour through different time zones. However, here we have a time that he hasn’t mentioned before. A time for justice. A time when every activity and every deed will be judged. A time when, as he writes in 3:15, "God will call the past to account." Every moment and minute will have its day in court. For now, there is wickedness in this world. Sin unaddressed. Suffering unalleviated. But here we see, in the end, justice is never denied, it is only ever delayed. Yes, Time seems jumbled to us, but God will judge it fully in the future.
Reading the last chapter of God’s story provides us with hope. A time of judgement is good news for sufferers. However, it is terrible news for sinners. Do you understand yourself to be both a sufferer and a sinner? Imagine Carl. Carl is going to court. Last year he was hired to help on a particularly challenging project. It meant long hours and hard work. However, he was happy to sacrifice for the sum he was promised. Despite completing the work, he never received any payment. Because of that, Carl had fallen behind on his mortgage and his marriage was on the rocks. However, he was sure the judge would see that injustice and award him what he was promised. Unfortunately, Carl didn’t appreciate the circumstances he was in. You see, Carl was a bank robber. The fact that the rest of his gang had cut and run after the heist, without giving Carl a stake, was of little interest to the judge. Carl thought he was a victim. In one sense, he was. However, more significantly, Carl was a criminal. He broke the law, and would now face justice as result.
Friend, we may be victims of sin, but we are also perpetrators. While we have been wronged, we have also wronged others. And worst of all, we have wronged God. We have broken his law, refused to give him the honour and obedience he deserves as our Creator. Even if you are sufferer, more significantly, you are a sinner. You will have your day in court, but it is you who will be put in the dock. As the Teacher tells us in 3:17, "God will bring to judgment both the righteous and the wicked, for there will be a time for every activity, a time for every deed." On that day, all of us will fall short of God’s perfect standard. When measured against God’s law, we are all criminals and will receive the proper sentence: eternal punishment for crimes against an eternal God.
The Teacher reminds there is a time of judgement. And yet, the Bible also reveals another time. In Galatians 4:4-5, Paul explains, "But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons." This is the good news of Christianity, the gospel. The Lord of time came to live in time. The judge stepped in, not only to serve our sentence, but to make us his sons. On the cross, Jesus bore the judgement for all those who repent of their sins and trust in him. After rising on the third day and ascending into heaven, the writer of Hebrews says, "Christ...offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins." (10:12) At the start of our service, in Acts 17:30, we heard what God calls us to in response. He "commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness...." Have you done this? If you haven’t, ultimately, all you will gain for your toil in this life will be judgement. Here the echo of Ecclesiastes in Jesus’ question from Mark 8:36, "what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?"
As we conclude, I’ll ask you all again, do you know what time it is? No matter what time zone from 3:2-8 you find yourself in, our passage tells us you that you are in a time of beauty. Time is planned by God, but we cannot perceive it perfectly in the present. And, secondly, you are in a time of brokenness. Time seems jumbled to us, but God will judge it fully in the future. Christian, no matter your season, remember these two truths about time and trust that, in time, you will better see this tapestry, this eternal masterpiece God is working on.
ALEXANDER ARRELL