Redeem the Time

what gain has the worker from his toil?

Well, that takes us back to the first poem. Again, he's progressing us slowly but surely through understanding the vanity of life that we had feared God and keep his commandments. What does man gain from all his toil? That's still the key question. At least last week we had there's nothing better for man that he still said was vanity. And now we're gonna continue to wrestle. Look at verse 10.

I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.

We've heard that before, haven't we? Underneath the first poem, chapter one, verse 13, kind of that first summary, but there he actually says, I know the business of man, it's an unhappy business. There's something unhappy, there's something difficult, there's a problem in the business that God has given the children of man to have. As we continue to look at Ecclesiastes, it is wisdom on how to live after Genesis 3. How to live because we are sinners. How to live in a world that's full of sin. How to live in a world that now has a curse. How to live in a world that is now appearing to be relentless and indifferent. What is the business of man? Now there's a major shift. Notice we have more about God in this passage than ever before. We have a significant amount of information that he's giving us from his perspective about God. God has given us business to be busy with. Well, now we're gonna pick up and he's gonna introduce new information for us to wrestle with. Verse 11,

he has made everything beautiful in his time.

Well, that sounds sweet. I keep trying to find, where can I find, you know, different phrases from Ecclesiastes on a coffee mug? This one's everywhere. What I was surprised that I didn't find was a mirror with this engraved over it so you can look in the mirror and see that and think, oh, look, you know, beautiful. Hobby Lobby's really missing out on opportunity there. Now, beautiful. He has made everything beautiful And it's time. A question we have to ask is, all right, is this something we're supposed to agree with with the preacher? I ask, is everything beautiful? Let's go back to the list. Is war beautiful? The pictures I've seen from what's going on in Ukraine, I have a hard time seeing aesthetic value in it. You look at pictures after a tsunami, it's devastating. The word here, beautiful, could also be translated appropriate. I think that's a better word. And you can tell there's an overlap between beauty and appropriate, fit. Everything that's beautiful is appropriate. There's a fitness, an order to it. Something that is beautiful, it's appropriate. You know, if you're going through that jar of scraps and you're looking for just the right nut to fit the bolt and you find it, finally you might say, oh, beautiful, I found it, it works, it's appropriate. We can also say, Eve, she was beautiful. Adam thought so because only woman has ever seen, but she's beautiful, but the most important thing about her is that she fit. God said, I'll give you a helper fit. And he praises God, it's bone of my bone, flesh of my bone, she fits. I believe that's a better way of understanding what he's saying here. He makes everything appropriate in his time. He's ordering all things. He is sovereign. He is in control. It's encouraging for us in the time that is relentless, the time that can appear to be chaotic and indifferent. God is making everything appropriate in his time. Now for fun, I kind of want to challenge you. If I were to ask you to define time, could you do it? We're thinking about time. I've used the word 50 times. I'll use it 100 more, hopefully. Time, can you define what time is? Now, you're gonna be tempted to say, well, yeah, of course I know what time is. It's 11, 27. No, you just measured time. You could say, well, time, well, yeah, that's before and after. No, that's a measurement of time. Well, it's past, present, and future. That's the way we talk about time. It's hard to actually understand what time is. We all know it, we all experience it, we all try to measure it, but really it's something much bigger than us. It's so encouraging to hear this word that God is sovereign over time. God has control over all time. He orders our days. The preacher continues, verse 11,

He has put eternity in the man's heart.

This is many folks' favorite verse in Ecclesiastes. There's something beautiful that C.S. Lewis pulls out of this, and that there's a way in which God has given us an idea of something so much greater than us, beyond us, that it should make us want to long for who God is. We inherently, internally, Intuitively, no, because God has given us a knowledge of something so much more than we experience. There must be something more. But notice here, the main thrust of what he's saying isn't how great that eternity is, but that it helps us see what we're missing. He has put eternity in a man's heart. We have a concept, we wrestle what time is, wrestle what eternity might be, But the whole point of that is that yet so that we cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. The whole idea that we understand a greatness of time, a before in time, a later in time, an eternity, is that we actually realize we don't know anything. We don't understand. We can trust there's a God who makes all things appropriate, but it's hard to trace his finger. We don't have a place to stand to understand what he's up to. Two really important truths we've learned about God in time that I think are important here. God makes all things appropriate in his time. Time is not meaningless, it's not directionless. We can see there's a God who is great over time. We're gonna reject deism here. But secondly, from the preacher's standpoint thus far, where he's taking us, we don't have an understanding of what he's up to. We can't perceive, we can't understand, we can't know what he's done and what he's gonna do and therefore what he's doing. Again, this is a Genesis 3 wisdom. Let's continue, verses 12 and 14. We start to see some other solutions here. Notice the parallelism, I perceived and I perceived. We're getting some, we're making some traction now. We're moving ahead. The preacher tells us,

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.

If you're here last week, we got another nothing better. Let's just be honest, you can't have more than one nothing better, right? That would make something better than the other. It's like when you ask somebody, what's your favorite? They can't tell you one thing. Nothing better. It's actually very similar. Here's something nothing better. It's to enjoy what God has given you. There's a great doctrine of God and what we have, very similar to what we can see more fully in James.

Every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights

, James tells us. Here, our preacher, he's able to recognize whatever we have is a gift of God. Whatever we have is meant to be enjoyed because it's a gift of God. There's nothing better than to recognize God gives you good things to enjoy. And let's not miss this very important declaration. Do good. I perceive there's nothing better for them to be joyful and to do good. That's a gift to man. What's the end of the matter in Ecclesiastes? Fear God, obey his commandments. There's a high calling to do what's good. We could go to the song we heard earlier from Hun and in the end establish the work of our hands. Help us to do the good that's right. It's a gift. This is just stewardship. The second thing we perceive, he perceives that we get to follow along with.

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.

We now have the end of the matter right here. Fear him, do good. Fear God, keep his commandments.

That which is already has been. That which is to be already has been. And God seeks what has been driven away.

That last phrase is a little difficult to translate. I believe the best way to think of this is God seeks to continue this cycle of what is always happening. He keeps life moving and going. He is in control. But notice the absolute sovereignty here. Whatever God does, it endures forever. Nothing to be added to it, nothing to be taken away. Why? God has done it. He's perfect in power. And the right response is so that people fear before him. Verse 15, if we don't know who that God is, it could sound like some kind of epic from Greece or ancient times where it's just fate driving along. Here, God is active, God is doing, God is giving, so that people would fear him, have reverence for him. The whole point here is that God's sovereign. He's in control. This isn't deism, he's not a watchmaker that just kind of wound everything up and stepped back. But you also haven't quite gotten to Yahweh, the covenant-making, promise-keeping God yet either. Let's hang out here. Man has been given some notion of God. He has put eternity in our hearts. The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. Or we could say it another way, the beginning of wisdom is God is God and I am not. That might not sound so profound to you, but I encourage you to write that down. God is God, I am not. We must know from scripture, we actually do know. He's given us everything we need to know him. Internally, he's put eternity into our hearts. Externally, God makes it very clear. In Acts 17, we hear from,

in him we live and move and have our being.

That's something that should be obvious to all people at all times. Paul is very explicit in Romans 1. Everything that has been made plain to all people is that God exists. God's shown it to them. Internally, God gives us our conscience, an internal presence of a knowledge of him who is greater. And externally, he's showing us. But what do we do with that knowledge that God gives us according to Romans 1? We suppress it. We ignore it. We reject it. We call this general revelation because it's available to all people at all times. And all people at all time, because of sin, suppress it. The knowledge God gives us only makes us culpable, without excuse. The knowledge God gives all is not a saving knowledge, but it's a knowledge that we should be able to look up and say, there is a God we should honor and give thanks. That's what sin is, according to Romans 1. When God tells us who he is and we suppress it, God gives us over to our sin. And the way we suppress it is by not honoring Him as God, giving thanks. If you're not a believer this morning, we're thankful you're here. I pray you would actually have a presence of an internal conviction. As you're hearing a word better than what creation can tell you, what your own conscience can tell you, you're hearing the very word of the Lord. This is special revelation. This is what God says so that you can know exactly who He is, what He's like, who you are, and most importantly, how you can be saved. God did not design this world with chaos, wickedness, and disorder. That's what we brought as his image bearers when we rejected him. God tells us, even though we've rejected him, he's made promises to save us, and those promises are all clear for us today if we look to Jesus Christ. If you're not a believer, the most important thing you can do is look to Jesus, who died on the cross for your sins, the sin of not honoring God or giving thanks to God, so that you might be forgiven. He died a death that we deserve so that our penalty is paid so that you can be forgiven, but it means you must believe in him. Today, the word says,

if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts

, believe in him. Believer, what should be true of the Christian? Our lives should be marked with honoring Him, giving Him thanks. If that's the crux of the sin problem in Romans 1, shouldn't that be the opposite, be true of the Christian? That our lives should be marked with honoring God, fearing Him, revering Him, giving Him thanks as the God who gives all good gifts? But life abundantly Life abundant, Christ's promise is marked with honor and gratitude. Again, we think about what he's saying, the preacher's saying, in light of the whole book, it's fear God and obey God. Does this preacher assume the good God we know from scripture, who shows steadfast love to generations? who promises himself to love his people and come and be their shepherd. Is this the same God? Is he aware? Is he assuming the God who created all things good and orderly and has promised to restore all those good and orderly things? I don't know, but this is where we're gonna come to the point in Ecclesiastes and say, I think we're gonna say something a little different than what he's already said. Because in verse 11, he declares, we cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. That is true if you do not have God's Word. But God has told us what he's doing from the beginning to the end.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

In the beginning, we know because God speaks, that after we sin he quickly comes and pursues man and woman who are hiding in shame because they've rejected him and he pursues them and calls out to them. And then he makes a promise. I'll destroy that serpent. I'll destroy sin. I'll destroy death. And then we just trace what he's up to from the beginning as he keeps making promises and keeping promises and making promises and keeping promises till finally they're all fulfilled in Christ. When we think about what God is doing from the beginning and end, we can know God is good. And he uses all his power for what is good. We can know God makes promises from the beginning and he keeps them all the way to the end. But what is God up to in time? I want us to reflect upon two passages that make it clear we do know what God is doing at some level. He has told us what we need to know what he's doing in time. Galatians 4.4.

but when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who are under the law, so that we might receive the adoption of sons.

We might ask, why has God been so slow? Why did God take so long? But we can go back and look at Genesis 15 and see how God has actually made it clear He has a plan that's gonna take time. And it might seem slow to us, 2 Peter 2 tells us. But what we can trust is God's time is perfect. In the fullness of time, at the right time, at the perfect time, that's when God himself came and entered this world as a baby in a womb. when the father sent his son to become like us in every way so that he would walk with us. So here we could enjoy his adoption. We could become sons of God. So God is perfect in what he's promised. We had to skip over so much between the fall with Adam and Jesus, but it's perfect when he came. One more verse, Romans 5, 6. For while, it's a time reference,

we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.

God is perfect, not only as a good creator and sovereign sustainer of this earth, but as a God who made us in His image, who gave us a command, who watched us break that command, and then immediately promised He would save us from our own sin. He's perfect in fulfilling His promise in that at the right time, Jesus took on flesh, and at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. We can praise Him. We can have great confidence. Let's go back to one more declaration and think about it in light of the gospel, verse 14. God has done it. That's good news for us. Because the salvation he promised. the salvation he accomplished, the death for your sin, the once-for-all sacrifice paid, the once-for-all resurrection to give you new life, the once-for-all sealing of the Holy Spirit in your heart. God has done it. Be of good courage. God has done it. Go back into the verses. If that's what God has done, and I believe we can see this is true, nothing can be added, nothing taken away. It's forever. But as what God has done for you, having the proper response so that you may revere Him, fear Him, have reverence for Him, worship Him, and obey Him. Our author's giving us some hope, but the gospel tells us so much more hope and that at the right time, God is working to bring about salvation for us. He has done it. Are we allowing that to lead us to worship? Our last section, God judges our time. Time is relentless. There is a God who is sovereign over time. We can step back to see all of scripture, to see what he's done from the beginning to the end. We ended last week on the marriage supper of the Lamb. Again, beginning to end, we see it. It's good. God has done it. But now God judges our time.

Moreover, I saw unto the Son that in the place of justice, even there was wickedness, and in the place of righteousness, even there was wickedness.

This is a problem that we would also see, isn't it? In the place of justice, where justice should be, we see wickedness. When we look to the high courts where a judge should sit, instead of justice, we would see somebody taking bribes or declaring innocent, not guilty in terms of a court of law. We would see police officers not using their power for justice, they would use it for wickedness. We would see pastors using the authority they have to bring about selfish gain rather than to care for others. We would see husbands who are supposed to be using a position of authority to bring about justice and goodness and using it for wickedness. We see this. We understand what he's saying here, right? Where there should be righteousness according to God's way, there's evil. This is why kings were told, according to God's law, to write down their own copy of God's word so that they would be ruled by God's word. This is why elders must first hold fast to the trustworthy word as taught so they would then be leading without any fear of the Lord. This is why parents must train the children in the admonition of the Lord. They must know the Lord so that they can make him known. Our preacher's got his finger on something that's really important here. It's terrifying. when authorities are unfair, or abusive, or wicked. It's paralyzing to watch, to experience, to be under it. The history of our world has more injustice than justice. It's wicked when there's two different systems of law. But I wanna be clear, the focus of the preacher is for those who have authority. He's speaking to those who are in authority and he's telling them, where I see you having an authority in place of justice, I see you as wicked. He's calling out those who have authority and he's making it clear, I see wickedness where you should have justice and righteousness. Verse 17,

I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked. For there is a time for every matter and for every work.

We have a really important solution here. God will judge. Notice he judges the righteous and the wicked. He's impartial. He will judge us for what we do. He will judge us with a perfect justice. The comfort we should have here, God will judge. There's a way in which we could say the fool and the wise will die the same in his vanity, but here, after that death, there's a judgment. He's going to judge everyone. This, at some level, is a comfort. God is equitable in his judgment, and it's also a warning. Verse 18, I said, in my heart. All right, here's where we gotta get into, what's he saying? Why is he calling him beast? Because it's true and it's not true. I believe here, and the reason I wanna make sure, in view, he's got authorities who are abusing their power. And he's willing to see the same way you as a human being with authority are treating other human beings like beasts. To rule over, not to care for. To exercise God's good rule over, not to use God's good authority for their well-being. You're nothing but a beast. You're just like the beast. You yourself are beasts. It's a post-Genesis 3 world we're working on here, and we're gonna hold that up. Are we just like beasts? Well, no, but here, his point is very clear. He's taunting those who have elevated themselves and abusing others. God's testing you so that you would see you're like a beast. Verse 19, he's gonna explain why he said this. Four.

For what happens to the children of man and what happens to beasts is the same. As one dies, so the other dies. They're all the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beast, for all is vanity. All go to one place, for all are from the dust, and the dust shall return.

Notice his argument is pretty convincing. You're nothing but a beast, because as you're both gonna die, you both came from the same place, you both have the same breath, you both have to die, you both come to an end. Now, okay, let's just have some fun. I'm gonna have fun, you can have fun if you want. How did he know the beast came from dust? That's from Genesis 1, right? That's not something we discover from scientific inquiry or observation. Now, maybe sometimes we gotta realize this preacher is saying things as if he's living in this world, but he has access to the full scriptures or scriptural knowledge that he's not always using, but here he actually says they all came from dust and you're gonna go to dust. You're gonna die the same, you breathe the same, you're going to the same place. Verse 19 said, the man has no advantage. And what he's getting at, no, man doesn't have an advantage. You're gonna die. We do know man has an advantage over beast though, right? Man rules beast, beast do not rule man. That's Genesis 1.26. That's clear in Genesis 2. And also in which it's not clear that beast are going to have to give an answer for the way they live before God. but every human being must give an answer to God for how they live. Verse 21,

who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down to the earth?

Question mark. All right, if you wanna build a theology that your pet is in heaven, this is your verse. However, I don't think that's what he's teaching. I think he's asking a question to show we don't know what the afterlife looks like. We don't know what happens afterwards and is what he's driving at. Here's the point. We all die. We will be judged. If you were with us last week, do you remember how he kind of just keeps going through stanzas and it just keeps getting worse and worse? Oh, the wise and the fool, they die alike. So I hated life. Or at that point in his moving us along in chapter two, it's why even have wisdom because we all die, life ends. And then he goes on, the worst thing that happens after that is that somebody else gets to play with your toys. Okay, that was the worst thing that we had to wrestle with last week. That was the daunting reality that life ends and someone else gets your stuff. Well, this week is so much more daunting. When life ends, when life ends, when you die, You stand before God and give an answer for how you lived in his time. That's much more significant than somebody else playing with your toys. Now, this passage, it's meant to give a warning and a comfort. It's comforting for us today. At least those of us who have recently seen a video of five police officers who beat a man to death. Justice definitely will happen. God is just. When somebody abuses power, who are supposed to be protecting others, and instead of protecting, they take life. hear this, when you see it and you're in despair, or you experience it and you're in despair, justice will happen. It might not happen the way we want, when we want, how we want, but it will perfectly, absolutely happen. Those who abuse power will give an answer, and they're going to answer to Him who judges perfectly and righteous. We as Christians need to be clear. We have a call to protect the vulnerable. We're active in promoting justice and righteousness. There's a way in which we're not going to make this world just and right because we're ungodly, we're wicked, we're part of the problem. So we work to make this world more just and right. We labor asking God that it would establish the work of our hands, but we know ultimately God is the one who will bring vengeance. As we go back, who are the wicked? Are we the wicked? What is God going to do with our wickedness? Because one day we will all die and face judgment. And because I believe what's in focus here is the authorities abusing their power for selfish gain. There's a way in which those who have an authority that there's a higher judgment, a more pressing judgment. Boy, is that terrifying. We just nominated James to be an elder and Crawford and Patrick to be deacons. You got a few more days left to reconsider. Church, you got a few more days to consider if we should affirm them. But let me be clear, the only people who should be afraid of this judgment are those who want to take on a role of authority and use it selfishly. Those who know God, who uses all of his authority to pour himself out for others, that's what we're supposed to do. The role of authority God gives is to follow him and that he gives himself over. But here we see the clear declaration. Anyone who's going to take on authority or abuse authority, they will face God and they will be judged. At the same time, we gotta ask, if everybody who sins, if everybody who abuses their words, if everybody who mistreats others has to stand before God, then who can stand? That's why I wanna take us back to Romans 5. At the right time, Jesus died for the ungodly. That's the only hope any of us have. that when we stand before God, Jesus stands with us. It's the only hope we have. There's nothing to boast of. There's nothing to speak of that we think we can convince God that we don't deserve any kind of wrath. It's only that at the right time, Jesus died for the ungodly, and that's why when we die, if we believed in him, he stands with us. This morning, as we wrestle with time, every life has a Certain limit. It begins and it ends. God appoints our days, we cannot add to them. He's revealed himself to us so that we might honor him. He's given himself over so that we can know his salvation. He's given us good work to do so we can pray, establish the work of our hands, help us to commit to the work that is not in vain, that can last forever. Christian, it's a gift from God. The moments we have, The time we have, it's fragile. It's precious. They're fleeting. They're fleeting moments to be moments of glorifying God or gratifying sin. How easy it is for every moment to be wasted, or every moment to be used for the glory of God. There's two passages that speak to this very clearly. Colossians 4.5.

Walk in wisdom towards outsiders, making the best use of the time.

There's a stewardship of time that's commanded by Christ. Ephesians 5, 15, look carefully, be watchful, be alert, then how you walk, how you live,

not as unwise, but as wise. Make the best use of the time because the days are evil.

There's no accident that wisdom and time are side by side in both those declarations. Our own church covenant reads,

we'll be good stewards of our time and resources.

If you've been in the membership class with me when I teach this, I do point out that's kind of a weird thing to say, isn't it? Time and resources? Time's a resource. We separate it because it's the most valuable. It's the one we all have the same of in terms of we got 24 hours a day. Are we being a good time, a good steward of our time? Are we evaluating how am I spending my time? Am I disciplined in my time as a disciple? Am I committed to the things that are truly in the fear of the Lord? While it feels like we're out of time, I wanna conclude with what I think is the most terrifying verses on time. The passage reads,

in the spring of the year, The time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel. They ravaged the Ammonites, besieged Rabbah, but David remained at Jerusalem.

What passage is that? Second Samuel 11. David isn't where he's supposed to be when he's supposed to be. At the time when kings go out, David stayed home. And what happened when David stayed home when he was supposed to be at the battle? He saw a woman named Bathsheba. He laid with her. He impregnated her. He then tried to murder, and eventually, or he tried to dupe her husband, and then he murdered her husband. And what's incredible in that story is it's so clear There was a time. He needed to be where he was supposed to be at the right time. And because he wasn't doing what he was supposed to do at the right time, he fell into great sin. Now this is the guy who wouldn't even touch Saul because he was the anointed of God because even when Saul was trying to kill him. How did he get there? Because he wasn't obedient at the right time. It's incredible that God let him confess that sin and forgave that sin, but the devastating consequence of that sin. What a warning about stewarding our time. Christian, fear the Lord. Obey his commandments, for he will judge even our secrets. Will you pray with me? Father, we thank you for your word. That it gives us more than just knowing there's a God who is controlling things like fate. We can know your promises. We can know how you have even helped us to see who you are as the God who is holy, holy, holy. Who's abundant in mercy and forgiveness. who extends patience and steadfast love, but is also absolutely true in justice. Lord, help us to know how you have ordered our days. Help us to find comfort in your order. Help us to find confidence in how we should seek to make the most use, the best use of this time. Redeemed this time, because you've redeemed us. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.