Ecclesiastes - Session 4 (Chasing Control)

Well, hey, good evening. Thank you guys for being here

for Renewed Mind Bible Studies. We're going to go and get

started because we're on the live stream.

And if you are watching us on the live stream, just keep in

mind that when we're done with the teaching portion, we'll go

ahead and we'll cut the feed. Then if you're here in person,

we do table discussion and then we've got acoustic worship to

end the night, which I'm excited for.

Happy April Fool's Day, I guess. Yeah.

Anyway, thanks for coming. No, I'm, I'm just kidding.

Today we're going to cover a whole chapter.

We're going to cover Ecclesiastes chapter 3.

Ecclesiastes 3 · chapter mention

And next week we're actually going to go over three different

chapters in Ecclesiastes, but we won't go over every single line

of every single chapter. What you'll see is that the book

of Ecclesiastes starts to shift and instead of it being these

very in depth individual parts, some of it becomes repetitive in

in a purpose. And we're going to highlight

that and show what matters. But today, as we're talking

about a new flavour of chasing the wind, every week we're

talking about a different way that we chase the wind.

This this week is about chasing control.

Anybody here who admits they have control issues?

Wow. I guess we flocked together,

don't we? Although bonus points to you,

Heather, because I don't feel like I finished saying it when

you were you were ready. You're like, I already know.

Well, the last week was chasing achievement, and achievement

can't carry the weight that we place on it, even though it's a

good thing. We know that work matters, but

it doesn't answer the ultimate questions of life.

And so this week, the teacher takes us directly into control.

If you can't control the outcome, maybe you can control

the process. This is the thought that a lot

of us have had in some form before we started to wonder,

well, maybe the key to peace is just learning how to manage life

better. Maybe we need to learn how to

time things correctly or make the right moves or stay ahead of

problems or hold everything together.

A lot of people say it this way, but they're trying to gain some

level of control over what happens next.

I used to pride myself on this and I used to tell Cassie when

we were first dating like this is, this is what I do.

I want to make sure that I'm, I'm prepared for everything.

And I, I would even tell her it's, it's like my mind.

I want it to be like Batman's utility belt, in specific, the

utility belt from the 1960s. Batman, that brother had bat

dental floss and a bat fly swatter in his belt.

He was ready for anything. Guys, that's an awful way to

live. It's an awful way to live.

You spend so much time preparing for situations that you're never

going to face. Some of them you will, and when

you do face one of them, you'll justify why you prepare for all

the other ones that you might. This is called anxiety.

Anxiety is a constant fear of what may or what will happen.

And you prepare yourself mentally, emotionally, even

physically sometimes for things that never manifest.

And so I don't know if you've noticed this or not, but the

problem is that life does not always cooperate.

And so in in, in this, I would just try to teach you that there

are seasons that we would all choose to go differently, right?

Are there not moments for all of us that arrive too early or too

late? Sometimes there's situations

that we can't fix and circumstances we can't change.

And whenever life begins to move outside of what we can manage,

it really shows just how much we were relying on control to give

us peace. Jesus spoke about this in

Matthew 6. I'm just going to read you from

six starting in verse 25. Jesus says that is why I tell

you not to worry about everyday life, whether you have enough

food or drink enough clothes to wear.

Isn't life more than food and your body more than clothing?

I mean, it is, but not if you watch the commercials.

He said look at the birds. They don't plant or harvest or

store food in barns. Your heavenly Father feeds them

and aren't you more valuable to Him than they are?

I'm afraid we read over that line much too fast.

In case you are curious or nobody's told you.

You are much more valuable to him than the birds that he also

takes care of, he says. Can all your worries add a

single moment to your life? Actually, scientifically

speaking, I don't have time to give you the stats, but it

actually takes time away from your life.

So he says, why worry about your clothing?

Look at the lilies of the field and how they grow.

They don't work or make their clothing.

And Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as

they are. And if God cares so wonderfully

for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire

tomorrow, He'll certainly care for you.

Why do you have so little faith? Guys?

I just want to draw the connection here.

Whenever we long or lust for control, we have little faith.

We want to take the control out of His hands.

We don't have faith that He's going to do the things that He

says he's going to or if he makes a decision that we

wouldn't make, that it's ultimately good for us.

And he says, so don't worry about these things saying what

will eat we eat, what will we drink?

What will we wear? These things dominate the

thoughts of unbelievers. But your Heavenly Father already

knows your needs. And then comes the famous part.

Seek the Kingdom of God above all else and live righteously

and he'll give you everything you need.

And then he says, so don't worry about tomorrow.

Tomorrow will bring its own worries.

Today's trouble is enough for today.

Jesus would never dismiss responsibility, but his words do

challenge our sense of control. They remind us that peace is not

found in managing everything around us, but entrusting the

One who holds all things together when we just can't.

And so at the beginning of Ecclesiastes 3, the 1st 8

verses, I'm calling it a time for everything.

I mentioned it last week, but there was a very famous song by

the birds. It was called What?

Anybody remember Turn and basically ripped off

Ecclesiastes and got away with it?

Here's what it says in the 1st 8 verses.

For everything there is a season.

A time for every activity under heaven.

A time to be born and a time to die.

A time to plant and a time to harvest.

A time to kill and a time to heal.

A time to tear down and a time to build up.

A time to cry and a time to laugh.

A time to grieve and a time to dance.

This one used to confuse me. A time to scatter stones and a

time to gather stones. The reason that used to confuse

me is I always thought, why would you scatter stones?

And in case you're curious, it's not in my notes or yours.

Scattering stones was a way of stopping things from growing.

So sometimes if you wanted to maintain a field, if you're

trying to stop something from growing, you had to scatter the

stones out there so that it wouldn't grow.

But if you did want to till the ground, if you did want to grow

something, guess what you had to do?

You had to gather them. Do you want to feed something

that's growing in your life, or do you not want to?

It goes on to say a time to embrace and a time to turn away.

A time to search and a time to quit searching.

A time to keep and a time to throw away.

A time to tear and a time to mend.

A time to be quiet and a time to speak.

A time to love and a time to hate.

A time for war and a time for peace.

Well, the teacher starts this chapter with poetic words, I

mean, but they carry more reality than we often realize.

When he's talking about the seasons, that statement can

sound comforting. We'll say this a lot of times.

If it's a bad one, we say, well, it's just a season.

If it's a good one, we say, I'm really trying to enjoy this

season. But really what he's trying to

show us is the fact that life has a rhythm in order.

There is a time for everything. So as the list unfolds, it

becomes clear that it's actually an honest description of how

life actually works, how life actually works.

That word that's translated a season is the Hebrew word Zaman,

and it means an appointed time, an appointed time that means

something that is set or determined.

It's not random. It's not accidental.

I understand that we live in North Carolina, right?

But if you woke up tomorrow and there was snow, you'd feel like

something's off. I mean, that was so two months

ago, right? But it's not like every day

there's a random shuffler on the weather.

Seasons come and seasons go. So this is something talking

about it's it's appointed, and the teacher's starting to list

some of these times he pairs opposites together

intentionally, like birth and death, planting and harvesting,

weeping and laughing. Each pair really does reflect a

different part of the human experience.

If you haven't experienced everything on this list, and I

know of at least one thing that you haven't yet, you will.

I mean, who goes through life without laughter and weeping?

It? It's just something that

happens. And so that rhythm feels

structured and it feels predictable.

Some of them are joyful, some of them are painful.

And we all have moments that we would hold on to longer and

moments we'd skip completely if we could.

But that word that's translated as time throughout the passage

is also significant. It comes from the Hebrew word

8th ETH. It's pronounced 8th, and it

describes a specific moment or occasion.

Not time in general, but the right time.

It's talking about the right time.

We would compare this to maybe the word Kairos in the Greek in

the New Testament. But this is the right time or

the fitting time. And he's trying to teach us that

life is not a random collection of events.

It's actually made-up of moments that all carry their own place

and purpose, even if you don't fully understand them, or maybe

especially if you don't fully understand them.

Because as the list continues, it becomes clear that the

teachers not just describing events, he's talking about

different struggles as well. Why?

Because who here has a green thumb?

Who loves to do the garden stuff anyway, right?

So to plant requires patience, does it not?

You got to be patient if you're going to do that.

To harvest requires you to be ready because you can't just

leave it there and say, I'll get it next week.

What happens to the crop if you don't harvest it when it's

ready? Starts rotting, falls apart, and

so to weep means you have to actually acknowledge loss and

not disassociate. Sorry, I wasn't meaning to come

for you. To laugh means to celebrate joy,

but when you laugh you're also vulnerable.

To embrace means you draw people close, and turning away also

creates distance. There's a time for both.

So they're not really contradictions, they're just

realities that exist side by side.

And so this is where, if you let it, Scripture really begins to

challenge the way that you think.

And I told you this on night one, I've never looked at

Ecclesiastes the way that I look at it now that I've spent some

deep time really studying it and praying through it.

Scripture will really challenge you at any time.

Most people want to live only on one side of this list.

We want to rush getting through weeping so we can get back to

laughing. We want to rush getting through

the planting so we can get to the harvesting.

But they're both important. And if you don't get what you

need to from the season, sometimes the season gets

extended. Renewing our minds means we have

to learn to accept that we are not in control of the seasons.

We can only respond to them. We can only respond to them.

And yeah, that might be a bummer for you to hear right now, but I

would just also tell you it should be a relief.

You don't have any more responsibility than to respond

to the seasons that you find yourself in.

You can walk through them wisely.

You just can't force them to arrive early or delay their

departure. The struggle that most people

encounter is when we resist the season that we're in, whenever

we wish that we were somewhere else or somewhere easier or

somewhere more comfortable. So just as we wrap up this first

section, remember this. The goal is not to control the

seasons, but it is to recognize them.

You have to recognize them. It's in a different scripture in

the New Testament, but they talked about how people knew the

signs of the times. And we'll be talking about that

before you know it here on a Sunday.

But we have to recognize the seasons to understand where we

are and respond the right way and and trust that there really

is a bigger order at work. So the teacher's explaining that

these seasons happen, but he's not explaining why he's not

qualified to, and neither are we.

He's just reminding us that they do happen.

Couple personal insight questions for you there, and

we'll move on to the second section.

So this is the tension of time, verses 9 through 13.

It's the tension of time. Well, now he's going to start

sounding familiar again to the first two chapters.

What do people really get for all their hard work?

I've seen the burden God has placed on us all.

Yeah, God has made everything beautiful for its own time.

You ever seen that in Hobby Lobby?

You didn't see the first part, though, did you?

I have seen the burden that God has placed on us all.

Put that over your kitchen table.

Somebody's going to. He's planted.

Listen, He's planted eternity in the human heart.

But Even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God's work

from beginning to end. You ever wonder if that's part

of why we feel dissatisfied that we have eternity in our heart,

but we still can't see all of God's creation.

We can't make sense of all of it.

There's a longing to be one with eternity, isn't there?

He says in verse 12. So I concluded that there's

nothing better than to be happy and enjoy ourselves as long as

we can. And people should eat and drink

and enjoy the fruits of their labour, for these are gifts from

God. So he's laid out the rhythm of

seasons at the beginning, and then he pauses and asks that

question that sounds like the first couple chapters.

What do we really get for all of our hard work?

That's the same question that's been echoing and it's not the

last time you're going to hear it.

But he answers it when he says, I've seen the burden God has

placed on us all. That word burden, it's the

Hebrew word inon, and it means an occupation or a task or

something that occupies a person's life, occupies a

person's life. So it's not necessarily even a

hardship. It's just something that's

there. Actually, I'm planning to share

this is very small, but we were staying at a family member's

house this weekend and they had this sign that says home sweet

home. And I was looking at it and I

looked at Cassie and I said, do you think they know that there's

no T in that sign? And when we looked at it, it

says home sweet home. And when we when we asked her,

she goes, that was with the house when I bought it.

It was just already there, right?

A lot of things, they're just already there.

They occupy space in our life. It's neither good nor bad, but

they're there. OK.

That's what burden means. It's not speaking about general

hardship, just the weight of being human, living, working,

thinking. All these things are part of our

experience. And so then the teacher says

something that kind of feels surprising after everything that

he's been describing, after saying I've seen the burden that

God places on us all. He says everything is beautiful

for it's own time. But the word beautiful comes

from the Hebrew word yafei, which carries the whole idea of

something that is fitting or appropriate or well placed.

So this is not like a physical beauty.

This is more like when something you know works, you, you turn

the right wrench and the engine starts or you know, you, you see

your kids or your loved ones succeed and you say beautiful.

It's appropriate. It's fitting for the moment, and

it carries the idea of something appropriate.

So teachers not saying every moment feels beautiful while

we're in it. He's saying that every season

has a place in the larger picture we don't see.

And then he starts talking about that eternity in the human

heart. The word for eternity is olam,

which really talks about something that's beyond time.

And this was the goal that we talked about early on in this

study, right, is that we don't want to just see everything

that's under the sun. We want to be able to see what

is beyond the sun, not just the things that are temporal that we

understand. So this talks about something

that is beyond time, something that stretches past what we can

measure or fully grasp. But here's the problem.

When you long for something that is beyond your grasp, that

longing creates a lot of dissatisfaction.

While we're here on Earth, how many of us have had a season

where we look back and we say, I should have done more, I should

have said more, I should have been more present.

Why did I open my mouth? We all look back and we say, I

can't undo these things, but I wish there's a dissatisfaction

because we don't see all of it. Here's your next blank.

We live inside time. We live inside of time, but we

were created with a sense of eternity.

So we experience moments, but we long for something that's

lasting, and we want to understand how it all fits

together. But the teacher says you can't.

He says literally, you can't see the whole scope of God's work

from the beginning to the end. There's a gap between what we

desire to know and what we're able to see.

And you'll never be satisfied in that capacity.

Sorry. This is where the human struggle

with control often comes from. So, control freaks, we've

arrived. We want to understand.

We want to understand the timing.

We want to understand the purpose.

We want to know the outcome of what we're walking through.

But instead, you and I are asked to live in the middle of the

story without seeing the whole picture.

Maybe you got a favorite movie. Would it be your favorite movie

if you had only seen the 15 minutes in the middle of it?

Maybe. But you'd have some questions.

You'd have some questions, and so you're being asked to live in

the middle of the story without seeing all of it.

Faith is hard, isn't it? It's a struggle, and the teacher

doesn't resolve it for us, but at least he acknowledges it.

Some of us, we struggle because we don't know how things are

going to work out, and some of us struggle because we don't

know why things were the way that they were.

But we're right here in the middle.

So instead of trying to solve the mystery, the teacher just

shifts towards a response. And he says, I concluded,

there's nothing better than to be happy and enjoy ourselves.

It's important. And I, I do want to say this, I

mean, we're about to be at Resurrection Sunday.

We're going to be celebrating this Sunday.

And it's important that we as believers grab a hold of this

recognition that the ability to enjoy life and to receive the

moments that he brings you with gratitude.

It is not something you create. It's something that God gives,

something that God gives. Think about the day you gave

your life to the Lord. Think about a time that you saw

somebody else give your life to the Lord.

If you're married, think about your wedding day.

If you're happy about your wedding day, if it's your kids,

if you like your kids, think about the day they're born.

I'm being silly with it, but all of these beautiful moments,

beautiful and appropriate for the time they were all gifts and

all given to you from the Lord. So if you feel dissatisfied,

here would just be some pastoral advice in the middle of the

Bible study. Genuinely, if you feel

dissatisfied in an area of life, start asking God for the ability

to receive moments with gratitude.

Instead of sitting there and saying, why can't I be grateful?

What's wrong with me? That'll get you good places.

Ask God to give you the ability to receive moments with

gratitude. I'm speaking from experience.

Personally, I find it a relief to know that this too is not

something I can do on my own. Enjoying the fruit of our work

is a gift from God. Enjoying the fruit of your work

is a gift from God. So it's OK that you're excited

when the paycheck comes in. It's OK if you go to a nice

restaurant. It's OK if something that you

worked hard on pays off It's a gift.

And by the way, that word gift is also intentional.

It just reminds us that it's not something we force out of life

by understanding it. It can only be received.

That's the only thing you can do with a gift.

The teacher still doesn't remove the mystery, but at least he

teaches us how to live within it.

The the third section is called God is in Control.

If you've been a believer for a certain length of time, then

maybe you remember that song by Twila Paris.

No, OK, me neither. Verses 14 and 15 say this, and I

know that whatever God does is final.

Nothing can be added to it or taken from it.

God's purpose is that people should fear Him.

What's happening now has happened before, and what will

happen in the future has already happened before because God

makes the same things happen over and over again.

That's encouraging. So we talked about time and the

limits of understanding. And the teacher starts to remind

us of something that we should always keep at the forefront of

our mind. For the first time in this

chapter, he shifts away from what we can't control and

towards what God does control. So this is an important turn in

Chapter 3. There's this sense of confidence

in those words because he says. And I know after all the

questions and struggles, the teacher finally says something

we should all recognize. Whatever God does is final.

Whatever God does is final. Who likes a time travel movie?

Who hates a time travel movie? Yeah.

Nobody cares. Got it.

So God's not going to time travel.

He's not going to go back and redo things.

What he does is final. And so that's important to know

because what God does is not temporary.

It's not subject to revision. There's no God's will 2.0 It's

just complete in a way that our human effort never is.

We never feel like we've worked enough, done enough, loved

enough, saved enough. But God doesn't suffer from the

same thing. Human work is always something

that has to be adjusted or improved or corrected.

But what God does stands as is. And that should speak directly

to all of our desire for control.

All of our desire for control. A lot of our stress comes from

the belief that everything depends on us.

And while most of us wouldn't verbalize that and tell another

human being that everything depends on us, we act like it.

We feel like if we don't manage it, fix it, hold it together,

it's just going to fall apart. And the teacher reminds us that

there is a greater reality at work.

God is not reacting to life like we do.

He's the one that establishes it right.

So that phrase, God's purpose is that people should fear him,

believe it or not, has this layer where it's all wrapped up

in this one word, which is fear. And that comes from the Hebrew

word yaray it. It doesn't mean simply like

fear, like being afraid. How many of you all remember

that? It says in another place in

Scripture that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

It's the beginning of wisdom and that doesn't mean shaking in

your boots. This carries the idea of

reverence or awe. That's AWE and recognizing God

for who He truly is. It's a position of a heart when

you understand how great He is. And that was purpose are so much

greater than ours. In other words, when you begin

to see that God really is control, then the right response

is not anxiety. And I say this as somebody who

still has anxiety come and go, but every time I have anxiety, I

remind myself my faith isn't in the driver's seat.

If I really feel like God's in control of it, then the right

response is not going to be anxiety.

It's going to be reverence. It's going to be, I cannot wait

to see what God makes of this. I have no clue what the Lord is

doing here, but thankfully He does.

And so I know this because when I'm anxious, I know I'm not

filled with faith. But verse 15 brings us back to

something familiar from the seasons where he says what's

happening now has happened before.

It's spring again and we're complaining about the pollen.

But didn't we do this dance last year?

I mean, and it's going to happen again next year until the day

that the pollen takes me to the grave.

Life moves in rhythms. Seasons repeat.

You don't weep once and laugh once during life.

It's probably going to happen over and over again.

But when he says this, when he says makes it happen, it's from

a Hebrew word, bakash. It means this sense of like

seeking out or requiring, requiring or bringing something

forward again. And the idea is that there's an

intentional movement with God's oversight.

When the spring comes, it's because it's supposed to come

again. And as much as I dread the

pollen, I'm grateful for the warmth.

And one day I'll be so sick of the warmth, and I'll be grateful

for it to be cool. I love the six days of fall that

we have every year, but what feels repetitive to us is not

meaningless to the Lord. It's part of a pattern that God

see, God sees fully, even if we don't.

So this is where the teacher really challenges our need for

control. Because we're not the ones

holding everything together. We're not the ones determining

the outcome of every season. There's a greater hand at work

that is shaping things we don't understand.

And our role is not to control things, but to walk faithfully

in what God is already doing. So the teacher is reminding us

that the story is not ours to control.

It is not ours to control. And this is important, but it is

also not out of control either. Yeah, I tricked you.

I gave you the same word. It's not ours to control, but

it's not out of control. And I think sometimes we need to

hear that because when it feels like it's not in our control, it

feels out of control, doesn't it?

All right. Section 4, The problem of

injustice. You will not be a Christian for

long without struggling with this, he says.

I've also noticed under the sun that there's evil in the

courtroom. Yes, even the courts of law are

corrupt. Apparently that was a problem

back then. He's he's sorry.

I can normally keep a straight face, he says.

I said to myself, in due season, God will judge everyone both

good and bad for all their deeds.

I also thought about the human condition, how God proves to

people that they are like animals.

As a youth pastor for a long time I can confirm.

But just when it feels like the teacher has given us something

that's really solid to hold onto, the God is in control that

his work stands. Then he looks up again around

the world and he says bad things happen to good people, which is

kind of the way that we normally phrase it, right?

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Why do good people or innocent people die before their time?

And that issue is the issue of injustice.

The line where he talks about evil in the courtroom lands like

it was written today. That same place that's supposed

to represent justice and fairness and what is right is

filled with what is wrong. The place where truth should be

upheld is instead corrupted all too often.

And that word that's translated is evil comes from the word RA.

It just means what is wrong or harmful, or I like this

definition, morally twisted. Morally twisted.

The issue is not minor mistakes or occasional failures.

Here, when he's talking about evil, he's speaking about a

system that is bent in the wrong direction.

Something that should reflect order instead reflects disorder,

which is not what God represents.

And so in the in the previous section, we were reminded that

God is in control, but he's now showing another highlighter.

Remember when he he went from laughter to weeping and from

birth to death and had all these opposites?

Well, now he's done this with concepts because he said God is

the one who's truly in control of everything, but also there's

evil here on this earth and it's out of control.

And So what are we supposed to make of this?

Well, he says to himself that in due season, God will judge

everyone. Pay special attention to that

phrase in due season because the same idea of time that we saw

earlier returns here. That Hebrew word 8th again

points to a specific, specific appointed time.

And so the teacher is not saying justice doesn't exist.

He's saying it doesn't always happen when we expect it.

It doesn't always happen when we expect it.

Have you ever thought somebody's going to get away with something

and then you watched it hit them and you were like, oh, they

didn't get away with it. Let me ask a better question of

Christians. Have you ever thought you got

away with something and then something happened and you went,

man, I thought it was God's mercy.

His justice felt delayed to me, but it was right on time.

So this is where our faith starts to stretch here because

we want justice now. We want all the wrongs corrected

immediately, and we want things to be made right the moment that

we see that we're that they're wrong.

And this is what sometimes gets between US and God because we

say, well, as soon as I saw that and knew it was wrong, I wanted

it to be made right. Why doesn't God make it right

the second he sees it? He knows everything.

Why doesn't he fix it? The teacher is reminding us that

God's timing, God's timing, is not the same as ours.

Judgement will come, but it will come at its proper time, not

necessarily in our preferred time.

At the end, though, that's a fun line, isn't it?

God proves to people that they're like animals.

Well, at first that sounds kind of harsh, but he's using poetic

means to expose the limits of the human condition because that

word prove comes from the Hebrew word Barr.

It means to test or to refine or to make something clear.

And so he's saying that through life, though it has limits, it's

frustrations and everything. People are confronted with the

truth about themselves. We're not in control even though

we think we are. We have two cats at my house,

you know, when they eat. No, when we put food in the

bowl. Well, at least when I'm there

anyway. They don't have control over

when more food gets put into their bowl when I'm at home.

And so it's the same thing. He's saying we're just like

animals. We don't have control over

what's happening. We feel like we do because we've

got more understanding, but it's really just the same.

We are dependent like animals. So we have a choice.

When we realize this, we can either lead ourselves towards

frustration or humility. When we realize this, we can

either go towards frustration or humility.

God's justice will come. You just don't get to choose

when we have to learn to live in that not yet season without

losing trust in the Lord. It's actually necessary to

acknowledge that injustice is real and that brokenness is here

on the earth. But it also means holding on to

the truth that God sees both what we see and He sees what we

can't see. Well, the final section here,

it's pretty fun. It's a minor issue that has

caused some really heated arguments amongst people that I

know of. This is called the limits of

control. Here's what he says, verses 19

through 22. People and animals share the

same fate. Both breathe and both must die.

So people have no real advantage over the animals.

How meaningless. There's that Hevel again.

He says both go into the same place.

They come from the dust, and they return to the dust.

For who can prove that the human spirit goes up and the spirit of

animals goes down into the earth?

So I saw that there's nothing better for people than to be

happy in their work. That is our lot in life, and no

one can bring us back to see what happens after we die.

I have heard this verse used to prove that animals go into

eternity. I have heard this verse used to

prove that they don't. It's quite a conundrum, right?

We'll get to it after walking through all these seasons and

wrestling through time. Now we're past injustice and

we're looking at the limits of control over life itself.

And the word breathe there, which we've discussed before,

comes from that Hebrew word ruach, which can also mean

spirit. So this is important.

Spirit. It's the same word used

throughout Scripture to describe the breath of life that comes

from God. When Adam and Eve were made, he

breathed the breath of life into them.

And the teacher is pointing out something that's pretty humbling

when you think about it. The life that you carry is not

self generated. Moms, dads, the lives that you

brought into this world weren't even completely self generated.

The very spark of life comes from the Lord himself.

And the life that we carry in that we've built for ourselves

is not self generated either. You did not build your dream

life. Your life was given to you.

But he's trying to teach us this just as it is given.

One day it'll be taken as well. But that's a popular phrase,

isn't it? Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

That's what we've gotten from it.

But it says they came from dust, and they return to dust, reaches

all the way back to the beginning when Adam was created.

And this is where the question comes up that some people would

prefer to avoid. Who can prove what happens after

we die? Well, he's not denying that

there is more. He's just acknowledging that

from a human perspective, we can't fully see beyond this

life. And so the answer is, who can

prove? Nobody can prove it.

We still struggle with that today.

That's a boundary that we can't cross.

It's a limit that we can't move past just through understanding.

And so it has these two common schools of thought when it comes

to how people understand the future of animals in eternity.

I said we get back to this again.

Some think that it highlights the difference, pointing out

that humanity has a unique relationship with God and that

only human beings experience resurrection in the same way

that Scripture later describes. Others see this question itself

is intentionally open-ended, leaving room for the possibility

that God's redemptive plan may extend further than we fully

understand. Those that are in that school of

thought teach it from this standpoint that we are the

stewards of the earth. And so it is our responsibility.

Death came into the earth through us, That before we

allowed sin and death into the earth, even trees, plants,

animals, they wouldn't have died.

And so as we are redeemed, that which we have stewardship over

also becomes redeemed. And I'm not here to answer the

question for you either. I have my own opinion.

And I'll tell you when I'm not up here with a microphone

because the teacher here is not trying to answer that question.

It's really sad to me when I see people get divided over this.

And This is why this isn't a moment of lament when somebody's

going through a hard season lamenting something great.

Pain introspective. It is not the time to lay down a

rule or tell them what to do, or establish A doctrine.

You cannot build a doctrine out of a moment of mourning.

So don't do that, right? OK.

Then he tells us that the only thing that we can really do is

to enjoy our work. That is our lot in life, as he

put it. And that word lot comes from the

Hebrew word kelech. And it basically means a

portion, a share or what has been assigned to someone.

Are you noticing that all of this is about assignment and

timing and appropriateness assigned to someone?

It has this whole idea that something has been given to you

within the boundaries of your life.

Not everything that you wish for is in your life, but what is

actually in your hands right now is what has been assigned to

you. And so this doesn't lower the

value of life when you think about this, whether there's a

difference between the spirits of animals or people or vice

versa. But to me, it actually increases

the value of what you have. Now.

You can't control everything, but you can be faithful with

what you've been given. You may wish you had a greater

lot, but you can be faithful with the lot that you have.

And you can't determine every outcome, but you can live wisely

in the present, in the present. So we have to learn to live

within those limits without becoming discouraged by the

limits themselves. It's a sticky situation.

It just means that recognizing control is not the goal.

Your faithfulness is. And so trusting God with what is

beyond us is something we are all called to do while also

embracing what's in front of us. Every time that we worry about

the things beyond us, we never give enough attention to what's

in front of us. Right?

So the teacher doesn't answer every question in this chapter,

and he's not going to in Ecclesiastes.

So if you've been waiting for that, it's not going to get

answered. He leaves some of that struggle

in place for us, but he also does give us something solid to

stand on. Life is not meant to be

controlled. It's meant to be lived and

received and trusted knowing that it came from the hands of

God. If you're watching on the live

stream, we're going to go ahead and cut the video now.

For those of you here, we'll do worship in just a little bit.

How's time for the table talk? Everybody get all.