Ecclesiastes: In Joy and Grief

Seated.

So as Josh said, uh we are working our way through the book of Ecclesiastes, this very intriguing book in the Old Testament.

It's about King Solomon.

Maybe King Solomon wrote it or somebody else wrote it about Solomon, is probably more what it is.

And and it's a guy at the end of his life letting loose, letting loose a lot of raw feelings.

And he's not telling us necessarily what is right and what is wrong.

He's telling us what life is like.

And so this morning, Ecclesiastes 3, it's a it's a pretty famous passage, right?

To every turn, turn turn.

Turn, turn, turn.

There is a season.

Very good, very good.

Anybody know who wrote it?

No, not the birds.

I thought it was the birds.

The birds made it famous.

Pete Seeger, he wrote it in the 50s.

The birds made it famous in the 60s.

I did a little Wikipedia this week.

I wouldn't have known that either.

I thought it was, actually, I thought it was the Beatles that shows you, and then I found that it was the birds.

Alright, so I was really wrong.

But what I did know was Kevin Bacon read this in front of the city council in Footloose.

Anybody know that, right?

Cinema history.

Cinema history was made when he read Ecclesiastes 3.

He didn't get the dance approved, by the way, in case you're wondering.

But he quoted it.

He quoted it.

Alright, so Ecclesiastes 3, 1 and 2.

For everything there's a season and a time for every matter under heaven, a time to be born and a time to die.

So I worked up a little illustration today.

I just grabbed stuff around my house, if that's okay with you.

So pretty much what he says is you are you're born and you're gonna die.

I mean, it's it's just what it is.

I mean, it's it's it's the way that in you in you, this is you, you are in this.

You are in this.

Okay?

Nobody escapes.

This is these are the these are certainties in all of our lives.

And now within this, there is a I collected more stuff around my house, there's just a range of experiences, right?

Like all sorts of different experiences and their different sizes, and all sorts of stuff just goes on in life.

Let's just put it all that was a big one.

That was a that was like something really great or something really, really bad.

And and this is this is life.

This and you're in here in this timeline, you're in here, and there's stuff, and you're making your way through, and there's and the complexity of it is that there's some there's some really good things that remain good, and then there's some like really bad things that stay bad, you don't see them turning good, but then there's like other things that started good and then they turned bad, and then there's other ones that started bad, and amazingly later they're they're good, and yet we are in this and we are, and what Solomon is saying is we are bound in this.

We are you you will be born and you will die.

You you are bound in time.

And in that we are very limited.

This is point number one.

Life in this world is bound in time.

That's it.

Point number one, you are born and you will die, and there's a range, a range of experiences within life of joy and grief along the way.

And that's point number two.

Life in this world is filled with joy and grief.

This is sort of a pretty good synopsis of verses two through eight, those all those couplets.

You know, there's gonna be killing and healing, weeping and laughing, seeking and losing, loving and hating and a whole bunch of others.

But basically saying, hey, there's gonna be joy, like really joyful seasons and things and experiences, and then there's gonna be loss and hurt and grieving.

Two weeks ago I took our last high chair and booster seat to goodwill.

So, what that means is it's groundbreaking.

Maybe you've been through it, you've been through it, and you're on the other side, or maybe you haven't got there yet.

Maybe you don't have a high chair in your house at all, and you're very happy about that.

What it means is there's no no nowhere in my house.

Nowhere in my house, not in a closet, not in the attic.

There is no high chair, there is no booster seat, and so I'm dropping off this old, worn-out, nasty, sticky high chair that all three of my girls sat in and made a mess in.

And giving it away means a new season.

Giving it away means there's a new experience that's coming to fruition.

It means there's no more babies in my house.

That's what it means.

Right?

But it means it means all that difficulty's gone.

Right?

Praise the Lord.

Oh, God, oh, that's wonderful.

But it also means that there's nobody to watch, learn to walk, or learn to talk, or you know, fix all their words.

Like, like we just have a couple words left.

Right?

Our three-year-old calls avocado Colorado, and she calls, that's fantastic.

And no, we're not fixing it.

We're like, as long as you want to call it Colorado, it will be Colorado.

Right?

There's only a few of those left.

And so so there can be, there can be, in the same moment, there can be an experience of joy and a grieving, and a grieving.

Because I carry in this high chair to goodwill and drop it off and and and leave in joy and in grief in the same moment.

And that's and that's an experience bound in time.

And maybe you've known this, right?

Because you your kid got their driver's license, or you dropped them off at college, and you're like, hallelujah, they're getting some independence, and I'm getting independence because they're getting independence and they're alive and they're functioning, but but then they're not around as much.

And that is sort of sad.

Or maybe you got the bigger job, right?

You were under somebody else for so long, and you go, Oh, I would never do it like that.

I can't believe they're making that decision.

They're ridiculous, and you go home, you're like, oh, I would do this, this, and this.

And then you get the bigger job, and so you get a little bit better salary, you get to make some directional decisions, and this is all exciting, this is joy, this is incredible, but you never expected the weight of the responsibility.

And so there's some grief with it as well.

Or a sorrow arrived, and it just stayed sorrow.

You just hadn't seen it turn to good.

Like you got you got cancer, and it's just horrible.

It was just horrible, and it was horrible, and it is horrible, and you just hadn't seen that one turn around.

Or you got cancer, and the very thing that you thought was gonna be horrible restored your soul and your family.

Right?

And I think we hear stories like that, at least I hear stories like that, and I think to myself, great, good for you.

Like, good for you.

Learn from your grief, right?

Like, I am so happy for you, but I don't want to learn like that, right?

I want you to learn like that.

I want to learn like skiing down a long blue ski run, and I have perfect ACLs, and my body doesn't hurt at the age of 37, my right hip does not ache.

I don't know why it aches at 37, but it does, and none of that, I just want it all perfect, right?

We like joy, we like comfort.

That's what we prefer.

Of course, that's what we prefer.

Healthy babies and springtime, number one at Chick-fil-A, you get it, and it's just a good, it's just so good, right?

We like that.

Grief is the thing that we're not sure about.

Grief is the thing we're not sure about.

And then there's grieving people all over the Bible.

Not only grief, just people voicing it, just letting loose.

Jesus is weeping.

Uh, 40% of the Psalms are people asking, God, where are you at?

There's a whole book called Lamentations.

People in the Old Testament are ripping their clothes, ripping their clothes in a signal and symbolism of saying, like, my heart is ripping.

And then I think about us, I think about our culture, and we start to tear up and we go, Oh, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

No, no, no, no, you don't have to be sorry for grieving.

Oh, I just need to let me collect myself.

I'll be back.

I'll be back in just a second.

A death of a loved one in the Jewish practice, they would take a week and be together in silence, just grieving.

No work, no work, no phone, just together, just grieving because they needed to.

Because they knew they needed to.

And after the week and after the burial, then they had a month, a month of grieving begins.

After that, there's a year of grieving, and they know this, and they because they need to.

I think about how we often do it.

Like, let's make the arrangements in three days, work right up to it, right?

And get there and act like nothing really happened.

We're sad for about two hours, and then we hide all of our sadness as if nothing happened.

But the problem is something did happen.

See, as for grief, whether it's a death of a person or the death of a season, or you're dropping off a high chair at goodwill, and it's just a change in your life, if it matters to you, it matters.

When there's a change, usually we need to grieve something.

See, healthy spirituality is being honest about your emotions.

It's not making judgments over, oh, whether, oh, I shouldn't be, or I should be, or I should be over this, or I should.

No, no, no, no.

Just healthy spirituality is honest about your emotions.

You have to give yourself permission to enjoy the joy.

Some of us aren't even good at that because we'll nitpick ourselves even when it's a joyful season.

Enjoy the joy.

Like, like, good.

Enjoy that.

And also embrace that sometimes we need to weep in the sorrow.

And maybe you would say, but it's not even that big of a deal.

I should be over that.

I should have, maybe you've heard that, I should have more faith.

It doesn't mean you lack faith.

It just means you're sad.

I mean, maybe the godly thing is to be sad.

Maybe that's the godly thing.

And maybe you need to be sad for three weeks, or maybe just a day, or maybe a year.

I don't know.

There's no timeline on this grieving.

But you have to grieve.

You have to grieve things.

We're constantly needing to grieve things.

Jesus had great meals with his friends, and then we turn around and we see him weeping.

It's joy and it's grief.

And we have to ask ourselves, right?

Like, okay, so in this, we're bound in time, this range of experience, and it all can feel very insecure, very uncertain.

Is there anything secure amidst the insecurity of the range of experiences we go through?

Solomon continues in verses 9 through 11.

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.

Now I think we'll wrestle with that one for like the rest of our lives because we're going, like, I see some of it, I don't see all of it, I'm not sure about that one.

I'm really wrestling with this one.

But he says it.

He has made everything beautiful in its time.

We're bound in time, it's hard for us to get that one.

Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

So he reminds us, you're bound in time, you're limited, you won't understand everything, but he's put eternity into the core of who you are.

And that's point number three.

Our hearts, the core of who we are, are rooted in eternity.

So he says this.

He says, eternity's been placed in your heart.

This is the word olam, which is like forever time, but some people actually think it's not really, we tend to think eternity, and we think, well, that's just time that goes on forever.

Some people think, well, that might not be the best way to think about it.

The better way might be to think about its existence without time.

And that's hard for us to understand because we're within time.

Let our brains kind of explode a little bit there.

So this world is one constant timeline, right?

That we exist in.

It's linear, it's just one moment to the next over experience after experience after experience, right?

And Solomon is saying, eternity is put in your heart, so there's a hint of something else.

There's a hint of some other realm, some other way of existence, and it's inside of you.

And we know it a little bit.

Like we get these feelings every once in a while because we'll say something like, Oh, where did the time go?

Oh, time really flew by.

Right?

We get these little moments, or our time stretches, and you're like, oh, how did third, how has it only 30 minutes gone by?

This is horrible.

And other times, like, three hours just went by.

I can't believe that went by.

And we get these little hints.

So Solomon hints at it, and then Jesus gives it.

Jesus said in John 10, verse 28, I give them eternal life.

John 10:28

So I give them an existence, a way to live that's beyond time.

Okay, so let me break it down a little bit.

So beyond being defined and completely bound by your experience, there's a way to exist that's that's beyond that, and I give that to them.

I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.

So it's existence beyond this boundness, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

So just for the sake of this, you know, really, really uh brilliant.

Uh where are you at in here?

You're buried under here.

Some good stuff there.

Alright, so this was you, and what Jesus says, I just found the best thing in my house, and it was a chocolate-covered coconut macaroon.

And so, pure joy right there.

And Jesus says, I have put in you eternal life, even while you are in bound in this.

So you won't understand all this, you won't understand all this range of experiences, you won't understand every grieving of your life, but I have still put in you, I've still put in you eternal life.

And Jesus is God in time for us to understand something of God, something.

And we don't get it all, we don't get all the explanations, but we but we get to know that he understands suffering, he suffered, and he's with us in our suffering.

And he perfectly took on all of our control issues because don't you want to just control it all?

Josh wants to control their silverware drawer, right?

I know that feeling.

Uh I love to control everything, ask Christie.

So, but this, we love to control our range of experiences.

If I can just control, if I can just control, if I can control, you know, keeping the comfort and you know, reducing the suffering, and okay, a little bit of that wise, wisdom, but when it just takes over our lives, we become more and more bound by it.

Rather, living out of the thing that's put in us, this eternal life.

So, this control, this desire for control, this is sin.

This is us trying to be God.

I will be God over this.

And we can't do it.

I mean, are any of us being successful at this?

And Jesus comes and in the cross, he even takes on that thing we do with this control.

And so we get this option.

We can live surrender, surrendered into this loving, knowing, present God, and live out of that eternal life that's put in us, or live in our attempt to control everything.

Now, I went to sleep last night a little bit later than I should have.

I always do.

Christy doesn't, she goes to sleep.

I, on the other hand, I needed to see that Shark Tank episode.

It was so important to me.

It was last night, it was very important to me.

This morning, it didn't matter.

But last night, it meant everything.

Right?

The very wise Jerry Seinfeld says Night Jerry always makes it difficult on morning Jerry.

You know the feeling.

Night Rust finds things that are interesting all the time, and morning rust wakes up and is like, what why did I need to know about those chips that were made out of crickets and they made a deal with Mark Cuban?

It means nothing to my life.

But last night it was a very big deal, and I needed to see all of that.

And so we love this, right?

We love it.

And what makes all this possible?

Right?

To take on that project at 10 o'clock at night, or to watch another show, or to just you know read a little bit longer, read a little bit longer, a little bit.

What makes all this possible?

Electricity.

I mean, it's just that basic.

I mean, this is what makes it possible.

I mean, before you would have had a fire for a little bit, you would have gone to sleep, and then the farm animal would have woke you up in the morning.

That was the rhythm.

And now we do it totally different.

And I mentioned this because we sort of love it.

We have control over the seasons.

Right?

I mean, we will go buy a peach at Whole Foods in the middle of February.

Now, it was probably from Argentina and was flown here overnight, and it cost you$6.

But we have control over the seasons.

And we love this.

We love it, and I mention it because this is just shows you how much we fight for control.

We fight for control over the range of life experiences.

I was out walking on Thursday just thinking about Solomon, talking about us being bound in time and birth and death, the range of experiences that we're in, how we try to control them, and that's that's us trying to be Lord of our lives rather than receiving Christ as Lord of our life.

And I'm thinking of y'all, thinking of you guys.

Like every everything going on in your lives and things I do know about, and I don't know a lot about you know about a lot of stuff I don't know about, but I know about a lot, and thinking about you know, these things for you guys, and what I'm gonna say, and then finally it hits me like, where am I at this?

Where am I?

Where am I in this?

And the truth is I'm not very good at this.

Like, I really will try to control as much as possible for comfort.

Uh the past two years I've watched my wife walk through five deaths of close ones, two years.

Five deaths in two years.

And she was amazing at that.

Like really wanting to feel each one.

And I just sort of like moving on.

I might feel a little bit a day or two.

And let's just get back to things.

But here's the thing it doesn't go away.

It's not gonna go away.

You think, oh, it won't have an effect on me.

No, it's already having an effect on you.

It has more of an effect on you if you don't deal with it.

Grieving has power over you unless grieving can be transformative for you if you choose to grieve.

If you don't choose to grieve, the grief itself will have power over you in a negative way.

And this control thing is just us and our sin.

Accepting the limitation in life, accepting this boundness.

This is part of following Jesus, to accept this and what we discover in it, if we accept it, and yet Christ is in us.

Eternal life is in us.

And so we're rooted in something deeper, even while experiencing this range of experiences.

Now we're now we're in some process of freedom.

Now we're in some process.

Now we're not always good at that, right?

I mean, if you're like me, not always good at that.

Rather just try to control things and avoid things and escape things.

And so that's why point number four is so good for us.

Though we fight God in controlling the seasons of our lives, He has already fought for our hearts.

That's what Jesus is talking about here.

Solomon's hinting toward it.

Jesus is talking about it.

Though we fight for control over the seasons of our lives, and you know you do it and I do it, though we fight for that, God's already fought for your heart.

So all this stuff is happening, the joy and the grief, the range of experiences, and you must process it.

You must speak it, you must name it, you must see it, you have to feel it.

But in all of that, inside of you, there is a gift.

There is Christ Himself.

Eternity has been put into your heart, and Christ calls it forth.

So the grief stuff is hard.

We don't have to pretend it's not hard.

We don't have to like put a godly spin on that.

It's hard.

If it's hard, it's hard.

If it's sad, it's sad.

That's what it is.

And you get to be that.

But the core of who you are does not rest on your perfect performance of going through all of this range of experiences.

The core of who you are rests in God's word for you and Jesus.

And that's why you are indestructible in your belovedness.

Because he has loved you.

And it's his work for you that's been put over you.

That when God looks at you in this range of experiences and in your joy, you nitpick yourself and you don't really even enjoy your joy or in the grief, you are avoiding it, and you shove it really far down, and you're not even very good at that.

In that, God looks at you as beloved child because He has put eternity in your heart because of the work of Jesus for you.

You're indestructible in your belovedness because you have been loved.

So, my brothers and sisters, you are loved beyond the seasons this world throws at you.

Let's pray together.

God, we do come before you and confess that we love to control the things going on in our lives, and we have a very difficult time with any measure of acceptance and surrender.

And in this control, we only know more anxiousness and more fear.

We are bound, and in our pride we do not like it.

And this is our sin.

God, thank you that you took on our sin on the cross and you gave to us your righteousness, so we are forever and destructibly your beloved.

Help us in this range of experiences of life.

Help us to remember eternity has been placed in our hearts through Jesus Christ Himself.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.