click on audio player to download mp3 or to change listening speed
Ecclesiastes #5 “Seasons in The Sun”
Ecclesiastes 3:1-15
If you would please take out your Bibles now and turn in them to the book of Ecclesiastes–just a little bit to the right of the middle part of your Bible—and Ecclesiastes chapter number three. Ecclesiasteschapter number three. [Do you guys want to give us a little bit more light here in the front section? Everyone is lit back there…I can’t see anybody’s faces in front of me. There you go. All right.]
You know one of the rare experiences of life is when you can truly receive candid perspective. I mean, really, it’s fairly rare in life that you get truly candid perspective. You know, a story was told of a lady who was completely just stressed out. I mean she had this complete anxiety and she ends up running to the doctor. And she bursts into the doctor’s office and she says to the doctor, “Doctor take a look at me. When I woke up this morning and I looked in the mirror, it was unbelievable,” she said. “My hair…it was all frizzed out and all ratted out and,” she said,. “My skin it was all completely wrinkled and it had all of these red blotches everywhere.” “And,” she said, “my eyes they were very bloodshot and they were just bugging all the way out. And when I just looked at my face it had this sort of witch-like demeanor to it.” She said, “What’s wrong with me doctor?” And he looked at her for a second, he said, “Well, one thing I can tell you, there’s nothing wrong with your eyesight.” Now that’s a truly candid perspective, all right?
And we’ve been studying a book that is notorious for having a candid perspective. The Book of Ecclesiastes is a thinking man’s book of truth. And in this book Solomon tells us that the reality is life is often tough. Life is frequently unfair. And life is repeatedly mysterious. We have just gotten through studying for several weeks Solomon’s Grand Experiment where he basically decided to pursue to the max all of the paths that people commonly pursue to find fulfillment in life. And basically, what he gives us is a warning, as we’ve seen over several weeks, that lasting fulfillment cannot be found apart from knowing God. What I want to do this morning is to continue receiving his candid perspective on life.
A number of years ago there was a song put out, a pop song, by Terry Jacks, called “Seasons in the Sun.” Part of that song went this way:
Goodbye, Emil my trusted friend. We’ve known each other since we were nine or ten. Together we’ve climbed hill and trees, learned of love and ABC’s, skinned our hearts and skinned our knees. We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun.”
Now in Ecclesiastes chapter three, that’s exactly what Solomon wants to do, is he wants to address some of the ‘seasons in the sun.’ I don’t know if you noticed or not, if you glance at Chapter three and look at those first eight verses, this is probably the most well know portion of the book of Ecclesiastes. In fact, it was in the mid-60s that a group by the name of The Byrds put out a song called “Turn, Turn, Turn.” The lyrics of that song were these very verses from the Book of Ecclesiastes. Would you like to hear that song? I’m glad that you asked. Let’s play it right now.
(Song playing)
“To everything, turn, turn, turn. There is a season, turn, turn, turn, and a time to every purpose under heaven. A time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant, a time to reap, a time to kill, a time to heal, a time to laugh, a time to weep. To everything, turn, turn, turn. There is a season, turn, turn, turn, and a time to every purpose under heaven. A time to build up, a time to break down, a time to dance, a time to mourn, a time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together. To everything, turn, turn, turn. There is a season, turn, turn, turn, and a time to every purpose under heaven. A time of love, a time of hate, a time of war, a time of peace, a time you may embrace, a time to refrain from embracing. To everything, turn, turn, turn. There is a season, turn, turn, turn, and a time to every purpose under heaven. A time to gain, a time to lose, a time to rest, a time to sow, a time for love, a time for hate, a time for peace, I swear it’s not too late.”
How about that for a creative scripture reading, huh? Now for those of you who weren’t alive in the mid-60s, one thing you might want to know is that they were using those lyrics as a war protest song, and they’ve changed the last couple of lines a little bit to emphasize the need for peace when they said: “I swear it’s not too late.” But that’s the Scripture we’re going to be studying this morning.
And what Solomon is trying to tell us is that life is time, and time is a series of seasons. What he’s going to do in this section is survey his way through the different seasons of life, and then he’s going to draw some real life conclusions. So let me give you the plan of attack, the outline we have for this morning. Basically this is what we’re going to see from Chapter three. Solomon is going to spend some time Surveying the Seasons of Life in verses 1 to 8. Then he’s going to spend some time Drawing Conclusions about Life in verses 9 to 15. Those conclusions are going to involve Perspective about God; and those conclusions are going to involve some Practical Responses for Us. So that’s where we’re going. Everyone feel all right with that? Shall we go ahead, or should we just quit right now? Let’s go ahead! Let’s look at how he Surveys through the Seasons of Life.
You notice in chapter three verse one, he says there is an appointed time for everything and there is a time for every event under heaven. These appointed times are the seasons in life and you’ll notice that they are appointed. We don’t really get to choose them. What we have in the following verses is a poem in Hebrew. In fact, time is divided into twenty-eight different pieces. In fact, the word “time” appears twenty eight times in the next few verses. Life is time. Every single day you are given and I are given 86,400 seconds. We spend them as we choose to spend them. But life is time. And time is viewed differently depending upon the season that you are in.
For example, just take an hour. An hour is viewed differently if you are playing a video game or if you happen to be sitting in the dentist’s chair…a different perspective based on the season of the moment. You can take the time frame of a month. A month can be viewed differently whether you have terminal cancer, or whether you are in the last trimester of a pregnancy. A month can be viewed differently depending upon the season.
What we have here are fourteen pairs and there really is a symmetry in them, there’s a time for this, there’s a time for that. And the pairs basically show the various ends of the spectrum of the seasons of life. Let’s just go through them quickly, we’re not going to spend a lot of time on them. Notice in verse 2 it says that there is time to give birth–some of the translations say there is a time to be born—and a time to die. The season of being born ushers us into time, the season of dying ushers us into eternity.
There is a time to plant, and a time to uproot. How many of you ladies are flower planters? How many of you guys are flower planters, because I know some guys are into that thing? My wife is into the flower thing. And, you know, if you are into the flower thing that means that there is a time to plant and a time to uproot. I want you to know—I’m going to say it publicly—I don’t enjoy either one of those, okay? There would be no flowers, real flowers, around our house if I was involved. So, there is a time to plant, a time to uproot.
Verse three tells us that there’s a time to kill. There’s a time in which you might choose to end life…like my father and many others did when they landed on Omaha Beach in 1944 in World War II. It was a season in which there needed to be some killing done. A time to kill, a time to heal, or we might say a time to save a life.
Verse three, there is a time to tear down and a time to build up. Anyone think that sounds a little bit like the Oklahoma highway system to you, you know? Tear the thing down, build it back up again. We’re involved right now in our house remodeling. Not because we wanted to, but because one of our bathrooms had a toilet that overflowed. It did it slowly. It was leaking actually. It then got into the particle floorboard. Does anyone know what happens to particle board when it gets wet for a long time? It just goes “bleek” (expands) and all the floor tile popped up. So we’ve been involved in a season of tearing down, and we’ve got that pretty well done. Now we’re in the season of having to build back up again and that’s just the way life works.
Verse four tells us that there is a time to weep and a time to laugh and I can clearly remember going through those seasons of my life. In 1993 was a time for us to weep. I remember the day my mom called me and said you need to come over because your dad stopped breathing. He had emphysema and lung cancer, he just stopped breathing this morning. That was a season of weeping in ’93.
In ’94, my alma mater went and won the national college football championship beating Miami in Miami. That was a time for some laughter and for some joy. Anytime you can knock off those guys in Miami on their home field it’s a big thing. But you know, I think that we really don’t laugh enough in life…we just don’t do that enough. I read this week about a pastor who left the pastorate after 20 years. He decided to become a funeral director and someone said, “Why did you do that? Why did you leave being a pastor to become a funeral director?” This is what he said: He said, “Well, I spent about 12 years trying to straighten out John, and he never did get straightened out. I spent 14 months trying to straighten out the marriage of the Smiths and that never did get straightened out. I spend three years trying to straighten out Susan and she never did get straightened out. Now when I straighten them out, they stay straight.” Yeah. A time to laugh.
Verse 4, there’s a time to mourn. You go through a funeral service. It’s a time to mourn. There’s a time to dance. When you have a wedding, it’s a time of joy! Verse five says there is a time to throw stones and a time to gather stones. I really think this is an inside joke. You have to be from Israel to understand this. Tour guides in Israel will often times tell you this little story: they tell you that God at the time of the creation gave a whole huge load of stones to an angel, giving the angel the instruction to distribute them throughout the earth, but the angel tripped over Israel and dumped them all right there. That’s the story they give. And it’s just because if you go over there, there’s just stones everywhere. And so, there’s a time to throw stones, where you might want to toss them out to clear a field to grow a crop. Or when you gather stones together when you want to maybe build a rock fence.
There’s a time to embrace. A time, a season of life, when you want to encourage and assure someone. And a time to shun embracing when maybe we’re admonishing or confronting. Verse six tells us there’s a season, a time to search…where you’re searching for something or someone, and in that timeframe, in that season you’re hopeful. And then there’s a time to give up as lost, and in that season you’re hopeless.
I think about the Oklahoma City bombing [of the Murrah Federal Building] in that way. It was a season to search for survivors. And then there was a season, a time, to give up as lost. There is a time to keep, and a time to throw away. And that is the Biblical basis of garage sales right there!
This week my wife Janet has been involved in what I call “double duty.” She has been involved all week in getting a garage sale [home rummage sale] off the ground. And, you know she’s moving all that stuff around, organizing all that stuff, pricing all the stuff for sale. At the same time, she’s been working on making items for the craft show that she wants to sell. So, I dubbed this week in our house, “hell week.” It wasn’t a pretty thing 😉 and I’m glad we finally made it to today.
Verse seven says there’s a time to tear apart and a time to sew together. There’s a time for, for example with me, to go and have surgery done at the Mayo clinic [famous medical clinic]. A time to tear things apart and a time to sew back together again. In my case, I got staples all up and down from my prostate surgery.
There’s a time to be silent and a time to speak. Does anyone ever struggle with understanding the difference between those two seasons of life? I mean, you know, sometimes we should be quiet and we’re not. And sometimes we should speak up and we don’t. There is a time to be quiet. If you’ve ever walked into a family’s home where there’s been a shocking death, it’s just not a time to be running off your mouth and handing out verbal insights. And then there also needs to be a time, though, in which we speak up…there are times in which we need to speak encouragement to others.
Dr. Ed Young tells a story of someone who spoke up from the 1994 national prayer breakfast that was held in Washington DC. Mother Theresa, you remember her, took the podium and she pleaded for the lives of unborn children. She’s barely tall enough to be seen over the lectern, and yet that tiny nun, he said, began her address by reading a portion of Scripture, then stunned all the assembled dignitaries, including then-President Clinton and the Vice-President, by saying “the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion…for if we accept that a mother can kill own child, how can we tell other people not to kill each other?” And Charles Colson went on to say, “Mother Theresa was invariably polite and respectful. Yet she did not flinch in speaking the truth. She demonstrated civility wedded to bold conviction, confronting world leaders with the message of Biblical rightness.” Clearly, she viewed the breakfast as a time to speak. “Please don’t kill the child,” she implored her audience, I want the child. Give me the child.” And after her speech, she approached the President, pointed her finger and said, “Stop killing babies.” Yeah. There’s a time to speak up.
Verse 8, There’s a time to love and a time to hate. The times to love are mostly obvious to us. But also note in Psalm 97:10, we are exhorted to “hate evil, you who love the Lord.” In Proverbs 6 we learn there are seven things that God hates.
There’s a time for war, there’s a time for peace. And remember, these things are appointed. We don’t always get to choose them. Think about the World Trade Center attack, we didn’t get any choice there. But there’s a time for war, and a time for peace.
Life is a series of seasons. And if you live long enough, you’re going to know a season of joy and a season of sorrow. You’re going to know a season of success and a season of failure. You’re going to know a season of births and you’re going to know the season of deaths. And you’re going to know a season of hope and you’re going to know a season of discouragement. There is appointed a time for everything, and too frequently we do not choose it, but we get chosen for it.
As we’ve been talking about songs a little bit today, there’s another song that was out many years ago, “Que Sera, Sera”. I don’t know if you remember that one. “Que sera, sera. Whatever will be, will be. The future’s not ours to see. Que sera, sera.” The seasons come and go. So Solomon surveys through these seasons in these first eight verses. Then what he wants to do, Solomon, is he wants to Draw some Conclusions about Life. So, let’s Draw Some Conclusions about Life.
The first conclusions deals with perspective about God, and it is this: all of this that we’ve talked about, All of these seasons are Part of His Sovereign Plan. Look at verse eleven. It says, “He has made everything appropriate in its time.” As we go through the Seasons in the Sun, we need to understand that God is large and in charge. All of this is part of His sovereign plan. It’s not mere fate that is going on. It is not random chance that brings these seasons. It is not just some sort of a cosmic accident that happens. We need to have the perspective that Nebuchadnezzer had to come to, in Chapter four of the book of Daniel, when he came to the conclusion that God does according to His will, in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth.
He made everything (my version says) “appropriate in its time.” Some of the versions say, “made everything beautiful.” Literally, that’s what the Hebrew says, “He made everything beautiful in its time.” Now it’s not necessarily beautiful to us, especially if we’re in a season where we weep or we mourn, or we’re in a season of death. Certainly it’s not true if we have to give up searching for something that’s lost. Certainly it’s not beautiful to us if it involves organizing for a garage sale 😉. But it is from God’s perspective. It is from his standpoint, appropriate and beautiful. And, you see, when we understand that, that it’s part of His plan, it brings us a sense of some comfort. It brings us some comfort.
Chuck Swindoll said this, “He makes everything beautiful in its time, including your loss, including your hospital experience, your failures, your brokenness, your battles, including your fragmented dreams, your lost romance, your heartache, your illness. Yes, even your terminal illness. And one more word on this, God wouldn’t say ‘everything’ if He didn’t mean ‘everything.’ That includes whatever you’re going through. He makes it beautiful in its time. Without Him, life is purposeless and profitless, miserable and meaningless. With Him, it will ultimately make sense.”
Solomon says we need to draw some conclusions related to Perspective about God. First of all, all this, All these Seasons are part of His Sovereign Plan. Then secondly, the second part of perspective he wants to introduce us to is that His Plan is Mysterious. His plan is mysterious.
You know, we have an inner sense of the eternal as human beings. Notice it says in verse eleven, in the middle, “He has set eternity in their heart.” As we swing through these various seasons under the sun, as we go through those, we sense deep down, there’s got to be something more to ‘life down under,’ as we are swinging into this season, and swinging into that season. It’s got to be more than random accidents! The truth is that we know on the interior, we know there’s a whole lot more to life than we can see. The deepest hunger that we have cannot be satisfied apart from God. The darkest question we have cannot be answered apart from God. His plan is mysterious. We have an inner sense that there is something eternal going on, but we can’t always put our finger on it.
The other part of this is that we have a limited understanding of the plan, right? Notice the last part of verse eleven. “Yet man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning, even to the end.” The New Living Translation says, “Man can’t see the whole scope of what God’s done.” The NIV says, man “cannot fathom what God has done.” You see, all these seasons are part of His plan, and yet there’s this mysterious element into it. We know there’s something eternal behind it, we can sense it on the interior because he put eternity in our hearts. And yet, we still don’t have all the answers, right? This is a theme throughout Ecclesiastes.
You know, I’ve been through some interesting seasons in the last year. And I had some sense of God’s purpose in all of that, but I still don’t have all of the answers. Again, we will see this is a theme throughout our study of the Book of Ecclesiastes. If you’re looking for ALL of the answers, you might as well just stop looking for them, because we’re not going to know them here on this planet. So we need to realize this all Part of the Sovereign Plan—it’s very, very important—and His plan is Mysterious, very mysterious.
So what are we to do? I’m always that kind of bottom- line kind of guy, what are we to do, how should we live? Well, we need to gain some perspective about God, but he tells us we also need to look at some practical responses. Let’s look at them, some Practical Responses for Us.
The first practical response for us, that Solomon wants to teach us as we go through the seasons of life, is to Enjoy Life as a Gift. Enjoy life as a gift. Verse twelve he says, “I know that there is nothing better for them, (that is man) than to rejoice and to do good in one’s lifetime; moreover that every man who eats and drinks and sees good in all his labor—it is the gift of God (vs. 13)”
I’m going to be real honest with you, men and women, sometimes I wish everyone of you could hear the words, “Your biopsy came back positive for cancer.” Sometimes I wish everyone could go through major surgery, because you know what happens? You go through some of those things and you find that life looks a little bit different. You can find joy in just being able to bound up the stairs somewhere. You can find joy in being able to see well. You can enjoy the taste of food in ways that you never have before. You can just enjoy the fact that you get to go through the day without having need of assistance everywhere you move.
See part of what he’s saying is we need to Enjoy Life as a gift. Life will be tough at times. Part of what he’s saying is that the lesson for us, the practical response is, that we need to enjoy, we need to smell the roses. And so, as you go through your week this week, just think about enjoying life as a gift, smell some of the roses, enjoy some of the people in your life. Enjoy some of the sights, and the sounds, and the tastes of life.
So the first practical response for us, that he has, is that we are to Enjoy Life as a Gift.
The second practical response that he has for us as we go through the seasons of life is that we are to Rest in and Revere Him. Notice verse fourteen; he says “I know that everything God does will remain forever; there is nothing to add to it and there is nothing to take away from it, for God has so worked that men should fear him.” The New Living Translation says, “God’s purpose is that men should fear Him.”
Now when he says that he doesn’t mean that we should run away from God in abject terror, that’s not the idea. The idea about revering Him and fearing Him, is that we would bow our knees to Him in recognition and awe for who He is. Verse fourteen, he says, “Everything God does remains forever, there is nothing you can add to it, or take from it.” Isn’t it interesting how we try to be in charge in life…or is that just my problem? Okay. We TRY to be in charge. And when things don’t go our way, we find ourselves sulking and pouting.
But what are we fighting it for? Because He IS God! His plan is final. When He calls you into the season it is not a negotiation, you see. It’s a final thing. And His plan has staying power. You can’t really add to it and you can’t really take away from it at all. We need to Enjoy Life as a Gift, Solomon says, and we need to Rest in and Revere Him.
Dr. Bernie Siegal tells a story of a friend of his, and this friend has a farm. And he says of his friend, he loves the old-fashioned way of doing things so he doesn’t have any mechanical equipment and plows his fields with a horse. One day as he was plowing his field, the horse dropped dead. Everyone in the village said, “Gee, what an awful thing to happen.” He just responded, “We’ll see.” He was so at peace and so calm, that people got together and because they admired his attitude so much, they gave him a new horse as a gift. Then everyone’s reaction was, “what a lucky man.” And he said, “we’ll see.” A few days later, the horse, being strange to his farm, jumped the fence and ran off. And everyone said, “Oh, poor fellow.” And he said, “we’ll see.” A week later, the horse returned with a dozen wild horses following it, and everyone said, “What a lucky man.” And he said, “we’ll see.” The next day his son went out riding because now they had more than one horse, but the boy fell off and broke his leg. And everyone said, “oh, poor boy.” But my friend said, “we’ll see.” The next day, the army came to town taking all the young men for military service, but they left his son because of his broken leg and everyone said, “What a lucky kid.” And my friend said, “we’ll see.”
Now you hear that story and you think, now what’s with this response of ‘we’ll see’? Is he just sort of shrugging his shoulders to events? “We’ll see.” You know, I think there’s some truth in this. I think really his response was more like this: “We’ll see. We’ll see God in this.” As each of those various seasons came to him, he was saying, “We’ll see. We’ll see God in this.” And you know what? That’s the response that God wants from you. And that’s the response that He wants from me. Whatever season He may lead you into, He wants the response of “we’ll see. We’ll see God in this.” Whatever season you may be in today, that’s the response He would like from your heart. “We’ll see God in this.” Whatever season you may find yourself in next week, He wants the response of “we’ll see. We’ll see God in this.” Whatever season you may be in next month, that’s the response He wants from you and from me, “We’ll see. We’ll see God in this.” He wants us to Rest in and to Revere Him.
Let’s bow in prayer for just a moment.
Lord, we want to admit to you that life is time, and there are seasons that are appointed for us to go through by your sovereign plan. And Lord, we also want to admit that even though we have a sense that there is design behind it, a purpose behind it, in truth, we really don’t understand oftentimes what you are doing. We would pray though that you would teach us as men and women and young people to enjoy life. To see it as a gift from your hand. And we pray as we walk away from here today that we can experience the freshness of some new perspective. There’s so much to enjoy. So much to enjoy! Sometimes we become riveted by what we don’t see or what we don’t have. We would pray that you would teach us to shift our focus and to enjoy the positive things that you have given us in our lives. And Father, I would pray for myself, and for each one of us, that as we go through the seasons in the sun, that we would rest in and revere you. My mind goes to one other song, a chorus that is often been sung. It goes this way: “in His time, in His time, He makes all things beautiful in His time.” And then there is a plea: “Lord, please show me everyday, as you’re teaching me your way, that you’ll do just what you say, in Your time.” We thank you for being God. We thank you for your promise of being with us, even to the very end of this age, no matter what season you may direct us into. We’ll give you praise for being God and we will rest in you. And we pray in Jesus name, Amen.