Time is Not the Enemy | Myles Holmes

We're gonna open up God's Word together now, and we are in Ecclesiastes chapter three.

If you don't have a copy of God's word, the ushers are making their way down the aisle right now.

They'd love to get a copy into your hand, so you can flag one of them down, and they will give you a copy of God's word, which we would love for you to keep as our gift to you.

We love to get into God's word here, and that is because every time we get into God's word, he speaks to us specifically.

And that's something I love about what's been happening in Ecclesiastes chapter three.

I over the last few weeks have had a number of people come up to me and accuse me of preaching a message that is relevant only to them.

Now, when Joel and Megan bought a house and there was a whole point on houses, I thought that one seems a little inconspicuous.

That's a little weird.

But then yesterday we talked about work, or last yesterday I talked to myself about work, but last week we talked about work, and and this week we find ourselves coming again to a text I trust, not just because of the text it is, but because of the presence of the Holy Spirit with us right now.

Do you believe that, church, that the Holy Spirit is here to expose the meaning of his word to us?

That there is a relevant word for us here in Ecclesiastes 3, and it really is a word about time.

Time is a fascinating thing.

We, from a very young age, are uh maybe you could say in love with time.

It's a friend, it's an enemy.

We're on our way here this morning, and I was reminded of this when we were 17 minutes away, and my youngest daughter interrupted the conversation my wife and I were having with this important question: how far away are we?

Parents, do you remember this?

Do you still get this?

How many minutes until we get there?

Oh, 17 minutes, honey.

And then again, this cute small voice erupted from the back, interrupting a conversation.

How many minutes until we get there?

Oh, 16 minutes now.

And every minute asked me, how many minutes, time, time, time, until we were a minute away, to which my youngest daughter who struggles, uh, second youngest now, who struggles with Zeds, said, I'll tell you when there's Lero minutes left.

And we turned the corner and saw the building and said, There's Lero minutes left.

Time.

We don't want to waste time, we don't want to spend our time doing what we shouldn't be doing.

We track time, we optimize time, we batch tasks, we have a calendar app, we have apps that wake us up in the uh lightest of our sleep so that we don't waste a single minute being groggy.

We want time back.

Maybe right now there are people listening to this sermon on a podcast on one and a half speed, two times the speed, three times the speed.

All of us do it.

Behind this belief is perhaps something we've never examined that time is running out.

Behind all this behavior is this belief that time is running out.

In fact, we so believe that we have all sorts of sayings in order to convey the truth that time is running out.

Time is not your friend.

Time flies.

Where did the time go?

We're running out of time.

All the language of someone who is losing a race, someone who is losing a battle.

That's how we feel about time, and so we've adopted all these phrases to say really this time is against us.

It is against you.

You are working against the clock.

And we don't necessarily need to talk about sayings to feel that, do we?

We feel the reality of time slipping through our fingers.

We again, tonight, on Sunday evening, many of us will get to the end of the weekend and look back over our weekend and ask, what did we really accomplish?

I mean, what did we even do?

We will celebrate another kid's birthday who we feel like just yesterday they were born, and here they are.

We're celebrating an eighth birthday, a 15th, a 20th birthday.

Time is time is flying.

Many of us will ask the question, maybe often in the middle of the night, in the in the wee hours of the morning, doing the math, how much time do we have left?

I mean, how many good years do I really have left?

And if nothing that makes us else makes us face the reality of time, then so often we find ourselves standing graveside, face to face, with this reality that time is short.

Time's short.

We all feel it, we all know it.

The question is, how do you respond to that?

And for many of us, maybe even now as we're talking about this, you're thinking, man, I can't wait to get out of Ecclesiastes so we can talk about some good stuff.

You know, it's summer.

The sun is shining out there.

We should be talking about summer things, but here we are contemplating the shortness, the brevity of life, the quickness of time.

Maybe what's occurring in you is this restlessness because there's never enough hours, there's never enough years, there's never enough life.

And no matter how well you manage the calendar, no matter how well you cram new things into the calendar, nothing ever makes that feeling of restlessness go away because in all reality it's not about the calendar, it is about the reality that we are confronted with this morning, that time really is short.

The modern remedy then is the remedy of mindfulness, where you just set your mind on the present moment.

Don't let it slip through your fingers.

Focus, focus, focus all of your attention.

Everything else, get out of the way, be present in the moment.

Do I don't I sound like an Instagram post right now that's gonna get a lot of likes?

I'm gonna be on the for you page, right?

And that's how we talk.

Be present in the moment.

And yet, behind this mindfulness is this assumption that time is the thing that you are fighting, that it is always fleeting, the only thing you can do is hold on to it before it gets away.

However, we deal with time, whether we attack it, trying to squeeze every minute out of our day, ending our days exhausted, terrified of the feeling that we're falling behind other people because time is passing, or we surrender to time, we scroll time away, we numb it, we waste it.

Whatever our response is, the heart of it is the same.

It is the belief in what Solomon wants to tell us is a lie this morning that time is your enemy.

Love when Solomon wants to tell us exactly the opposite this morning, that time is not your enemy.

And Solomon is an ancient king who tried harder than anybody here to master his time, to control his time.

And he's here to tell us that we have it exactly backwards.

Let's read it together in Ecclesiastes chapter 3.

Ecclesiastes 3 · chapter mention

As we do, would you stand with me?

Ecclesiastes chapter 3, verse 1.

Ecclesiastes 3:1

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, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to seek and a time to lose, a time to keep, a time to cast away, a time to tear and a time to sow, 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've 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 than 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, nor anything taken away from it.

God has done it so that the 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.

This is the word of the Lord.

You can grab a seat.

Time is not the enemy.

Never was, never will be, and and Solomon in this passage is asking us to consider three wisdom principles about time, three things that we would never do with an enemy, to release it, to trust it, and to receive it.

To release it, to trust it, and to receive it.

First, I want you to see this.

The first wisdom principle Solomon gives to us regarding time to release it.

Time is uncontrollable.

Release it.

Time is uncontrollable.

Notice what Solomon says here in verse 1 for everything there is a season, a time for every matter under heaven.

We, of course, have seen this verse before.

It's perhaps one of the most popular passages in all the Bible.

It is plastered on graduation cards.

It's also given to you when you fail to graduate.

There's a time for everything, a time to fail, time to pass.

It's on Instagram posts, it's on mugs.

We love mug quotes around here.

It's everywhere.

There is a time for everything.

And yet, as we have sort of sentimentalized this verse, I am convinced here that Solomon is not seeking sentimental comfort.

It's actually more searing confrontation.

Solomon is here to confront us with the reality of time.

And as we begin to read the poem on time from verse 2 to verse 8, there are 14 pairs, each of which have a good thing and a bad thing.

Now, as we come to this poem, I think we often emphasize the good, saying, okay, well, listen, the bad is there, but but there is a time for everything.

So don't worry, you'll get through the bad and into the good.

And Solomon says this, no, no, no, there is a time for everything.

There is a time, Solomon says as he goes then to explain the poem, where God ordains everything to be.

The reality of time is not just that you need to grit your way through the horrible times to get to the good times.

The reality of time is that a good God brings both.

And so we read through this list and we recognize that there are incredibly good times that we want here.

There's a time to be born.

There's a time to plant, a time to heal, a time to build, a time to laugh.

I mean, we don't have to argue about which one of these are good.

There's a time to dance.

For which, as a you know, little example, I asked the other two elders to come up here and do a dance just to show us.

They're gonna come up now.

Let's give them a hand.

No, I'm just kidding, then.

We lost two elders.

I'm the only elder after that.

There are good times.

Notice also, though, that there are bad times.

It really is the good, the bad, and the ugly here.

There is a time to die.

A time to kill.

A time to weep.

A time to mourn.

A time to lose.

I'm not gonna say anything about Habs fans here this morning.

There's a time to lose.

I, of course, am a Leafs fan, so there's more time to lose for Leafs fan.

That's the great thing about preaching.

You can say whatever you want, and it's a monologue, so you don't get to say anything in return.

So here we are.

There is a time to lose.

There is a time to tear apart.

There's the good, there's the bad, there is the ugly.

There are some introverts here who read this morning, there is a time to speak.

And their skin started crawling.

I mean, I don't want to speak.

There's some people here who don't like physical contact who just read biblically, there is a time to embrace.

And so they're gonna put up their hand right now, and we're all gonna go and hug them this morning.

There is a time to embrace.

There is a time for everything.

We love to say there's a time for everything, but nobody finds this whole list beautiful.

Everyone finds 50% of this list beautiful.

Nobody embraces the whole thing.

We move towards certain times, don't we?

Dinner time, vacation time, date night.

Nobody excitedly announces.

It's time to mourn, everyone.

Come on, let's get mourning.

It's time to weep, let's let's cry together, let's weep together.

It's time to die, it's time to kill.

Nobody moves towards these things.

It's human nature.

And Solomon is here to say you can't have biblical wisdom without seeing not only the necessity of all of these things, but the goodness of all of them.

You'd need them all.

Now let's just take a moment to say that the biblical picture of time is very far away from the worldly vision of time.

Does not the world spend a lot of time, and I include so many of our pursuits in this, trying to avoid half of this list?

In fact, there is a billion-upon billion dollar industry all coming from the desire to avoid the time to die.

Longevity podcasts, anti-aging creams, which as you get older and older, you realize that's a very lucrative business.

There's some expensive creams for just that little space under your eye right there.

Whole business is uh around avoiding death.

We as a human people want to avoid mourning so that we don't call it a funeral anymore.

We call it a celebration of life.

Let's skip the mourning, let's skip the sadness, let's just get straight to the joy.

Fill every silence so we don't have to face the reality of what our life is.

So then recognize, loved ones, what we are doing with time.

I mean, this is so modern of us, isn't it?

We are trying to control it.

Let me look at this list.

I understand it's all a reality, but let me work as hard as I can to control and to curate my time, to allow into my life the things in this list that I think will be good that will benefit me.

Now, 29 times in this chapter, Solomon uses this word, time.

Time, time, time.

He keeps coming back to it, time.

And in the original Hebrew, this is not just like the time on a clock.

It's not Solomon saying, hey, listen, at 4:30 p.m.

it's dying time, and 6.15 is crying time, and the here's a time on the clock.

What Solomon's talking about here, he's using the Hebrew word that talks about an appointed time.

It's a fixed time.

It is a set moment, it is determined by someone, and you see that in verse 1 when he says, uh, for everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.

Solomon is pointing us to this reality that the times under heaven are dictated, are appointed by a person, by a God who is above the heavens.

This is why the psalmist says, the times are in your hands, God.

The times are in your hands.

This is why we read in Galatians 4, what Mike prayed through this morning, that at the right time God sent his son because God is in control of all that happens under heaven.

He is the one appointing the times, fixing the times, fitting the time, setting the moment.

He sets the clock.

Every appointed time arrives not on your calendar, but on his.

And Solomon is here saying, I mean, I mean, let's just take a step back and say, isn't it kind of absurd how much we try to control when the reality is we we ultimately have no control over what comes into our life and when it comes in?

It is this feeling that this, I mean, this is what poetry is supposed to do, right?

It's supposed to evoke a feeling in you.

And Solomon writes this poem to say, listen, listen, you have no control.

You have no control.

And that is what you need to hear this morning.

That is what you can't live wisely without believing.

You have no control over the time.

Can you think about your life for a moment and the most significant things that have happened in your life?

The birth of your kids is such a great example, isn't it?

Of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.

Women, did any of the birth of your children go the way that you had planned it?

The way that you had planned it, there's spa music playing in the background, right?

It was very peaceful.

Your husband did not eat the tuna sandwich for lunch, but here you are.

None of it has gone according to plan.

This is true in so many things in our life.

The health diagnosis that you receive that upturns everything in your life.

I never would have planned that for myself.

I have no control over this doctor appointment.

The phone call of sharing the news of the death of a loved one.

I mean, you have no control over whether that will happen this week or not.

We have no control over the things that come into our lives.

Solomon is very clearly speaking here.

You authored almost none of the significant moments that happened in your life.

All of it was set before you got here, and the one who said it is not you.

That means this whole idea that we can control our time and curate a life in which only half of this list is there, is an illusion.

It always has been an illusion, it will be an illusion.

This grip we try to have on life where we try to invite as many good things into our life as possible.

And maybe you're not doing this for yourself.

Maybe where this really shows up is for your kids, where you try to protect your kids in this little bubble in this world of listen, everything's good in this world.

You're never gonna face any harm, and we're gonna shelter you from what is difficult.

And I understand that there is an age where things are appropriate, but you understand that you cannot do that for long until that sweet, innocent child experiences the harsh reality of this world that we live in, and the time that God has appointed for them to mourn, to cry, to weep, to lose comes into their life.

It is a reality of life that you must embrace in order to live wisely.

The grip that we have we believe we have on control, the ability to curate our time, to bring into our life what we think is good and to leave from our life what we think is bad.

It is an illusion.

It is an illusion.

And in this moment, we just thank you, Holy Spirit.

Thank you, Holy Spirit, for the clarity right now.

Because, man, we don't we live the rat race where we do not think like scripture tells us to think, and we get caught up in thinking, maybe I can live, I can pursue the good life.

It's an illusion, and the reality is we live under the illusion, and very few of us call this a control problem.

What many of us are calling responsibility, I believe Solomon is pressing his finger into a wound here to say, that's not responsibility.

That is you trying to control what good comes into your life and what bad comes into your life.

We call it good responsibility, we we call it stewardship, we call it planning ahead.

And all of it is this grip we have on the things of this world, this this belief.

Belief that is in plain sight that we can control time.

We pack our calendar full of things.

We have a contingency plan for the contingency plan.

We are awake in the middle of the night, rehearsing the events of tomorrow, playing that conversation over and over in our head, which is a great thing because you always win the argument in your head, right?

We've dressed up our anxiety in a responsible clothing and we've called it virtue, trying to control our calendar.

And Solomon is here to just say, hey, let's just hit the pause button on life.

And can we look back and ask how many meaningful moments that changed your life you really were in control of?

Is it not that the most significant moments of your life were things either that you would have never planned for yourself or that came to you outside of your ability to secure it?

I was been reminded of this constantly in ministry.

I have always entered every ministry calling God has given me with an amazing plan for how that's gonna go.

I remember getting into youth ministry and thinking, this is gonna be amazing.

When I speak to these youth, they're gonna have their hands folded in their lap and they are gonna be so locked in on what I'm saying to them.

And I did youth ministry for eight years, and I never got to experience that once.

I got to experience kids eating the paper outline that I printed off in the front row while I was speaking.

And yeah, I mean I'm gonna get there someday.

I will get their attention.

Remember receiving the call to this church and having this idea.

I mean, man, when I get to Newmarket, everyone is gonna love me.

And everyone who's here right now loves me, I think.

Yeah.

At least those five people do.

But there was so many conversations where nothing changed in the church apart from my presence, and that was what signaled the departure.

And I had to come face to face with this reality that my plan is not God's plan, that I really have no control over the time and my story and how it's gonna go, and God does, and yet I look at what God has done, and every single time I've had this plan and it's not gone according to my plan at all.

And I cannot help but to think that God is a better author than I am.

That every I mean, I think about the pain of having to be rejected by people as their pastor, and I just I mean, it's produced so much good in me.

I needed to know as a pastor that I am not anyone's savior, and you need to know that too.

I can't save anybody.

Only Jesus can.

And it has been so helpful for my being a pastor and preaching to know like this is not about, I can't do it.

It's gotta be Jesus.

It has to be him.

I have to submit myself to his plan.

Man, I look at our church today, and it's so much better for it that it went according to his plan and not my plan.

Loved one, what if the times that you are fighting the hardest right now may be the times that you need the most?

Has it not been true in your life that the most difficult seasons produced the deepest good?

And if you can't look in your life and experientially say that's true, which I trust you can right now, you need to know it's biblically true.

Romans 5, suffering produces endurance, character, hope.

But without the times of suffering, biblically, you have no character, you have no endurance, you have no hope.

What does James say?

He says, Count it joy, because testing produces steadfastness.

You want to make it to the end, you need to suffer.

There is no other way.

You need the bad times, the hard times.

This is how God carries you, not despite the hard times, but through them.

The call then is to release the times.

Notice, loved one, how often the scriptures call God's people to do what?

To wait on the Lord.

Wait on the Lord.

It is his timing.

He has brought you into this.

Then the calling then is to sit under it faithfully, to wait.

And we hate that.

Why do they schedule doctor's appointments when I gotta wait for 40 minutes?

We hate waiting, and yet here is the Lord saying, I am gonna give you this thing, and so long as you sit under it, it will produce incredible good that you cannot imagine.

And if you will sit under it, so much good will come from it.

Sit under it.

Wait on the Lord, release the times to the Lord and say, Listen, they're not in my hands, and so I'm gonna trust that they come from a good God.

Doesn't mean I'm passive, doesn't mean I stop working altogether, doesn't mean I stop caring.

It means that I start believing that the things that God has brought into my life for good or for bad or for ugly or for whatever it is are controlled by a sovereign God who is good and wise and powerful.

So that you can stop treating every unexpected season like it's a problem to solve.

And you can start asking the question: what is God doing right now?

What is God doing right now?

Why has a good God brought this into my life?

What does He want to produce to me?

Love when you see how different that is.

You see how different it is than how we often just kind of squirm under suffering and hardship?

Release it.

Time is uncontrollable.

You are not in control of the times.

You never were.

Can you release them?

Well, you can, and in the second part of this passage, Solomon wants to tell us why, and that is because the second biblical principle we learn about time is to trust it.

Time is incomprehensible.

Trust it.

Time is incomprehensible.

Our second point that's coming up on the screen, right?

Now it's gonna be timely, it's incomprehensible when it will come, it is going to come now.

At some point it's gonna come.

But trust it, it will come.

Time is incomprehensible.

Look down at your copy of God's word with me.

Look at verse 9.

What gain has the worker from his toil?

Again, we find this word gain.

Circle it in your Bibles.

It is the obsession of Solomon.

If I don't control the times, what do I get for all my striving?

And it really is a hypothetical question.

It's really meant to make you stop and say, well, it's probably not worth it in the end.

And again, that's what we've said time and time again, Solomon is doing.

Solomon is showing us what happens when we pursue what the world offers over what God gives.

So, what gain do I find when I pursue what the world offers?

What gain do I find when I try to control and curate my time?

It's not cynicism.

It is an honest question we need to ask ourselves.

An honest question we can't live wisely without asking.

What gain is there?

Now then in verse 11, he says, This provides so much wisdom for us.

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.

Notice the comfort, loved one, that Solomon is inviting you to bring into your life through faith this morning.

That God has made everything in verse one to eight.

Everything there.

You believe God's word this morning?

You believe God's word this morning?

That God has made everything in verse one to eight beautiful.

That the time to die, it is beautiful.

A time to pluck up what is planted, that's not talking about harvest.

That's talking about like you just went to Bradford Greenhouse and you spent$300 and now you're ripping it out of the ground.

And I'm speaking a little personally here.

But there's a time, I can't believe I'm saying this, but that's from the Lord.

There's a time to kill, there is a time of war, he's saying.

There is a time to break down, there is a time to weep, there is a time to mourn.

Verse 11, he has made everything beautiful in its time.

Do you believe that, loved one?

Do you believe that?

And do you live like that?

Do you believe you live like the negative things that our culture says are negative brought into your life really are beautiful and brought by a good God?

God has made everything beautiful in its time.

But second thing that verse 11 does is after providing us the comforting hand of a friend on our shoulder, the end of verse 11 really is a knife to the heart.

He put eternity in man's heart, yet man cannot find out what God has done from the beginning.

Love one, God put eternity in your heart.

We're speaking about what it means to be a human being here.

And biblically, the truth is that you have a heart created by God for eternal satisfaction.

You were created to be like a sponge in the ocean of God's goodness that for all of eternity floated in the ocean of God's goodness and soaked in as much of God's goodness as it possibly could.

And you begin to understand why life becomes so restless without God, because we live for these other things that just never satisfy.

We live for the pleasure of sex and it's a sponge and it fills us a little bit, but it's not an ocean.

And it cannot satisfy us eternally.

We live for the pleasure of work and it fills us a little bit, but it's not an ocean, and so it does not satisfy us eternally, and all these things, reputation, family, power, control, all of it.

We're searching for joy.

And here is God saying, you were wired for something else.

You were wired for eternal satisfaction in Him.

Can I tell you, loved one?

Can I tell you that your life will be miserable so long as you do not become the sponge who soaks eternally in the ocean of God's goodness?

He wired us for satisfaction.

C.

S.

Lewis has a famous quote.

He says it like this if I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.

The problem is that instead of turning towards the God who can satisfy that eternal longing, we do exactly what Solomon did in chapters one to two.

We turn to other things.

And the reality of our lives is that we are right now in this moment either in the pursuit of satisfaction where we it just cannot be found because we weren't made to find it there, or we are receiving the gift from God.

We are either pursuing what the world offers, or we are receiving what God gives pursuing the things of the world, trying to fill in an eternal hunger with fleeting joys.

We can't see the story from beginning to end.

We can't comprehend why God then would bring these things into our life.

Why did we suffer this loss?

Why did our life go that way?

Why is my testimony so filled with the trials that it's filled with?

I can't comprehend the beginning from the end.

What is God doing?

We're left once we embrace this reality that eternity has been placed in our heart, and yet there's nowhere under the sun that we can find its satisfaction.

We're left with one thing, and that is to trust.

Point one is releasing the grip that we have on time.

Point two is taking a step back, inviting the things that happen into our life and trusting that they come from the hands of a God who is good and wise and powerful.

Point one has to do with our hands and our time and our heart.

Point two really has to do with our mind.

With silencing the demand that so many of us have to understand why our life has gone the way that it has gone.

So many of us make understanding the price of peace.

I've heard this time and time again.

I will trust God as soon as this makes sense to me.

Or even more subtle is to go through suffering and say, I know it's gonna make sense someday.

I know God will reveal his plan to me.

And loved one, Solomon is here to say it doesn't always make sense.

You don't always understand why God does the things that he does.

The question is, can you trust the God behind your life?

Is it possible to not understand why the things that happened in your life happened while also trusting the God who made them happen?

It's gotta be possible if we know who God is.

In fact, I can I can illustrate this for you.

Imagine you had kids and you one day you you got a job offer.

And it's in a completely different city, but but this city is amazing.

There's a phenomenal church nearby, there's a great school for the kids to go to, and this job offer is just gonna set you up for life so that you can send your kids to college, and it's just gonna set you up in every single way.

And so you sit your kids down and you look at your 12-year-old in the eye and you say, Hey, listen, we're moving to a different city.

Now, what is gonna happen in that moment?

Your child is not gonna say, Oh, thank you, kind and gracious father, for the wisdom that you impart unto us as you move our family.

That is not how that conversation is gonna go.

There's gonna be kicking and screaming.

How could you ever do this to me?

Why would you ever do this?

Now, what's the difference between those reactions of the parents who understand this to be a wise decision and the kids who think this is the worst thing that could ever possibly happen?

Is it not perspective?

See, the perspective of the kid can see things that are very real.

The reality that we have friends here.

We play sports.

I mean, this is where our life is, and I can't imagine what it would be like to go over there.

I have no idea how we could ever do that.

What's the perspective of the parent?

The parent has more perspective.

The parent understands the beginning from the end.

The parent understands what good in the long run this will invite into the kid's house.

Loved one, you know, if if we knew everything God knew, we would do everything he does.

You believe that?

I mean, if God is eternally wise, if he knows the beginning from the end, if he is sovereign over all things, is it not true that if we knew everything that God knew, we would do everything that he does?

The issue is that, like the child, we cannot understand why the tearing down has to come before the building up.

We cannot understand why the loss that we experienced in our life really was a mercy.

We don't have the full perspective to know why that door that was closed in your face that you thought would be such a good thing was actually protection for you.

We see one piece and we feel the reality of that peace.

The problem is we don't have the full perspective.

And so, like that child, we have a choice.

We can fight it, we can interrogate, we can make peace conditional on understanding, or we can trust the parent.

We can trust the parent who has led us this far, and and loved one, God is revealing to some of you that you've trusted too much in your own perspective.

That if God is really in control of the time, you can trust him.

This is exactly where God is with you.

And I don't need to know what's happening in your life to know that you are not flying blind in an indifferent universe.

That the things that have happened in your life have not happened by mistake.

That God, verse 11, has made everything beautiful in its time, that he knows the beginning to the end, and he is working Romans 8.28, all things together for good for those who love him.

Loved one, you are held by a father who knows you and who will not open the door to suffering in your life unless it will produce good for eternity.

Can you trust him?

You don't need the full picture to trust the one who has the full picture.

Now, here then is what a trustworthy God does with the times he holds.

He gives them back to you as a gift.

And that is the third thing I want you to see: that time is something that we must receive.

Time is a gift.

Receive it.

Time is a gift.

Verses 11, sorry, verses 12 to 13 really are the turn in this passage.

Solomon says this in verse 12.

I perceive that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful, to do good as long as they live.

To eat, later he says, and drink and find enjoyment in his toil.

Verse 13, this is God's gift to man.

There is a categorical shift here.

So far, Solomon has been chasing gain.

Now the word changes to gift.

Gain is what you can extract from life.

A gift, fundamentally by meaning, is something that you must receive.

And Solomon has come to understand that there is a different posture we must embrace if we are going to live wisely in relation to time.

We cannot seek to gain all that we can from time.

We must seek to receive the gift that is the time we have received from a God who has made all things beautiful.

This is why in verse 18, look down at your copy of God's word, Solomon says, I perceived that whatever God does endures forever.

Notice the vanity of thinking you can control time.

Nothing can be added to it.

You can't change God's plan.

He says, Nothing can be taken away from it.

God has done it.

So that.

So that verse 14.

People fear before Him.

God's work is permanent.

You can change nothing.

That is not a threat.

That's not meant to belittle you.

What it is meant to do is produce in you this fear of God, this reverential awe that stands in the awe and worship of Him, of His goodness, which we see in verse 15.

Do you see it there?

That which is already has been, that which is to be already has been, and God seeks what has been driven away.

Do you see it there?

Nothing has been taken from your life, from which God is in heaven, and said, Oh man, I we lost that one.

I don't know what happened.

I wish we kind of kept that in your life.

He's in control, and whatever has been taken away, God could easily grab and give it back to you.

Whatever blessing could be poured into your life, whatever it is, that promotion, the family, the way that you want it to be, money, the how whatever it is, God could give it to you.

He has made everything beautiful in its time.

And there is a reason you are standing here without it.

Because God is good in withholding it.

He's good with in withholding it.

Verse 15 God is He's not passive, He is actively seeking, restoring, redeeming seasons of Like that felt like pure loss to you.

God is there, verse 15.

He is seeking what to bring into your life and what to drive out of your life.

He is sovereign over it all.

What's the call that Solomon is giving to us?

It is a call to gift living versus gain living.

Gift living versus gain living.

Are you living as though the time you have received, whatever you are in verses one to eight, the time you have received is a gift from a good God?

Or are you trying to gain as much as you can from life, to squeeze it out like a sponge and to say, give me as much satisfaction as you can?

We live according to gain.

We do everything we can to get as much from life as possible.

We work so hard that we go on vacation and can't rest, coming home exhausted.

We go to bed and we start playing the scorecard of how well did I do?

Did I do enough?

Everything, almost everything becomes a metric of either success or failure.

Did I go to church enough?

Did I talk about myself too much in that conversation?

Did I eat the right food today?

Did I spend my time the right way today?

Everything becomes a metric.

I'm trying to squeeze as much from life as I possibly can.

Solomon is calling us to the opposite, to gift living.

What is God handing me right now?

What gift has God given me?

Is the gift to be received right now the opportunity to sit in this room with God's people and hear God's word?

Is the gift this meal that we're about to eat?

Is the gift the relationship that you will enter in this afternoon?

What is the gift?

Notice what Solomon calls us to.

It is to the enjoyment of today, not as self-indulgence.

He says, verse 12, I perceive that there's nothing better than for them to be joyful and do good as long as they live.

Understanding, verse 13, that this is a gift from God, not worshiping the gift, but worshiping the giver of the good gift.

So that joy is not the reward of a productive life.

Joy is the result of a received gift.

Solomon calls us then to the fear of God.

The settled, reverent recognition that He is God, that you are not, that the things He has brought into your life are beautiful in their design.

So that we can stop trying to add to what He is doing and start receiving the things that He has given.

Can you look at God right now?

And stand in awe of the way that He has orchestrated your life?

Can you look at every single detail of your life for good or for bad?

And stand in awe of the God who ordains all the times, not only for his glory, but for your good.

Love one, if you can't do that experientially, can I point you somewhere that will reveal this reality about God to you?

Can I point you to the cross?

At the cross, Jesus received every hard appointed time in the poem.

He did it in your place.

Jesus, being above the heavens, not a created being and so unrestrained from the constraints of time, entered into time.

Galatians 4, at the right time, God sent his son.

He entered into time and he entered into all of verses 1 to 8, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and he took it on to himself.

And most specifically, the time that he came to embrace was the time to die.

You remember reading through the Gospel of John, where time and time again they tried to arrest Jesus.

And what did John say?

His time had not yet come.

John chapter 2, his time had not yet come.

John 2 · chapter mention

John chapter 3, his time had not yet come.

John 3 · chapter mention

John chapter 8, his time had not yet come.

John 8 · chapter mention

Then finally in John chapter 11, the appointed time for Jesus to die had come.

John 11 · chapter mention

And from that moment on, he started marching toward the cross.

It was time for the Son of God to die.

And dying, he took our sin upon himself.

He took the vanity of life under the sun upon himself, and he embraced it fully.

The time came for Jesus to die in order that it might become the time to rise for us.

Love one, Jesus has done that for you.

He has died and been resurrected so that time does not need to be your enemy, so that you don't need to fight it, because Jesus came to bring eternal life.

What is eternal?

But a marker of time, the reality that if your faith is in Jesus Christ, time is not short.

There is a time to die, but loved one in Jesus Christ, there is a time to rise again through faith.

Will you receive that gift?

It's only in Jesus that you can.

Time isn't your enemy.

It never was.

You can release it, you can trust it, you can receive it.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for this reality.

God, we confess how often we fail to live wisely when it comes to time.

Lord, we are filled with fear and anxiety.

Believing that the time is short, believing that the time is against us, believing that we are behind.

And yet, Lord, in Jesus Christ, we have this good news.

That though there will be a time to die, there will be a time to rise again to eternal life.

We give you all the praise and we pray that you would help us to live with the incredible wisdom that comes when we stare at the brevity of life in the face.

Lord, help us to receive the gift of whatever is in our life right now, trusting God, that it it comes from your hands and that you are infinitely sovereign, infinitely wise, and infinitely good.

God, we worship you and we pray this in the name of your son.

Amen.

Could you stand with me in worship?