"He has made everything beautiful in His time: also he has set eternity in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God makes from the beginning to the end" (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
What Biblical doctrine affords the most comfort? What Scriptural honeycomb produces the most honey? What doctrine tastes the most like Hershey's chocolate? What gives you the most grit to face the new year? Your answer should be: the beautiful sovereignty of God! All events, past, present, and future are under God's scepter and sway; they are not under the caprice of chance; fortune is not King of kings and Lord of lords. The Monte Carlo games do not rule.
God's rule is the teaching of Ecclesiastes 3:1ff, which begins, "To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven." Here, "everything" means everything! Nothing slips through the fingers of our sovereign God. So, to showcase this, Solomon presents a menu of events: birth and death, planting and plucking up, killing and healing, breaking down and building up, weeping and laughing, mourning and dancing, casting away stones and gathering stones, etc. There are fourteen couplets and twenty-eight events catalogued. The cavalcade of events is not exhaustive, but exhaustive enough to teach you that God rules over all. Less important events such as worthless sparrows crashing to earth and the imperceptible descent of your hair follicles are included by implication. The so-called "mosquito" or "gnat" providences are determined by God, too. John Calvin keenly observed that even the gnawing of worms is under God's immediate governance (Jonah 4:7)
But why has the Holy Spirit given you this list? And how does the menu of events relate to Christ and His kingdom. The answer comes by studying the words "season" and "time." Yet, unhappily, it must also be reported that there are a few bogus ideas about these events that need to be exposed. Yes, the world has an interpretation of Ecclesiastes 3! This was highlighted by the rock group the Byrds in the 1960s and their hit song, There is a Season. Sadly, their song seemed to treat the times and seasons of Ecclesiastes 3 as impersonal events akin to fate. A fatalist believes in the randomness of "times" and "seasons." Impersonalism is the philosophy of secularists and evolutionists, who crown chance as King of kings and Lord of lords. For example, impersonalism is the force behind Enya's beautiful song, Only Time C a monster hit in US markets. She sang:
Who can say if your love grows, as your heart choseConly Time.
And who can say where the road goes where the day flowsConly Time.
Who knowsConly Time.
Who knowsConly Time.
Enya sings Only Time because Time is (according to her) all there is. It is timeless time, meaning that time is eternal. In other words, time is God (instead of Christ as the Potentate of time). Ecclesiastes 3 does not teach the deity of time, randomness, or a cyclical inevitability to the flow of time. Time, by itself, is not sovereign. Time is God's creature.
The second bogus idea is that Ecclesiastes 3 teaches that time is orchestrated by man himself. "Justification" for this is found in the word purpose in verse 1. So, it is thought that all fourteen couplets refer to man's purposes. Of course, there are major problems with this view. To begin with, Ecclesiastes 3 is not an exhaustive menu. The writer could have said there is "a time for rain," or "a time for sunshine." You do not control the weather. In fact, if you study the word rain in the Bible, you will discover that there is never an instance when "rain" stands by itself. Every time "rain" occurs, God sends it! Yes, our God "sends rain upon the just and the unjust" (Matthew 5:45). The most famous example of human impotence with regard to the elements was the British king Canute, who sat on the seaside and tried to command the sea and waves! And added to this, there are events in the list itself that you cannot control. For example, the Preacher says "there is a time to be born and a time to die." Who purposes his own birth or death? This is quite out of our hands, as Mark Twain quipped when asked the reason for his success, "I chose my parents very carefully." Even Judas' suicide was just as much a product of God's sovereign will as God's foreordination of Christ's death (Luke 22:22).
Your Times And Seasons Are Ruled By God
In our own culture, the closest you come to a menu of events like Ecclesiastes is at weddings. You hear expressions like loving your spouse in "sickness and health," "in plenty and in want," "in joy and in sorrow," till death do you part. These are not hypothetical events, much less the bludgeonings of chance; rather, these things happen by God's sovereign command. Marriage is not only an ordinance of Scripture-it is an ordinance of the script of providence, too.
But how can we prove that our times and years are God's? All you need do is study the words times and seasons in the Bible. For example, when the disciples questioned Christ, "Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" Jesus rebuked these curious Georges: "It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father has put in His own power." So, times and seasons are not faceless; rather, they are the serfs of the Lord of the manor. They are in God's hands, not yours or Allstate's! But our number one text is Psalm 31:15, where David writes, "My times are in thy hand ... " So, it is not just national events, but very personal events that your God controls. It is rightly said: "There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow." How true! Yes, God "has made everything beautiful in His time" (Ecclesiastes 3:11.) The news recorded in the London Times or The New York Times is really His times (an apt name for a Calvinistic newspaper, indeed!). So, all your times are God's.
In Ecclesiastes 3, you also have Solomon speaking about "purposes." Ephesians 1:11 teaches that everything happens "according to the purpose of Him who works all things after the counsel of His will." Yes, not only are all times in God's hands, but all purposes, "s there is purpose behind all times. Of course, God's purposes may not be as clear as the sun at noon day. As William Cowper hymned:
His purposes shall ripen fast, unfolding every hour,
The bud may have a bitter taste, but sweet shall be the flower.
Blind unbelief is sure to err, and scan His work in vain,
God is His own Interpreter, and He will make it plain.
In all of our times, no matter how dismal their character, let us not forget that God's time-table is His own, not ours. Therefore, let us heartily quote the aphorism, "Man proposes; God disposes."
The ‘Specs' Of God's Beautiful Sovereignty
First, there is a time to kill and a time to heal (Ecclesiastes 3:3). God ordains killing-times and healing-times. Even if you are killed accidentally by a flying axe-head, your death is an act of God. But God ordains healing, too. We tend to give God more credit for killing than for healing.
Second, there is a time to break down and a time to build up. You may see the collapse of great buildings, like the World Trade Center. But the eye of faith in God sees not only breaking down, but rebuilding! Israel was in Babylon for 70 years, where she was commanded to build and to plant. Then, when the Lord returned the Captivity of Israel, she rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem in the incredible period of 52 days!
Third, there is a time to weep and a time to laugh (verse 4). God ordains laughing and weeping times. Abbot and Costello once took out insurance for themselves, that if anyone died of laughter, that they would not be sued! God wants you to laugh, to enjoy life. Laughing is more than being a ham-it is being AbraHAMic. Abraham, the father of all who believe, was a laughing father. He named Isaac Isaac because Isaac means "laughter." Spurgeon and a friend were walking on the beaches of Mentone in France laughing and jesting, when Spurgeon suddenly said, "Let us pray and thank God for the gift of laughter." Let us do the same!
Fourth, there are times to mourn and times to dance. Martin Luther's wife, Katherine, once dressed in black to pantomime her husband's funereal melancholy. Dancing was conspicuous at marriages: Jesus attended the wedding at Cana of Galilee, where there was merriment and dancing. So, God gives you dancing times after mourning times and dancing times in the midst of mourning times. When ‘your ship comes in,' you are to dance. Although we do not believe in ongoing miracles today, we do believe in God's "remarkable providences." And, these remarkable providences make us laugh in faith.
There is a time to cast away stones and a time to gather them. In Bible times, casting away stones signified God's judgment of cities. For example, Christ prophesied of the "demolition crew,"-the armies of Titus! Also, when the Jews were taken into captivity, the conquering armies cast stones into their fields to make the fields unproductive (2 Kings 3:19). When Israel returned from Babylon, she rebuilt with stones. Herod the Great was dubbed "great" because he was a builder, having rebuilt the Temple.
Sixth, there is a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. This is the marital, sexual embrace. Yes, God even determines spousal embraces. Providences such as fasting, prayer, sickness, war-all these make embraces impossible. Scripture teaches that the husband has authority over the body of the wife, and the wife has authority over the body of the husband. But we must never think of this mutual authority as so absolute that it becomes an inalienable right. God may interrupt our embraces to teach us that all sexual caresses are subject to His good will. Spouses belong more to God than they do to themselves.
Seventh, there is a time to get and a time to lose. You must love losses and gains because both are Godsends. The Jews in captivity lost the land of milk and honey. That can only be described as a meltdown, a colossal loss! But when they returned, they knew gain! When the World Trade Center went down, the investment firm of Kantor-Fitzgerald lost 75 per cent of all its employees! Do not be unnerved, even if your Swiss banker looks at your bank account and despairs of life.
Then, there is a time to keep and a time to cast away. Things that you cherish today, you will donate to Good Will Store tomorrow. Cherishing things become perishing things. Death itself is the number one means of the redistribution of your wealth.
There is also a time to rend and a time to sew. The Jews rent their clothing during times of grief-when death struck, or when they loathed themselves for their sins. God commands: "Rend your hearts, not your garments ..." -which means that a textile-repentance does not fly with God. But God also sews; He provides us with clothing as glorious as Solomon's (Matthew 6:29-30).
There is a time to keep silent and a time to speak (verse 7). When taps are played, be silent. When God's law renders you guilty for your sins, your mouth should be stopped (Romans 3:19). But there is also a time to speak, even to confess your sins (1 John 1:9). When Christ was interrogated by Pilate, He kept silent for a time, giving no answer (John 19:9). But when Pilate blasphemed, "scribing all authority to his puny self, Jesus said, "You could have no power at all against me, except it were given you from above: ..." (John 19:11a). It has been said that the sinner will have God to be anywhere, except on His throne. Christ was galvanized into action when Pilate tried to dethrone God! It is blasphemy not to speak against blasphemy.
There is a time to love and a time to hate (v. 8). Psalm 105:25 tells how God set up the Egyptians to be trophies of His fierce wrath: "He turned their heart to hate his people ..." -the point being that God Himself stirs His enemies to hate His people. But God also loves in His own time, declaring, "when I passed by you, and looked upon you, behold, thy time was the time of love: and I spread my skirt over you: yea, I sware unto you and entered into a covenant with you, says the Lord God, and you became mine" (Ezekiel 16:8). Why does the core of the Moslem world hate both Christ's Church and Americans today? Whatever the reasons, we know that God turns hearts in our century, too.
There is a time for peace and a time for war. This is most comforting-to know that even the scourge of war is in God's hands. I was one who thought that when the Iron Curtain came down, that war would become rare (at least for our country). But look what has happened; along came 9-11, and now we find ourselves spending billions to support national defense. We are beating our plowshares into swords! Yet, it is comforting because the same God Who orchestrates war, also orchestrates the peace. He makes wars to cease unto the ends of the earth, turning swords into plowshares. Our war against the terrorists will end. It may take decades, but God will end it.
Our Times Are Governed Beautifully!
The Preacher then says that "He hath made everything beautiful in His time: he hath set the world [eternity] in their heart, so that no man can find out the work of God from the beginning to the end" (3:11). Here, the Hebrew word for beauty (tov) is the same word in Genesis 1:31: "And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good (tov)." The word "good" also means beautiful.
Of course, the beauty of God's rule is not always immediately discerned. He makes things beautiful "in His time." Things before this time may look confused, scrambled, even mysterious. Because we are encased in our own finitude, we become frustrated. God has set "eternity" in our hearts so that we try to understand His providence, but because of our finitude, we cannot. Instead, we see only fragments of the whole story-snapshots, "the coming attractions" of God's providence. Plus, God's work often begins in one age and ends in another! This was indeed Israel's experience, after she was vomited out of the Promised Land to Babylon.
God wants you to know that your times are not out of control. There are no maverick molecules in God's universe. This explains why everyday, mundane things are mentioned in Ecclesiastes! In our lives all we see is one or two pieces of God's sovereign, jigsaw puzzle. I like to take Winston Churchill's famous statement about Russia and apply it to God's mysterious providence. He said: "Russia is a mystery, wrapped in a riddle, inside an enigma." Think of God's providence in your life as a mystery, wrapped in a riddle, inside an enigma! Or, apply Shakespeare's famous insight to God's sovereignty: "Sweet are the uses of adversity, which like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears a precious jewel in his head."
Do Not Misinterpret God's Providence
In Ecclesiastes 3:10, the writer asks: "What profit has he that works in that where he labors?" The reason for his question seems to be that if God orchestrates everything, then what's the use? Why work, why labor, why exercise yourself? If God directs peace and war, love and hate, what is the profit for us? The answer is that God makes everything beautiful in his time. This means that your work is not in vain "in the Lord." Our mistake is to become inert, to think that our work is useless because God is sovereign! But the Preacher tells you that God wants you to continue to work; He wants you to suspend your judgment-wait for your Heavenly Artist to complete His painting!
Of course, all of us must understand that God's kingdom is bigger than us anyway. We are to wait for Him to put the jigsaw puzzle together in His own time. The choices are that you believe that God has made a mess of things or that God makes everything beautiful in His own time. Only ask yourself this: What was the most monstrous thing that has ever happened? You are right if your answer is the crucifixion of the Lord of glory! Yet, I remind you that God made even the crucifixion beautiful. He did this by raising Christ from the dead on the third day. And He accomplished this for your redemption!
Yes, all of Jesus' times were determined by His Father. It was in the "fullness of time that God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law" (Galatians 4:4). And Christ's betrayal and crucifixion would only come at the pre-appointed hour or time (John 8:20; 13:1).
As you face the new year, keep two things before you: First, begin the new year with this years' God, Whose specialty is painting beautiful providences. No matter what happens, no matter how ugly the providence, no matter how mysterious, count on God's sovereignty to be beautiful! Second, remember that the new year is really the same as the old year. The entire time from Christ's first coming to His Second Advent is "the year of our Lord." (Isaiah 61:1-3; Luke 4:19). Why is it "the year of our Lord?" The answer is that Christ is busily redeeming sinners and busily exercising His rule. The Psalmist prophesies that Christ's "years shall have no end" (Psalm 102:27). The universe is really a Christo-verse, because Christ sits as the exalted God-man, ruling over all. Whirl is not king of kings and lord lords. And neither is time. The Lord Jesus Christ is the Potentate of time, this year, all of 2007, and forevermore!
