“1 There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: 2 a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, 3 a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, 4 a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, 5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain, 6 a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, 7 a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, 8 a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.
9 What does the worker gain from his toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on men. 11 He 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. 12 I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. 13 That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil—this is the gift of God. 14 I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him.”
A few weeks ago, Kentucky Fried Chicken released an advertisement intended to show the tastiness of its product. The ad was a full minute montage of customers eating KFC chicken and then licking their fingers. “Finger licking good;” that’s their slogan or at least it was. That advertisement could have worked a year ago, but a room full of strangers in close proximity licking their fingers in a restaurant doesn’t work today. The ad was quickly pulled.
I don’t know how long it takes to think up, cast, film, edit, and distribute a commercial. I do, however, know that KFC is not in charge of the times in which we live. I also know that you are not in charge of the times in which we live. You were not in charge of them a year ago. You will not be in charge of them a year from now. President Trump is not in charge of the times. He wasn’t a year ago and he won’t be a year from now, whether or not he is still president.
Abraham Lincoln wasn’t in charge of the times when he was inaugurated president as states were seceding from the union. The slaves who were freed as a result of the war that followed those secessions were not in charge of the times.
You are not in charge of your times. Rather, you find yourself in the times that God has appointed. This has been the case for your entire life, and it will be until you enter eternity.
You don’t set the times. God does. The best that you can do is revere the One who sets the times, live wisely in each time, and enjoy what you can in each time. Since God sets the times, fear Him, live wisely, and enjoy what you can. That’s the claim of this sermon: since God sets the times, fear Him, live wisely, and enjoy what you can.
We will study this in two points. First: God sets the times. Second: fear God and live today. First, in verses 1-10, we see that God sets the times. Second, in verses 11-14, we see that since God sets the times, we should fear God and live today.
First: God sets the times. Here in Ecclesiastes we are studying life as it is. Wisdom literature, like Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, speaks to what is wise given the way that life really is. For example, you might wish that everyone had your best intentions at heart, but they don’t. Wisdom literature tells you how to deal with that fact. You might wish that you were in charge of the times in which you live. You aren’t. This passage tells you how to deal with that fact.
This passage of Ecclesiastes and especially its poem are far and away the most famous section of the book. Ecclesiastes is a difficult book to understand. Scholars who agree on almost everything else disagree on even its basic meaning. Some think the book is cynical with almost no redemptive value. Others think it is tongue in cheek. I think that Sidney Greidanus was most likely right when he said this book teaches us to, “Fear God in order to turn a vain, empty life into a meaningful life which will enjoy God’s gifts.”
The teacher in Ecclesiastes, and we will assume he is Solomon, discussed wealth, reputation, romance, success to show that by themselves these will all disappoint. He argued that only the fear of the Lord can put these in their proper places. Ecclesiastes teaches you that if you put first things first, the rest of life falls into place; however, if you put anything else in God’s place, life will become meaningless. In other words, wealth is valuable servant but a terrible master. Romance is a valuable servant but a terrible master.
In our passage, the teacher considers the times in which he lived, and in which we all live. He wrote, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.”
The poem that follows isn’t a prescriptive list of what you ought to do. Solomon wasn’t telling his readers to make a time to plant. It is a descriptive list of the way life goes. Solomon told his readers that there is already a time to plant and they ignored that time to their own peril. These times are outside of your control. You merely live in them and must act wisely within them.
This poem is meant to cover all times. You can see that Solomon has all times in mind when you notice his use of the number seven. The poem is arranged in sevens. There are fourteen contrasts like a time to be born and a time to die. That’s seven times two. The Biblical authors, especially the poets, used the number seven to underline totality. Solomon’s use of sevens drives home what he said in verse 1, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.”
There is no season that is outside of God’s purposes. You have never lived in a season and never will live in a season that is outside of the plan and purposes of God. You might not know why God allowed this or that time, but, of course, you are not God. You certainly prefer the good seasons to the bad. So do I. You would make all the seasons good if you could, but you are not in charge. As Solomon put it in verse 11, you “cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” You can’t fathom why God arranges life the way that He does. If you need to understand His ways before you submit to Him, you will never submit to Him and you will face the consequences of that decision.
This poem makes clear that life is beautiful and life is ugly. Life is a joy and life is a pain. You didn’t have a choice of whether to be born into this just as you are not in charge of death or what comes afterward. You simply enter into these by God’s choice. He is in charge.
There is no escaping this reality. You live in the times which God has set and that is always true in this life. Solomon underlined this fact with a poetic technique called “merism”. A merism is two words meant to represent the whole. Perhaps the most famous merism is the contrast of heaven and earth. When Genesis 1:1 tells us that, “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” it wasn’t simply telling Israel that God created two places—heaven and earth. It was telling them that God created everything. The two words heaven and earth were meant to represent the whole.
The same goes for the two words in each line of this poem. The line, “a time to be born and a time to die,” does not simply refer to birth and death; it speaks of the totality of life. The line, “a time to plant and a time to uproot,” does not simply refer to planting and harvest; it refers to the entire agricultural cycle until it starts over again. The line, “a time to love and a time to hate,” covers the full gamut of human attitudes. The line, “a time to weep and a time to laugh,” covers the full gamut of human emotions. You live in the times which God has set and God has set all the times.
Now you can try to change the times, but all your efforts will do absolutely nothing unless God changes them. Farmers know this better than most. Farmers understand quite well this dynamic of time as seen in verse 2, “a time to plant and a time to uproot.” I don’t know much about farming, but I do know that no farmer considers planting corn in the middle of a snowstorm in January; it isn’t time. It isn’t a time to plant. No farmer considers harvesting her corn a month after she plants it; it simply isn’t time. She can wish that corn could be ready in a month but wishing won’t change the times. She can only do what is appropriate for each time.
You must accept that and respond appropriately. Think about the first couplet, “there is a time to be born and a time to die.” You are aging. My eye doctor told me that I’m nearing an age when I might find myself in need of reading glasses. Now I can lament the fact that the brain is becomes less capable of bringing near objects into focus, or I can accept it and respond appropriately. Think of the phrase, “a time to die.” You can pretend there isn’t a time to die and die anyway, or you can respond appropriately by considering what death means and what lies on the other side.
This is a call to act wisely in the times you find yourself. Consider, for example, the couplets of verse 4, “a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.” If you are wise, you will behave differently when attending a funeral than when watching a comedy show. The day of a woman’s wedding is a much different day from the day on which she buries her husband, but the time comes for both. If she is wise, she will recognize that fact.
These times keep coming and the times keep changing. You see that in the repetition of the phrase “a time to”, “a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.” The repetition of these words is, according to JA Loader, “like a clock that, inexorably and independent of the wishes of people, keeps ticking and striking. Whatever happens happens, and there is nothing you can do about it.” There will be plenty of times in your life when weeping is the best recourse available to you and there is nothing you can do today to prevent those times from coming. You will also have plenty of opportunities to laugh and there is nothing anyone else can do to take that away from you. That is life. Recognize it and act appropriately.
If you don’t recognize these realities of life, you will be quite miserable. You see that in the question of verse 9, “What does the worker gain from his toil?” To understand that statement, think back to the KFC commercial. What did KFC gain from that commercial? If their plan was to sell more chicken, they would say, “we gained absolutely nothing from all that toil.”
The fact is that we are all KFC in this sense. None of us can control the times. Sometimes nothing comes from the best of our labors and that often has nothing to do with the insufficiency of our labors. It has to do with the times. Life is often futile. You know this. Your best intentions often come to nothing or even worse. Now you can rail against that reality, but what you are really railing against is the fact that you are not God. You are finding yourself bumping up against the same reality as Adam and Eve in the Garden. They wanted to do what only God could do.
Now you know how frustrating this sense of futility and wasted effort is. I imagine that you, like me, recognize it more and more the older you get. You come to realize that there is very little that you can control. This is, in part, what Solomon meant in verse 10, “I have seen the burden God has laid on men. He 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.”
Life in a fallen world is endlessly frustrating because we were created for eternity with all the permanence and purpose that goes along with it. Yet we find ourselves in the midst of time and time overturns so much of what we do. So much of life in this world seems to have no eternal consequence. As one singer put it, “today was just a day drifting into another and that can’t be what a life is for”, or as Ecclesiastes commentator Duane Garrett put it, “we feel like aliens in the world of time and yearn to be part of eternity.”
You have the sense that you were made for so much more than this. You have the sense that you were made for the permanence and purposefulness we see in eternity and not the futility and pointlessness we experience now. That is the case for everyone. That’s the pain of verse 11, “God has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” You can’t get your mind around eternity in this life, but you want your life to matter; you need your life to matter, and it will only matter in the way that you hope when you enter eternity. Accept that today.
That takes us to the resurrection because were it not for the resurrection, there would be no hope of entering eternity. Were it not for the resurrection, life really would be pointless. Even your faith would be pointless. As Paul put it, “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” Life has a point only because of the resurrection. “Life is worth the living just because he lives,” as the hymn puts it. The Son of God entered time so that you might enter eternity. If he didn’t you would never escape the futility of life.
The Son of God entered into futility so that you might escape it. Jesus entered into futility. As Mark put it, “Jesus could not do any miracles [in his hometown], except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. He was amazed at their lack of faith.” The Son of God entered into this meaninglessness. He is the servant in Isaiah who said, “I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing at all.” He is the servant who did everything right and yet cried out, “my God, my God; why have You forsaken me?”
Humanly speaking Jesus’ work seemed pointless. His disciples saw that. Listen to two of them describe Jesus as they walked to Emmaus on this very day centuries ago, “He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel.” ‘We had hoped, but that’s over. He’s dead. It was all pointless. Three years down the drain.’ Humanly speaking, in that moment those words seemed right.
However, they were entirely wrong. That’s what Jesus’ resurrection says. Jesus’ resurrection was God making effective what seemed so ineffective. To use the words of Isaiah, the cross says, “I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing at all. Yet what is due me is in the Lord’s hand, and my reward is with my God.” To use the next words of Isaiah, the resurrection says, “And now the Lord says—He who formed me in the womb to be His servant to bring [His people] back to Him and gather [them] to Himself, for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord and my God has been my strength—He says: “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” The cross seems to say, ‘it was all a waste.’ The resurrection says, ‘no, the best for which any human could hope was too small. This is making all things new.’
So yes, you live in a world governed by times which you do not control and can’t change. Get used to that because that is life. God sets the times. He has purposes which are beyond your comprehension. You must submit to Him.
Submit to Him in time to enter eternity. If you try to live out eternity in this fallen world, you will be miserable. If you recognize the realities of this time and submit to God’s means by which you can enter eternity, the pain of this life will be greatly dulled, and you can be patient as you wait for life as it was meant to be.
Live eternity in eternity. Live today, today. That’s our second point: fear God and live today. If you are wise, you will make adjustments to match reality. For example, you will recognize that one day you will die, and you will make adjustments to match that reality. If you are a fool, you will either refuse to recognize that you are going to do, or will you recognize reality and refuse to make adjustments. You won’t make a will. You won’t have any regard for the state of your soul. You will act like a fool. Fools don’t make adjustments to match reality. Wise people do.
We just studied one adjustment that wise souls make. They desire to enter eternity and they submit to the means God has appointed to enter eternity. Now we consider that wise souls fear God. We see that in verse 14, “I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere Him.”
You should fear God because what He does lasts forever and what you doesn’t. My dad is a bricklayer. Brickwork lasts a long time, but he is now to the point in his career that he is re-doing some of his earlier work because the styles of have changed. He is also replacing work that his dad did decades ago. Time makes all of our work obsolete. Time does not make God’s works obsolete. That is a reason for humility.
Unless the Lord returns first, one day I will be long dead and no one who is part of this church then will remember anything about me. I will simply be a name in the denominational yearbook. No one alive even among my decedents will remember me then. Time will take me out. It takes out everyone, Solomon says, except for God. You know this even if you don’t want to acknowledge it.
Time beats us all. In the movie Creed, the boxer Rocky Balboa makes this point. Rocky was speaking with the son of Apollo Creed. Creed was the champion until Rocky defeated him. Creed’s son had never met his father. He asked Rocky whether his dad was really as good as they say. Rocky said, “He was the perfect fighter. Ain’t no one ever better.” So Apollo’s son asked the logical question, “So how did you beat him?” and Rocky responded, “Time beat him. Time takes everybody out. It’s undefeated.” Now when this film began, we learn that Rocky had recently buried his best friend. His wife was long dead. Over the course of the movie, Rocky gets cancer. In other words, “Time beat him. Time takes everybody out. It’s undefeated.”
The same goes for you. The same goes for me. The same goes for everyone other than God. “I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere Him.”
If you have eyes to see, time will show you that you are only a vapor and that only God is eternal. If you have eyes to see, time will show you that you can never accomplish exactly what you purpose, and that God will always accomplish everything He purposes.
That should humble you. That should make you feel small. Now feeling small isn’t the same as feeling bad about yourself. Feeling bad about yourself involves humiliation. Feeling small involves humbling. Feeling small is appropriate because before God you are small. The constant march of time should make you feel small before God.
God humbles us. This is for our good. It is for our good as we think about eternity and it is for our good as we think about the small pleasures of today. As Solomon puts it in verse 12, “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.”
You aren’t going to enjoy eternity today. You aren’t going to enjoy the new creation today. This life will be filled with a fair bit of futility and seasons that seem utterly purposeless. Accept it because that is the way that it is. Accept that and you will have, as Tremper Longman puts it, “a resigned awareness that life’s enjoyments… come from small sensual pleasures, rather than an understanding of the grander scheme of things… [this] is not the highest, best imaginable good but… life in a fallen world, which is the best humans can do under the circumstances.”
There will be a time to mourn so when it is time to dance, dance. There will be a time to weep so when it is time to laugh, laugh. There will be a time to refrain so when it is time to embrace, embrace. Enjoy all that you can when you can.
You don’t control the times. God does so fear Him. Live wisely. Enjoy what you can when you can, but don’t try to enjoy eternity today. The Son of God didn’t die and rise again so that you could do that. He died and rose again so that you could enter when it that time comes. “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven” including that. Amen.