Time

Good morning.

Today's scripture reading is from Ecclesiastes 3, 1 through 15.

For um 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 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 and 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.

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 perceived there is nothing better 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 from it.

God has done it, so that 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.

Please be seated.

Good morning.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

It's great to gather together and worship with you all.

We are in our second week of our time in Ecclesiastes, and this time we are talking about time.

This is the Christopher Nolan episode.

All right, let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we praise you for this appointed time of gathering together to worship you and to celebrate your name.

Lord, we praise you for the loving kindness that you've shown us in your rescue, and in the way that you have worked through time to draw us to yourself.

Lord, we praise you that the sins which we commit in time that you offer an eternal forgiveness for.

Yeah.

Some of you got the joke.

There's a demographic split I noticed in getting that joke.

And those of you that didn't get it were like, that joke's for the birds.

There is a season for that joke.

All right.

Look, I'm probably, I don't know when the next time I'll preach Ecclesiastes 3 is, you know, there's a time for everything.

Now, time, this isn't the first introduction of time in the book.

This is time has been an the context of his exploration through the through the whole book so far.

Last week, when we looked at chapters 1 and 2, and we established the themes of this book, one of them is under the sun.

That's the context of his exploration, that this all takes place under the sun.

And we looked at how that's not just a geographical context, it's a temporal context.

The sun is the ruler of time.

In Genesis 1.14, on the fourth day, says, and God said, Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years.

So under the sun, we establish as a temporal context.

Now, the way that Solomon has described this to us so far is that this temporal reality that we're stuck in under the sun means that everything is vapor.

Time is like these wheels within wheels that are marching along and they're devouring everything such that all things ultimately go away and amount to nothing.

They all amount to just vapor.

Vapor of vapors, vanity of vanities, everything is vanity, meaningless, meaningless.

That is all because of the context of time.

But today, something strange happens where he describes to us that there's a time for everything.

And this very same context, which proves that everything is vapor, it has this new angle on it, and it starts to look like, well, time which causes the vapor is also the context of the miracle.

This is the very place where the wonder happens, where where the meaning breaks in.

So the incessant march of time, which renders everything vapor, also provides the context of meaning.

How can that be?

How can it be both?

That's what we'll look at today.

Ecclesiastes 3, 1 through 3, it says, 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.

Now when we hear that, for the for everything there is a season, and for every matter under heaven, there is a time.

Time doesn't feel like a tyrant as it's described in this uh it it as as we might imagine it would feel, like this tyrannical thing rendering everything vapor.

Here in this second song in the book, time it has this rhythm to it.

It sounds like music.

There's a meaning for all of these things that take place in life.

There's a meaning for because of when they happen.

There's a time for everything to happen.

It's like Solomon is it lay he takes us in front of a piano and he says, look at all the notes.

They're all permissible.

What matters is when, when they happen.

He's drawing us into this deep wisdom of how to live within the rhythm of God's creation as time-bound creatures.

If you search the Mosaic Law, there is no section which describes what to do if two prostitutes come to you, both claiming to be mothers of the same child.

There's not a section on that.

It is not written in the Mosaic Law.

If you have a a rash, there's a section for that.

You can the priest is like, well, check it here, come back in a week, and let me see how it goes.

If things get worse, then we might have to burn your house down.

But if two mothers are claiming to be mothers of the if two women are claiming to be mothers of the same child, uh there's uh there's no instruction for that.

Instead, what Solomon has to do is he has to rely on on this wit on this wisdom.

And so what Solomon does is is, as you remember in the famous story, is he says, well, let's cut the baby in half, and then you'll each get half.

See?

No problem.

There's two of you, division, you guys know about division.

And then he so what he does is he's applying death in order to preserve life.

He's risking this horrific death so that he might expose what would lead to life.

He understands these principles of the world.

He understands that a mother's love is indivisible, so I'll threaten division, and it will expose the mother's love.

The king understands that there is a time for death.

Kings must understand this.

The fool thinks death is bad, therefore no death.

That's what the fool thinks.

The fool thinks there's there's good things and there's bad things.

And we don't do the bad things and we do the good things.

The king knows the king is going to have to make decisions like do we need to go to war or not?

And in war, good people will die.

Is it worth it?

Does it make sense for that to happen?

The fool says, death is bad, so we cannot use death.

The king says, well, depends on when.

It depends on when.

There is a time for it.

There are circumstances which call for it.

If there's such a thing as just war, then that means there's such a thing as unjust peace.

And the king knows that.

Because the king, like Solomon in his wisdom, he is able to look at the whole piano and say, there's a place for every note.

What matters is is when they're played.

That's what makes them work.

That's what that's where the wisdom is.

That's where the that's where the glory of them being played is.

It's if you just go up it that doesn't mean there's room for any note at any time.

That's not what it means.

That's not music.

That's just when uh my uh two-year-old goes over to the piano.

There's room for any note at any time when he plays the piano.

And it's just sound.

And it doesn't go over into that music place, you know?

It just stays in the sounds place.

But the king knows that there is a time.

There's a time for every season.

Every note is permissible, but not any note at any time.

Heard it said, there is no virtue or vice in a transitive verb.

So, like, uh there's no virtue in love.

Because you gotta I'm gonna need more information.

Is it virtuous to love?

Well, what are you loving?

How are you loving it?

Is it ver it it we're we're commended to love.

We're also told in the same book, which commends us to love, that the love of money is the root of all evil.

That's so if you meet somebody and they're like, I'm a I'm a gr I'm a great lover, you say that could be good.

Could be bad.

Could be bad.

So Solomon is drawing us into this kingly wisdom, and he's showing us by this song that there is a time for everything.

And that living wisely knows is about knowing when to do the things that the Lord calls you to do.

It's about reading the seasons.

It's not sufficient to have a list of good things and a list of bad things.

You you must have all the notes available to you, and then you must execute them wisely in order to live well in the world.

This is this song is is proverbial wisdom, and it's telling you how to live wise, like how the king lives wise.

But Solomon has already taken us to the limits of wisdom.

Remember last week?

We this song is in the same book in which we've already heard the song, Vanity of Vanities, everything is vanity.

It's just the the it doesn't matter the song that you play, the the ear is never satisfied with hearing.

The eye is never satisfied with seeing.

It's never the last painting that you need to see.

And it's done, and you're done.

For some reason, they keep making movies.

You know, we we haven't, we aren't we good.

So if he's already taken us to the limits of wisdom and he's shown us that it's all vapor, and then now he's telling us, look, there's a uh there's a glory, there's a wonder, there's a time for everything to happen under the sun.

So there's a there's a time for death, there's a time to be born, and that in those times, there's it's those times are for those things.

So that means there's a coherence there, there's a meaning there, there's something lasting about the temporality.

Well, isn't he just asking us to forget that it's all vapor?

Because consider this.

I mean, remember, Solomon got the the riddle right of the of the two mothers, and he did the right thing.

He he you he wielded the sword that he had as king, and he wielded it in an appropriate way, that that under the threat of death, he was able to preserve life.

And with that happening, he was we we saw his success in doing so, and we see the nation rally around his wisdom and how he's able to bring this nation to these glorious heights under that wisdom, and then one generation later, while he could prevent the baby from being cut in half, he couldn't prevent the kingdom from being cut in half.

And one generation later, it's two kingdoms.

So we had uh David, United Kingdom, Saul, excuse me, Solomon, United Kingdom, and then Civil War split in two, North and South.

It's the way those often happen.

So if Solomon got the notes right, and we zoom out just a generation, and it seems like it still amounted to nothing, then when he's commending us to to do right by living wisely and getting our timing right, isn't he just asking us to pretend to not know that it's all vapor?

Like if you get if by wisdom you get your timing right and it still doesn't work, it still doesn't amount to any meaning, it still ends in death, then what's the difference if you miss the notes?

If you hit the notes or if you miss the notes, it seems as though there's no difference.

It's all the same.

It's all vapor, like the first song told us.

We'll stay within the music metaphor.

Uh you you know uh John Cage.

Didn't you guys listen to his stuff?

Probably not.

The only way you know him is if you have to take like a music appreciation class, which I did, and I'm gonna take that out on you.

John Cage was a composer, and he made his most famous work in 1952, and uh the uh title of his most famous work is uh 433.

There we go, Matthew.

Sometimes just me and Matthew.

And 433 stands for 4 minutes and 33 seconds, and the way that this composition works is the uh musicians walk out onto the stage and they take their seats, and for 4 minutes and 33 seconds, they do not play their instruments.

He was doing the 60s, even in the 50s, you know.

They do not play their instruments.

I actually uh have been practicing and I have a sample uh prepared for you to hear right now.

That was it, of course.

And the question after that, this is meant to raise a question, which is uh, was that music?

Was that music?

John Cage says, people expect listening to be more than listening.

And so sometimes they speak of inner listening or the meaning of sound.

When I talk about music, it finally comes to people's minds that I'm talking about sound that doesn't mean anything.

He's talking about just sound.

What he's doing is he's he's getting the vapor part.

Because the the question that he's raising is, well, why are those sounds music?

And these sounds, the sound of the rustling and and you know shifting in chairs and the uncomfortable silence of of uh me standing here and saying nothing, or of the musician standing up there and playing nothing, why are those sounds not music?

And then you try and answer and it'd say, well, well, because music has a has a rhythm to it, and it and it's in time and it's in sync, and and he says, Well, in sync with what?

And finally you'd say, well, well, with with time itself, with the the rhythm of things, you know, the the way things are, and the and and you, you know, we have this phrase, the music of the spheres.

Because the sun and the moon and the stars, they move like a clock, like in this glorious rhythm, and we can find it, and there's like this heavenly pattern that music maps onto.

And then and then John Cage would say something like, a heavenly pattern.

You know, the sun will will burn out.

And you know, this is all just there's no pattern there.

You're the one putting the pattern there.

It's arbitrary.

It's just chance that it happened to be this way.

You look up into it and you say a pattern, and then you're the one who listens to certain sounds and says music.

There's no music there.

There's no pattern there.

And so there's no there's no music.

Sound that doesn't mean anything.

A tale that's told by an idiot.

Full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

Full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

We have two songs at this point in Ecclesiastes.

One song goes, Vapor of vapor.

Everything is vapor.

It all goes away, nothing amounts to anything.

The second song we now have in Ecclesiastes is there's a time to be born, a time to die, there's a time for everything that happens.

One song says that nothing is meaningful.

And the other song, the second song that we now have, says that there's in time, in these things, there's a there's a There's a rightness to them.

There's a music to them.

There's a rhythm to them where they where there's a glorious meaning in their right placement.

The question that Solomon is pushing us into is, well, if I match that rhythm, if I match the rhythm of everything being in its right time, if I live wisely, well, what do I gain?

Isn't it all fundamentally just vapor on the other side anyway?

If this all ends in death, and it all came from nothing, and it's all just washing away by this march of time, then even if I get all the notes right, isn't it finally no different from getting all the notes wrong?

Isn't there finally, in the end, no difference between the music and the sound?

Well, Solomon pushes us right into this question.

What here's the next thing that he asks, and in after this song, it's what you'd hope he'd ask.

Verses 9 and 10, what gain has the worker from his toil?

Yeah, this is not the first time he's asked this question, but we need it again because we thought we plainly knew the answer is nothing.

And then he showed us that there's actually this meaning in the world.

And he says again, I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.

And we know the answer to that as well.

He has already told us it is a grievous business.

It's an evil business.

And the reason that he called it evil, the business, the toil that God has given to the sons of man, is because the vapor under time washes it all away.

And it all amounts to nothing.

It's like Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the mountain that all amounts to nothing.

The work is mysterious and important.

So if there is a time for everything, which Solomon established there is, what does it accomplish if everything is done in its right time?

If all is vapor, how can we call any time right?

If it's all vapor, how can we say that there's a right time or a wrong time?

How can we say that there's that there's music and sounds?

How can we say that was the right time for war, that was the wrong time for war?

How can we say that there is something real, not accidental, about the mother-child relationship that ought to be preserved, perhaps even at the point of a sword?

And it's not just other people that happen to be together.

As real as any other relationship that there is.

If it's all vapor, how can we see the realness or the meaning in anything?

And then he gives us this answer.

He's told us both are here.

And then he gives us this paradox and he puts it right in right in the person.

In Ecclesiastes 3.11, he says this, as like an answer to what the gain is.

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.

Okay, first, he has made everything beautiful in its time.

Okay, so the the song, the song of everything, there being a time for everything.

Yes, there is, of course, a proverbs-like practical wisdom of how to live, how to put things in their right place, how to be a true king who lives wisely and knows how to use all the tools and uses them at the right time.

But there's something more than that going on.

Because what's more than that is he, God, has made everything beautiful in its time.

Now, this is almost impossible to grasp, but what it means is that all of the things that take place, all of the binaries that are sung in that song, the opposites that are sung in that song, all of the things that take place are perfectly placed there by the hand of God.

And they amount to the glorious song that He is writing with all of creation.

And if you could hear it, you would say it's beautiful.

And why is it beautiful?

Because he placed everything just at the right time.

The reason songs are beautiful, because it all happens at the right time.

There is someone who is writing this beautiful, glorious song.

There is a music of the spheres.

And it's and it's not just tied to the sun.

It's about the one who put the sun there.

The sun is humming along to his designs.

You know, this under the sun language, it's uh the sun's not there in the beginning of the Bible.

And the sun's not there at the end of the Bible.

There's light in both places, but they're not under the sun.

They're light that is just from God Himself.

But all that he's doing here in this time under the sun, God has perfectly placed.

Now, this means that even when we are seeking to play along with his rhythm, and we play horrible notes that are terribly out of tune and that sound awful and are perfectly in the wrong time, in such ways that we can point and see, I destroyed this relationship, I led to death where there should have been life, I loved things I should have hated, I hated things that I should have loved, and we can look at the cacophony that we've made of our lives.

There's these sharpness of sin and the flatness of unwise living.

And that's gonna be an O for me, dog.

I will not see you in Hollywood.

I gotta update my references.

The scriptures tell us that even those things are perfectly placed in God's song.

That he has made those beautiful in his time.

And here we are pressed into all of the questions of the sovereignty of God.

Because if you hear that and you understand it, you might think this is just plainly horrifying.

Or wicked or cruel.

What is he using the sufferings of our lives in order to bring about this glorious song?

And that's one perspective you might take on it.

But the other perspective that you might take on it is that even in the darkest parts of your life, because God is the one who's writing the story, there is a final hope of beauty in it.

That's another perspective.

So he has made everything beautiful in its time.

And you say, sounds great, doesn't seem like it.

I can think of lots of ugly things here in time.

Also, continuing verse 311, there's like a whole world in this verse.

Also, he has put eternity into man's heart.

There's eternity in your heart.

He put it there.

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 read a verse like that and I just think, ain't that what it's like out here?

Here's an example.

Do you guys understand infinity?

Not if you understand infinity.

Yes.

Well, I understand it.

It's a song that never ends.

Very long.

And then, so that's the part where he's put eternity in your heart.

Because you can understand infinity.

You can.

I know you can.

Could draw the thing.

You're like, it's just an eight.

It was a joke about perspectives.

But now, here I can prove to you the second clause also, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

Now here's how you know that part is true.

But do you understand infinity?

And you all say, no.

No.

You get it, right?

You don't get it.

That's what our wisdom is like.

It's this like uh terrible tension that we have within ourselves.

Because you desperately desire for for the things in your life to be finally fundamentally meaningful.

You you desire to be satisfied.

You desire to have a love and a relationship that never ends.

You desire to never have to say goodbye to the ones that you love.

You desire to keep, you see your kids and then you see a picture, and then you realize how much they've grown up.

And what do you want to do?

You'd say things like, I wish you would just stay this small, like, could we just be in this phase forever?

This is the best little phase.

I just want it to be like this forever.

And you give your eight-year-old like a complex about growing up.

Because we know that this time, there's something we want it to be permanent.

But we can't see what he's doing from the beginning to the end.

It's beautiful.

I can't see that.

I know, I know it ought to be.

So I can tell that it's this doesn't seem like it.

It's the eternity that's in your heart.

He's put eternity into our hearts, yet so that you cannot know what God has done from the beginning to the end.

Sisyphus is our graphic, so let's talk about Camus.

Albert Camus names this complaint like this.

He says, This world in itself is not reasonable.

Amen.

That is all that can be said.

But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational.

She uses that word in a weird way, of this irrational, you know what he means, and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart.

The absurd depends as much on man as on the world.

The world in itself, he's saying it's irrational.

It can't be comprehended, it can't be understood.

He tells this story where he's like, they told me all that it was all um uh atoms.

And the scientists they've explored and they've discovered that it's all atoms.

And that's the foundation of all things.

But then the atoms, he says, those are those are all little solar systems.

They've got they've got planets and electrons and neutrons and potrons.

Well, you know.

However you say that word.

Photons.

Do they?

Protons! All right.

See, I'm glad you guys are here.

Photons and uh protons.

All right, I gotta get over this pretty quick.

Sometimes you get stuck in a pit in front of all your friends.

And then he says, Oh, I see what you've done.

I see what you've done.

You thought you were describing reality, now you've just descended into poetry again.

And I thought that we were getting down to the bottom of things, but now we've we've discovered there's no bottom.

There's no beginning, there's no end.

It's irrational.

But what's absurd about the irrationality of that is this collision, the confrontation that that irrationality has with the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart.

He spends pages and pages establishing the irrationality of the world.

And he spends half a sentence establishing the wild longing for clarity that echoes in the human heart.

Why doesn't he do any work to prove that that's really there?

Because he doesn't have to.

Because you know exactly what he means.

This should make sense out here.

It doesn't.

Things should hold together.

When I do well, it should go well.

It doesn't happen that way.

And even when the best things are done, it doesn't last.

So it doesn't mean anything.

It's all absurd, and there's no music.

That's one way to understand this collision between our longing for eternity and this limit that we cannot understand what God has done from the beginning to the end.

Camus sees that same collision, and he says it's all absurd.

The world is just absurd.

Solomon sees that same collision.

Well, he tells us to do something sort of strange.

Verses 12 through 13 he says, I perceive that there is nothing better 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.

This is the second time we've heard this.

Remember, last week we saw that this phrase comes in with no segue, no introduction.

He's just like, despair of life, life is horrible, nothing matters, it's all vapor.

When you try to be wise, it doesn't matter and nothing happens.

So you should enjoy it out here.

And we recognize the strangeness of this exhortation breaking in out of nowhere, but it's going to continue breaking in.

And it breaks in here, but now don't you see we get it a little more?

Because he's described he's described these new categories that we've needed.

You know, there's a meaning in time here.

If you look at it from the outside in the vapor that it all amounts to, then it then it won't seem like there's a meaning here, but there is a meaning.

You know, you can tell there's music and there's sound.

You can tell that, right?

This is music.

That's just sound.

You know, you know there's a there's a difference there.

And then he tells us in God made everything beautiful in its time.

God's making everything beautiful in its time.

But you, of course, you can't see it.

You can't tell from the beginning to the end.

It just feels like things are going terrible right now.

You don't know that this dissonance that's being built is is going to make the resolution so much more beautiful.

You know, the the minor fall and the major lift.

You know, that's from a song about songs.

I don't know anything about music, but I can say that.

And you can't see that from here, but now you know why you can't see it.

So he perceives now, and we start to kind of get it.

Of course, there's nothing better for us to do than here, in time where we are, enjoy the things that he's given to us.

That's what he's calling us to do.

Because this he sees also that everyone should eat and drink, take pleasure in all his toil.

This is God's gift to man.

God's gift for us must be something that is in time.

Because that's where we are.

We're the type of things that can't tell what things are like from the beginning to the end.

We need things given to us on a moment-by-moment basis.

That's where we enjoy things.

But the things that we desire to enjoy, we desire to enjoy in an eternal way.

So what do we what is the answer to this dilemma?

That there is an eternal God who relates to you by giving you good gifts in time.

You know, that would be perfect for me.

That would be perfect for a thing like me.

I've got eternal desires.

But I can't experience eternity.

It's too long.

I can only experience these temporal things.

So what if I received these temporal things as though they were from the hand of the Lord, a gift from the hand of the Lord.

Now, now the world starts to move from absurdity to a place of unthinkable joy and wonder.

And these places of despair are all of a sudden transformed in these places of meaning and hopefulness.

They're the same places.

He's not ignoring the dissonance that you feel between eternal desires and the vapor of time.

He's describing that God meets you there.

Right here in time.

You can receive it.

If you don't receive it there, then you will try and gain eternity in these temporal things.

And you will try and mount up enough toil to where you will finally be able to climb up into the heavens.

But you can't climb up into the heavens, not from here.

Or you will try and resolve that tension by denying the eternity, by denying the meaning that is in things.

Because you recognize that the meaning and your inability to grasp eternity is what creates this painful collision.

And so you'll do what John Cage does.

And you'll say, we can't prove music.

I can't prove to you that it's music and not sounds.

And so quit longing for music.

This is like the Eastern answer.

This is the Buddhist answer.

Just quit desiring it.

Huh.

What didn't I think of that?

There's stuff that I want.

And I'm I uh want it to last forever.

Well, stop wanting that.

Kill that part of yourself.

Now you follow that train, and what happens is you can't tell the difference between music and sounds.

You can't tell the difference between a mother's love for her child and any other friendship.

It's all just amounts to nothing.

That's the real absurdity.

That's not what Solomon does.

Solomon says, Enjoy it, but enjoy it as a gift.

It cannot be grasped by toil, it can only be received by faith.

That there is one above you who is making things beautiful in their time.

In Ecclesiastes 3, 14 through 15, he says, I perceived that whatever God does endures forever.

That's different.

Nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it.

God has done it so that 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.

The works that you do, observed under the sun, vapor.

But the works that he does endures forever.

But the strange twist that Solomon has already shown us, those are the same works.

Because the what are the decrees of God?

The decrees of God are his most holy, wise, and powerful, preserving and governing all his creatures and all their actions.

This is all his.

God has done it.

And you see that, and what happens is you fear before him because you're not like that.

You can't grasp what his life, what it's like where the things that you do last eternally.

And then this unreal news, that which is already has been, that which is to be already has been, and God seeks what has been driven away.

Like vapor is driven away.

Like how dust returns to dust, and it can't be gathered back again.

Like you can't uh you can't unburn a match.

But God seeks what has been driven away.

And you think, well, I can't get there from here.

That's the position that He's put you in.

You can't toil your way to eternal meaning from here.

You cannot grasp what God has done from the beginning to the end.

What you need, the the the place of meaning where you can be met is a place like this, just in time, things that go away, the service will be done soon, but I promise.

That eternal one must must come down to meet us here in time.

The sun is not the true light.

Under the sun, it's not the place of the true light.

But in John 1 9, it says the true light which gives light to everyone was coming into the world.

Incarnation.

The true light, the eternal one, that takes on time.

Comes down here to this place at the appointed time.

He meets us here.

The gift you need must be eternal.

It has to be eternal because eternity is in your heart.

It's a feature, not a bug.

It's good to desire eternal things.

So the gift that you need must be eternal, but you can't see what he has done from the beginning to the end.

So it must meet you here.

In time.

Once again, all things are summed up in our Lord Jesus Christ.

God becomes a man.

The eternal one takes on finitude.

Truth, that clarity, the wild call for clarity, which echoes in the human heart, is not met with a proposition, with an answer to a unifying theory of physics.

It's met with a person, a person who meets you.

Yeah, but we've got to take that to the limit, right?

I mean, we've already gone to the limits, vapor of vapor, vanity of vanities, everything's vanity.

We've got to take this, if this is gonna really stick, if it's gonna really be meaningful, we've got to take this light coming into the world all the way to that very place that erases all of us and brings everything into vanity.

That light will have to go into the darkness, he'll have to die.

Light will have to die.

He'll have to take all of the notes that we've misplayed, and he'll have to take them into himself and he'll have to make them a beautiful song.

If this is going to be anything we could actually hope in, if this is going to actually address the problem, if it's actually going to span that gap, it would have to be God Himself becoming a man, and that man would have to take on our sins.

And then he'd have to take them into death, and that would have to somehow not be the end.

Jesus, he's inevitable.

He's absolutely necessary.

He's the only possible resolution, the only possible resolution to all your loose ends, is Jesus Christ, God who became man, laid himself down in death, that you might be saved by him.

And of course, the only way that you can participate in that salvation is of course by faith.

By faith alone.

Why would it be by faith?

It's the only way you can participate in anything.

Eternity is in your heart.

You can't see what God has done from the beginning to the end.

How do you live?

By faith.

How do you receive the salvation of Jesus Christ by faith that He did it?

It's the only place of true meaning.

It's the only way the song of vapor and the song of meaning in time can both be true.

They're both in the Bible.

They're both true.

Because the true light, the true light, has come into the world, and the darkness did not overcome him.

Alright.

Are there any questions today, Tim?

Great.

How does Christian enjoyment of the present differ from the unbeliever's decision to live in the present?

Great question.

Great question.

When I meet people in coffee shops, I hear all the time that they're just trying to be more present.

Which I imagine looks like this.

Come on.

That's the way I'd try and do it.

Yeah.

Okay, so here's uh here's the difference.

One is pretending to not know.

Okay, so the unbelievers living in the present is pretending to not know that there's a horrible catastrophe coming.

But they do know.

It's pretending to not know that if the future ends in death, that that's terrible.

And that if it's a vapor, then the present is meaningless.

So it's practicing a lie.

It's pretending to not know the difference between music and sound.

You know the difference.

I bet if we'd had a music versus sound test, you'd all get AIDS.

And you'd be like, well, prove to me, and you'd be like, I can't prove it, but you're the type of thing that knows things like that.

But the Christians enjoying things in the present, we're able to enjoy because we know that the death that terminates, that destroys everything, the sin that corrupts everything, has been dealt with on the cross by Jesus Christ.

And so Paul says if we hope in Christ, our hope is we are not put to shame.

The reason that they're trying to be more present is because they know that their hope, the unbeliever knows that their hope will put them to shame.

They will be finally disappointed.

So how do you stop that?

You just don't hope.

We know that our hope, even in death itself, will not be put to shame.

Because there's a resurrection in Jesus Christ.

So I enjoy lunch.

I enjoy air conditioning and walks in the park, pina coladas, getting caught in the rain.

Not because, but I enjoy it as a gift.

I can even enjoy my suffering.

That's a trick.