The March of Time

Introduction

I appreciate Jacob leading a couple of Matt Bassford songs that are pretty fitting with where we’re gonna go this morning. I, as you song leaders know, I often don’t make that many song requests. but kind of last minute yesterday, I sent Jacob two of the songs that we sang this morning, even song and the one we just sang, a foretaste of your rest. and knowing Matt’s story, he wrote this years ago before he got sick and went through what he went through, but it’s even more interesting to see the words of those songs and how they relate not just to his life but to life in general, and to see how they connect to what we’re looking at in the book of Ecclesiastes.

Time is inescapable, it’s just part of our reality. In fact, God’s story begins with the establishment of time. In the beginning, God said, Let there be light, and there was light. And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening and there was morning the first day. You know, as the account of creation goes on, it keeps that pattern repeated. The second day, the third day, the fourth day. He’s establishing these sequences of time, establishing 24-hour periods. God is not only creating the world, but he’s also creating the structures of time within which we dwell, the seasons, the times, all of the things that go on in the world around us. God’s creating all of that, not just plants and animals and those sorts of things.

So, in the very essence of who we are, there is time, and we are bound to it. God transcends time, he is above it, but he has created it for his purposes for us to dwell in and to exist within. Time matters so much in our culture that we have endless sayings about it. We could just pause here, and I could just let you sit and write down different sayings or idioms or things like that. You could come up with all kinds of them. When we’re relaxed, we might say something like, I’ve got all kinds of time, or I have all the time in the world. We’re a little bit delusional about time sometimes as well. Let’s kill some time, we might say. When we’re reflective, also known as clueless, and we don’t know what’s actually going to happen.

We say, oh, time will tell. But will it? Often it doesn’t, but we like to kind of comfort ourselves with the idea that maybe it will at some point. The teacher in Ecclesiastes will argue with that. Time flies. Right? We blink and it looks like everything has changed around us. Our kids grow up quickly. Our work situation is completely different than it was 10 years ago, and yet it just seemed like a moment. Or when we are rushed, I need to buy some time. I’m working on borrowed time. I’m running out of time. Time is money. I’m on the clock. Or maybe just simply time me. Our kids like that one. See how fast they can go. It’s just part of almost every part of our life.

It structures our whole day. It dictates almost everything we do in the day. We schedule how we eat around all the times that go on around us. Your workplace probably has lunchtime or a break time. And so it’s really just a part of everything that we do. And the teacher in Ecclesiastes understands this. And maybe in a way that is quite different than we would like to imagine. Like I said, we’re often very delusional about time, and he’s not going to pull any punches. He’s going to tell it like it is. And even with that, sometimes we will interpret or think about what he’s saying in a much more positive way than what he’s actually doing. And so let me just admit up front, as we’ll work through this series in Ecclesiastes, over and over again, we’re going to go to a dark place because that’s what he’s doing.

But the whole point of that is then to see the hope that comes in understanding what we have through Jesus Christ, or from his perspective, what we have not under the sun, but when we fear God and to keep his commandments. That changes everything about our perspective. But from a purely earthly standpoint, when we’re looking at life and the things around us in life, without a view of God, it is dark. And of course, this is a testimony. It is bearing witness to the importance of seeing God in our life and living with God as the primary focus of everything that we’re doing. So I want to talk about some lessons about time from the book of Ecclesiastes. You’re familiar with the text. Much of the book actually deals with this because almost everything has already said exists within time.

1. A Time for Every Matter Under Heaven

But he does take this break in chapter three to run through this poem and then some reflections on the idea of time. So let’s read the poem together, and then I want to work from there, and we’ll maybe highlight some other texts along the way. He 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, 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, a time for war and a time for peace. The following section in the rest of the book, the rest of the chapter really is a reflection on these ideas about time. And at first, as I read that, you may think this is sort of pleasant, right? I mean, it’s kind of nice. There’s a time for everything. There seems to be balance in the world, and everything seems to be good and right. I mean, you have the time of birth of giving birth, and then there’s a time you die.

It’s kind of the whole bookend of our life. And we like these kinds of thoughts because they seem complete to us, and we like to have that completed sort of idea in our mind. And to some extent, we actually are affected. This is an interesting aspect of interpretation, we don’t talk about a whole lot, but strangely enough, we are affected by rock music with this song. Those of you who are a little bit older, you are familiar with turn. And what this is called, I’m going to give you a big term here, and you don’t have to memorize this or even walk away with it, but I want you to understand the way interpretation works. This is kind of part of the sociology of interpretation.

And what that means is a document or something, it affects the world it’s in, and it is influenced by the world it’s in, and it affects the world it’s in, right? So Peter Seeger, he wrote the song based on Ecclesiastes 3, so that’s influencing him. But then when he writes the song, that then influences the world he’s in, even till today. And let me explain that for just a moment. His song was adapted by the birds in 1965 in the height of the Cold War. And if you’ve heard the song, maybe parents, you can show the song to your kids later on. You know it’s like almost word for word from Ecclesiastes 3, particularly the King James Version. The tune is very upbeat, right? It’s hopeful.

It’s the idea, really, is the idea of kind of balance, like things might be bad now, but it’s gonna turn. And whatever situation you’re in, it’s gonna turn, and then you’re gonna have kind of the other side of this, right? So things are bad now, but it’s gonna turn and it’s gonna be better, which is why he inserts the idea of turn, even though that’s not actually in Ecclesiastes 3. But almost everything else in the song is. It’s basically just quoting the words from the text. Except the very end. The last stanza in Ecclesiastes 3.8 says a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. Now, earlier in the song, he does mention a time for war, so he’s not just trying to completely escape it and not talk about it, but in the last stanza, he says a time to love, a time to hate, a time for peace.

I swear it’s not too late. And what this has done, unfortunately, two things, really. The upbeat, positive, hopeful nature of the musical elements of the song, along with him changing this to give humans the idea that somehow they have control, causes us to misinterpret this passage. We don’t have control. We’ll talk more about that in a later sermon. The point that the teacher’s making here is not to give us comfort. It’s not really to say it’s all gonna be okay and things are gonna turn and get better. That’s not the point he’s making at all. He’s actually highlighting human powerlessness. That all these things happen to you, and really you don’t have much control over them. You may imagine you do, but actually, God is behind the actions that take place in the world in some form, in some way, He’s created it all, and actually we are just pawns within the world.

This is an under the sun perspective. Right? He’s seeing this in a way that’s fairly pessimistic. Right? There’s a time, and again, I think even in the poem itself, it seems a little bit hopeful at first, but as you just keep hitting the tedium of this refrain over and over and over and over, you realize you’re just a product of time. Your life is just like everybody else’s life. There’s a time when you’re born, there’s a time when you die, there’s times when you bring life, the first verse two of this poem, and then there’s times life is taken away. There’s times when things are killed, there’s things when times are healed. You sometimes you get in a situation, you build up, sometimes you tear down, and it’s usually dictated by things around you that often have very little to do with you.

And he’s gonna go on to say in the reflection that although we have an eternity in our heart, we just we can’t know the beginning from the end. There’s so much we don’t understand and so much we don’t know. God’s things endure forever, but we don’t even know what God’s doing. It’s sort of a hopeless thought that he’s giving here that we just don’t have control. And then he goes on to say in the end of the chapter here’s all these things I see under the sun. In the place of justice, there’s wickedness. When things should be right, they’re wrong. And where things are supposed to be wrong, sometimes they’re doing it right. And it’s just this confusion. Life is heavily. Don’t forget. It’s a vapor, it’s a mist.

It’s enigma. It’s mystery. It’s paradox. It’s irony. And he has not lost that in this little poem. In fact, the poem is all about that. And so while it’s an amazing song and was number one and got all sorts of attention, don’t allow that to then influence your actual interpretation of the passage. Which is meant to be like everything else, setting you up to see what the world is like just under the sun without a view of God. Without making him central. Now none of them are really atheists. They all have an understanding of God, so that’s not really their culture. But it’s when if you are neglecting to put God as first in your life and priority, if you’re not fearing him in the things that you’re doing, life is just monotony.

It’s just one season after another, one time after another. It’s just the same thing for everyone. And there seems to be no end. I guess maybe the most prominent way that hits my mind is bedtime. I mean, parents, bedtime’s rough. You get to the end of the day, and now you’ve got to go through all these steps. And it’s like the same thing every day, right? And the kids are trying to stay up later than they’re supposed to, and you gotta go through the various routines, and you gotta establish those routines, and they are they just become repetitive and difficult. We love you kids. It’s not that we don’t love you, but it’s just the monotony, the difficulty of that, right? And who’s gonna do it tonight?

Is it gonna be me or is it gonna be Katie? I’ve had a long day. Maybe you should do it. Well, I’ve had a long day. Maybe you should do it. Right? These are the sorts of things that we go through, even if we don’t always say that. I love you, Katie. You do it most of the time. It’s great. But this is life, right? And the preacher is not trying to step away and beat around the bush and not talk about real life. He’s saying this is what life is really like. And there’s got to ultimately there’s got to be something more, something greater, something bigger than this, and that’s what he wants to lead us to. But to get us there, he’s got to repeatedly get us into the pit to admit what life is really like before we can admit how badly we need God.

2. Time's Cadence Is Relentless and Unyielding

And that’s what this is actually about in Ecclesiastes 3 that time is not within our control. Time doesn’t care about my plans. Time is harsh. It’s indifferent. There’s another statement. I don’t remember all the details of it, but I came across it a while ago. It says, you know, one day you’re 17 and you’re planning for someday, and then in a moment, you’re looking back at all the plans you made, and you just exist in the reality you’re in now. Right? How many of us remember that? You’re 16, 17, you have all these ideas, all the things you’re going to accomplish and do, the plans that you’re making, and then you wake up, and I’m 43 now. Where did the time go? Probably not much different for those of you who are 60 or 70.

It’s just quick. It feels slow at times, but then in the end it’s fast. And it’s hard to control. And we think, I wanted to do so much. Sometimes we wrestle with that, right? I wanted to do this by the time I was 40. And we think that we can control time, and we can’t. Time awaits for no man. It is indifferent to our feelings, to our plans, to the things that we want to accomplish. And that is ultimately not the answer to life, anyway. Meeting some arbitrary standards that I’ve come up with about what I need to do by 35 or 40 or 60 or whatever it is really not the answer to life, as we’ll continue to see as we work through Ecclesiastes.

And the New Testament writers pick up on this. James, toward the end of his letter says, Come now, you who say today or tomorrow. We will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and make a profit. You do not know what tomorrow brings. What is your life? For you were a mist. Life is heavel. That’s what he’s saying. You were a mist that appears for a time and then vanishes. Time doesn’t ask you if you’re ready for a job loss, or health problems, or issues with your friends and family. Then say, are you ready for that? Is now a good time for these problems to happen? Time doesn’t care. It is what it is, and we exist within it, and we have to deal and we struggle with the things that come about.

And life just keeps moving on. That may be the hardest part of all of this. Some of you this morning are going through struggles and difficulties. Some of them may be very intense. And there may be some great things, and I know there is some great things about coming to a place like this and worshiping together, and there’s encouragement that comes from that. And yet, at the same time, I’ve been there, I understand this, and I know what it’s like. At the same time, you look around and you realize other people are celebrating and going through great things right now. And that’s hard to deal with. Life just goes on. Life doesn’t stop when you have a difficulty or a struggle. And so, you know, we’re going to wait for you to get this all figured out.

And so this first lesson or idea that we need to come to terms with is that time it’s a cadence that is relentless and unyielding. It stops from no man. The clock, we don’t have timeouts. We’re in the middle of it. And we have to live life without breaks, without pauses. And we’ll get to the conclusion here, the resolution here in a little bit, but the idea that the writer’s wanting us to understand here is just kind of the monotony, the cycles of time that are very hard to wrestle with and deal with. Right when you think you’ve got it figured out, a new season comes. And now everything changes again. It’s just the nature of how life works. The next is that time is a reminder of human limitations.

3. Time Is a Reminder of Human Limitations

So the first is that the clock never stops. Time’s cadence is unyielding, it’s relentless. But second, time is a reminder of my limitations. I think the simplest way to understand this is just the way a day works. You get up in the morning and you do things all day, and what happens? You’re tired. Of course, God created us to be this way for good reason. Maybe even to help us understand our limitations. Sometimes, young people, you’ve heard this with little kids, and then like your older kids actually do it. Little kids are like, I’m gonna stay up all night, right? And then they’re asleep by 11 30. Like they really want to try to take advantage of time or beat time, and they can’t do it.

Sometimes our teens will do it, and then the next day they sleep all day. Right? Time always wins. We will never defeat time. And so it is a reminder of our limitations. All the way back in chapter one and two, we see ideas that are related to this, right? In chapter one, it’s talking about all the cycles that take place. A generation comes, a generation goes, and yet the earth remains forever. It’s just the way it is. It’s just relentless, it’s unyielding. And in the end of all of that, everything is just forgotten. The things that we’re doing that we sometimes think are so significant, maybe our job or our career or education, in a hundred years, who’s gonna care? Who’s gonna even remember? In a hundred years, probably like two people will remember my name because they’re in my family, right?

And maybe they still remember who I am. That’s just the nature of time. That is the reality that time doesn’t stop and time doesn’t end, that we have limitations, and again, this is sort of built in, I believe. Think about like the Tower of Babel, how they’re trying to come together, and they are trying to do things to thwart God’s plans, and then he ends up putting some limitations on them. So some of this is because God has good reason for it. It’s just the nature of how life works. And we have this sense of eternity that we are created with, chapter three and verse 11. He has put eternity in our hearts, but we are stuck in time, and we cannot possibly comprehend the big picture.

We need to learn to leave that to God. I can’t control everything, I can’t make it all work out the way I want it to work out. It’s all going to be beautiful in his time, and part of the message here is to learn to trust him even when I feel like I don’t have control, which I don’t, and you don’t. In our modern culture, we have this perception of control that is utterly ridiculous. People in our culture think we can control all sorts of things around us. And to some extent, we can on a micro level control some stuff, but big picture we just can’t. And it’s all an illusion. Remember, I said we’re delusional about this sort of stuff. So we give ourselves the idea that we can control so much, and then we get upset when we can’t control things.

Our expectations are completely off. That time is a reminder of human limitation. That time restrains us. It is a boundary. There’s nothing we can do to stop the inevitable. No matter what we do, we will grow old. We will not have eternal youth. And eventually, whether we’re young or old, we will die. That’s the nature of time. See, I told you it’s gonna be a little bit dark. We’re gonna work back for the positive here in a minute. The teacher says in chapter 6, for who knows what is good for a man while he lives the few days of his vain life, which he passes like a shadow. For who can tell man what will be after him under the sun? I can only do so much.

And after that, I don’t know. I can work my whole life to build up my retirement, to take care of my kids, to do whatever, but then when I’m gone, I don’t even know anymore. How important is that really? Now he’s not saying we shouldn’t make preparations or we shouldn’t. We’re going to talk about how we should live life the best way we can, but it’s more the perspective and the way we think, the way we frame this in our minds. I saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, the preacher says. Nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all.

For man does not know his time. The children of men are snared at an evil time when it suddenly falls upon them. Now we like the story of David and Goliath. Because it’s a person of God, it’s an underdog who is victorious. But that’s exactly the sort of thing this text is talking about. Goliath should have won. He was big and strong, but things just don’t work out the way we would imagine a lot of times. Life doesn’t go the way we think it should go because we don’t see the big picture and we don’t understand it all, which the preacher says over and over again throughout this writing. And you know, we only know about Goliath because of the story about David, but how many times did something like this happen and we don’t even know the person’s name anymore?

Life just goes on. As big and as important, as strong, as fast, as mighty, as powerful, as various people have been. How many of those people are ever actually remembered? You know some people from history. You know the names at least. Maybe like Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar. I mean, there’s some people we remember here and there, but how much do we actually even know about them or even cared enough. We just know maybe some big picture details, but most of us, there’s some of you who may, most of us don’t really know the details of their life and what they’re really like. We didn’t even know what they look like for the most part. Time goes on and everything changes, and they’re just like everybody else.

They live and they die. So what? What does that mean for us? Shakespeare’s Macbeth sounds a lot like the preacher. The human condition is just easily observable, and even Shakespeare could see it. Finds it within his tragedies quite often. He’s speaking truth. Truth doesn’t only exist in the Bible. You can find truths other places. And Shakespeare is observant. He sees the truths around him, and he’s writing it into these stories. Macbeth is told that his wife has died. And seeing the things that are going on around him, the battle that’s about to ensue, he just points out, well, she was gonna die at some point anyway, and I would have received this news at some point. Right? That’s his response in his despair. And then he utters the famous lines, which some of you probably memorized as school students, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day.

To the last syllable of recorded time. And all our yesterdays have lighted fools, the way to dusty death, out brief candle. Life’s but a walking shadow. A poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more, is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. When Macbeth looks around at his world, he realizes that none of the efforts he’s made is gonna amount to anything. It has all been heavy. It’s all a vapor. It signifies nothing. His kingdom’s going to be lost. His wife has died. And all the things he thought he was going to accomplish, all the plans that he wanted to make, ended up not happening. Time doesn’t care about his plans.

4. The Answer Is to Spend My Time Well

Time consumes just like everybody else. It consumes him and his wife, no matter how powerful or how strong he was. It didn’t matter how much he worried, how anxious he was about the things that are happening, right? You strut and you fret about your hour on the stage. That’s what life is. It’s this hour in the limelight. It’s this hour on the stage, and then you’re heard from no more. And the point of this from Ecclesiastes and the teacher is not to just live in despair. That’s not what I want for you either. It’s not that we just walk around in complete despair and saying, well, life just doesn’t matter. That’s the lesson. Who cares what I do because I’m going to be forgotten and there’ll be no memory of me, so I might as well just do whatever I want, and it doesn’t matter at all.

That’s not what the teacher’s saying at all. But it is true that life slowly moves to its inevitable end. And that our anxieties only ruin whatever good exists in our life. And so the wise man says there is nothing better for them than to be joyful, to do good as long as they live. Chapter 3 and verse 12.

Any fame or popularity that we think that we’re going to build, time will win. And so, what’s actually going to matter in life? That’s what I need to be thinking about.

All will have been long forgotten, the wise observer says in chapter 2 and verse 16. And so the answer is to spend my time well. Paul is very familiar with Ecclesiastes. That’s evident by multiple things he says, but probably most obvious is his statement in Ephesians 5 make the best use of the time because the days are evil. He’s familiar with the message of Ecclesiastes. Right? Look at those good days, the blessings, the things that you’re enjoying, and keep those as a promise that God will bless you. Right? That’s what the song we sang said. Right? When you have those good days, celebrate, enjoy them. They are a foretaste of the rest that is to come. Because you’re going to have dark days. There’s going to be times when things do not go well, where you’re suffering and pain or difficulty, and so we need to log those good days and say, yes, God has blessed me.

Even though I’m going through some of these difficulties, God loves me. He’s giving me gifts in life, and it’s about how I use those gifts and what I do with them. And so the wise man says, enjoy your marriage. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love all the days of your vain life. Heavel, the mist, the temporary nature of your life. Enjoy those days. God has given you these days under the sun. This is your portion in life. Enjoy that. Right? So the answer isn’t to say, well, none of this matters because we’re not going to have marriage in heaven, or whatever we might think in our despair and our depression because we have a bad day. That’s not the answer. The answer is to realize in the moment what you have now, you can enjoy.

5. Remember Your Creator in the Days of Your Youth

He goes on to say to young people, rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. This is in chapter 11, by the way. Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes, but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment. I mean, what an interesting message. The things you desire, go after them. He’s not saying, forget your desires, they don’t matter. Don’t pursue the things you like. That’s not the message. But it is to keep it all within the proper perspective and framework. If you love something, go after it. If you want to do something with your life very specific, you should do that. God created the world and this life for us to enjoy, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all.

Everything is right with that, actually, the wise man says. So rejoice in your youth, but also realize that youth is heavily. It’s not always going to be there. And so then he goes on to say, remove vexation from your heart and put away pain from your body for youth and the dawn of life are vanity. Appreciate the joys of youth. The good things about it, because it won’t last forever. And I don’t want to spend a lot of time talking about this, but I’m just going to say this. Don’t waste your youth worrying about dating relationships and things that will bring vexation to your life with God and with your friends. See the joys that come from being young and the things that you can do to please the Lord and to build relationships.

These are all things that are part of youth that are great and wonderful. What a travesty to ruin that. With fake marriage after fake marriage and divorce after divorce when you’re 15, 16, 17 years old. It’s a disaster. It’s a disaster our culture promotes to its own detriment. And so remove that from your life. Have good perspective. Remember also your creator in the days of your youth. Before the evil days come, and the years draw near of which you will say, I have no pleasure in him. He’s just being honest. You know, as we get older, things start to hurt. It’s not as comfortable anymore. Enjoy it right now. Enjoy it while it’s pleasurable and your body is functioning the way it’s supposed to, and you’re not in pain all the time, and make the best use of that.

And prepare yourself for the time where even though your outer self is wasting away, your inner self can be growing up and maturing, becoming one in greater unity with the Lord. Begin that now. Don’t waste your time and your youth saying, someday I will grow my relationship with God. When I get a little bit older, I’ll read my Bible more. No, remember your creator in the days of your youth. Start now. And it will prepare such a better future. Not because it’ll solve all the problems and make all the pains go away and there’ll be no difficulties. No, because you’ll be better prepared for those when they arrive. That’s the point. And you’ll see life in a much better perspective. We can’t stop time. We can’t even really alter it.

Even though some of our sayings try to act like we can. You can’t buy more time. You can’t borrow time. You can’t do anything.

But all of those, properly, I think, give us a sense of urgency. The value of time, how priceless it is to live well and to please God in the moments that we are in. Life is full of the bittersweet. And the wise man wants us to admit the bitter, but to focus on the sweet when we can. Right now, you live in the comfort of home, young people. But enjoy when you get there the freedoms of an adult life. You don’t need it now. Enjoy where you are now. One day you may get married and you can enjoy companionship. You may lose some of the simplicity of the single life. Right? There’s bitter and sweet to all of this. And we have to wrestle with this properly and think how can I, in this moment, right now, in the situation I’m in, best serve the Lord.

You have the joy of a child. But you got to give up a little bit of the freedoms of being an adult to raise it. Right? There’s just the back and forth of all of this. And rather than focusing on the negative and how difficult things can be in whatever situation we’re in, we can think about the goodness of what God has given us in our life. You missed the baby in the toddler years, right? There’s all these memes, you know, the last time you’re gonna hold your baby and all this kind of stuff. And those thoughts are fine, but also enjoy watching your child grow and mature and become a servant of the Lord. All of these things can be good. And while it’s fine to see some of those things and to even mourn the loss of some of it, we can also appreciate the joy that comes from the gift of God and what he’s given us, because time marches on.

6. The Ultimate Answer: Times of Refreshing Through Jesus

It will not stop. So there’s no use pretending. Live in the moment, enjoy the blessings that God has given us in this very short life that we have. And of course, the ultimate answer is the joy that we find through Jesus Christ. In Acts chapter 3, Peter’s talking to them about their life and the events that have happened around him. And they’re all in amazement and wonder, and this is mystery. How can these things be happening? And he testifies to them about the power of God. And he tells them, you need to follow Jesus. You need to repent and turn back so that times of refreshing can come from the presence of the Lord. In whatever situation you’re in this morning, whether you’re suffering through difficulty, whatever they might be, or if you’re in a good time.

Whatever it may be in your life, understand that the focus of our life needs to be Jesus Christ and God’s plan through him. And that’s where true rest and peace and times of refreshing will come from. That is the ultimate answer. It’s actually what the wise man in Ecclesiastes is looking forward to. Even though Peter says these prophets that came before, they didn’t know all of the ideas that come about for the grace of God. They understand that the general picture, they don’t know all the details, but you do. And all of us, we know more than this writer in Ecclesiastes. Because we see the bigger picture now. We see how God has worked through Jesus Christ and whatever’s going on in life, we can actually have peace and times of refreshment from the presence of the Lord through Him.

Conclusion

And although the Ecclesiastes writer didn’t know it, that’s His ultimate call to all of us. Fear God, keep His commandments, know that he has a plan, and we can trust Him even when we don’t know it. Give ourselves to Him, and that plan now we know is through Jesus Christ. Can we help you this morning? Why don’t you come and give your life to Him? Be buried with Him in baptism. Be resurrected to get out of that old monotonous life and the viewpoint of under the sun sort of living to a new glorious life. A new life in Jesus that has purpose and meaning, where we are awaiting eternity where time will no longer matter. Can we help you with that? Come now as we stand and we sing.