Beautiful In Its Time
Download MP3We're continuing our study in the work of or in the book of Ecclesiastes. So if you have a bible, I invite you to turn to Ecclesiastes chapter 3. It's It's also there in your worship guide. When Lauren and I have a movie night, I usually let her decide whatever movie she'd like to fall asleep to. And it usually takes us 3, 4, 5 nights to finish a movie, if we ever do finish it.
Joel Brooks:Sometimes that's due to Lauren falling asleep within the first 10, 15 minutes. Other times, it's because, we have one of those smart TVs, and it can pull up pictures from our phone, and it begins the slideshow. Any of your TVs do that? I mean, and it just sucks you right in, and you end up not watching the movie. Just a warning, if you've been to our house and you've used our WiFi, it takes the pictures off your phone too.
Joel Brooks:And so we have enjoyed some of your vacation photos, some of your selfies over the years. It's It's been a little creepy. But these pictures as they come up, Lauren and I, we just get sucked in. I mean, there's pictures of us pre kids and we look so young and refreshed. There's times where there there's these pictures of me.
Joel Brooks:I'm surrounded by baby dolls having a tea party in our old Playfort, pictures of all 3 of my girls in one little Barbie jeep in our backyard. And and we see these pictures, and it just I mean, it just melts your heart as you're looking at these, but it also hurts. You know what I'm talking about. It hurts. You're looking at these moments that you will never get back.
Joel Brooks:No matter how much you you want to relive those moments, you'll never get back. And and you wonder as you're looking at them, did I fully appreciate the moment when it was there? A picture that popped up just a few weeks ago was a picture of, a wedding. I think it was Phil and Natalie Markham's wedding. There was dancing, and I was dancing with Caroline at the time.
Joel Brooks:She was however whatever age that is. She she was there and and somebody took a picture of us. And and we're looking at one another and it caught her face, and it was pure joy as she was looking at me. And I just thought, did I did I appreciate it? I mean, when that happened, did I know how special and how wonderful that moment was?
Joel Brooks:Because now it's it's gone. You you can't just keep that moment and have it last forever. And think about why why do moments like that have to end? Well, that's what Ecclesiastes 3 is about. Ecclesiastes 3 said, God has put eternity in our hearts, yet we are bound by time.
Joel Brooks:There's the pain. Deep down in the deepest core of our being, we know that moments aren't supposed to end, that that we're supposed to endure forever. Our lives are not supposed to be this hourglass that's just turned, and the sands of time are going, and it will end in death. We know that's not right. We we've got the echoes of Eden in our heart.
Joel Brooks:The promise we no longer live in Eden. We live post fall, and the sand is going through the hourglass. And so we experience time. It's what Ecclesiastes 3 is about. This chapter I wanna look at is about the nature of time.
Joel Brooks:And it's one of the most well known chapters in the Bible because of the poem that's there. Made into a song that the birds made famous. To everything, there is a season. I'm gonna read, the first 13 verses of chapter 3. For everything, there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.
Joel Brooks: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 together, 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 sew.
Joel Brooks: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. What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, He has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from beginning to the end.
Joel Brooks:I perceive that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and do good as long as they live. Also, that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil. This is God's gift to man. This is the word of the Lord. It is to your heart.
Joel Brooks:Will you pray with me? Father, we have set aside this time this morning that we might listen to you through your word. So, Lord, would you redeem the time? Would you make the most of it through your spirit? May we hear from you?
Joel Brooks:I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. Lord, may your words remain and may they change us. And we pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. So be honest, do any of you at times get just at least a little bit annoyed when Christians use the word season.
Joel Brooks:They talk about what season they're in. They're just in a really busy season right now. It's a really stressful season. I know I got a lot of things going on, but it's just a season. I know there's a lot of pain in my life, but it's just it's just a season.
Joel Brooks:I've actually been surprised by, how violent of a reaction it brings out in people when they hear the word season. I used it recently and somebody goes, don't use that Christianese on me. It's like, woah. But the truth is it's not really even a Christian term. There's nothing Christian about this poem.
Joel Brooks:To everything, there is a season. This is why this poem is loved by religious people and non religious people. I have heard this poem read, at the funeral of Christians. And I've heard this poem read even at the funeral of an atheist. God is not even mentioned in this poem.
Joel Brooks:Yeah. The composer of this poem, the the preacher who we know is Solomon here, he is just simply stating a fact. To everything, there is a season. What is a season? A season is just an appropriate time for doing something.
Joel Brooks:Lauren and I, I shared this a couple weeks ago. We planted our tomato plants, our vegetable garden. And it felt really good to do so. And the reason it felt good was because it was time. It was just the appropriate time to do so.
Joel Brooks:Sometimes we try to jump the gun and you know, you try to do it earlier in the winter. Sometimes, you know, it might be January or February and it fools you and it gives you a 70 degree day and, you know, you wanna get out there and you you put the seed in the ground. You could put in the best soil fertilizer and you can will it. Grow. But a season won't yield to you.
Joel Brooks:You have to yield to the season. That's what a season is. It's the appropriate time for doing something. You have to submit to it because it will not submit to you. You can fight against that season all you want and it will do you no good.
Joel Brooks:You have to accept a season. Surrender to it. So a season means that there's an appropriate time for doing something, but it also means that this appropriate time won't last. Seasons come and they go. There is a beginning and an end to every season.
Joel Brooks:In other words, this fits in with Ecclesiastes in that even seasons are hevel. They're they're vanity. They're they're the puff of smoke. They come and then they're gone. But they do not last forever.
Joel Brooks:And if you happen to find yourself in a painful season, this is really good news. It's a comforting thought that you know that your pain is not gonna last forever. Perhaps you are in a season of having a teething child, keeping you up all through the night, know it won't last forever. Or if you are in a season of having to study for exams, there will be an end to that season. And this could be a relief to you when you're in kind of a a painful or a stressful season, but it also means the happy seasons will end.
Joel Brooks:There was a season that all of my kids were at home every night around the dinner table. The season's gone. There was a season when my daughters used to laugh at all of my jokes. That is gone. It's been replaced by the season of eye rolls.
Joel Brooks:This idea of having a pleasant and an unpleasant season is actually how this poem is structured. The preacher is telling us that there's a time for every matter under heaven and then he's gonna list 28 times, but he pairs them. He used 14 pairs. And each of these pairs, He's gonna give something somewhat positive and something somewhat negative. He's gonna give a high and then He's gonna give a low.
Joel Brooks:There's a time to be to be born and a time to die, a time to plant, a time to pluck up what's planted, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to break down, a time to build up. And each of these a positive and a negative, A time for beginnings and a time for ends. For some of us, it's hard to get things going. It's it's hard for us to work. For others of us, it's hard to know when work should end.
Joel Brooks:And here the preacher says there's a time for both. He goes on to say in verse 4 that there is a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance. There are times that my girls, they wanna watch some tearjerker movie because they think it's just time to cry. They just want to cry. I don't understand that, why you would watch a movie because you feel like you need to cry.
Joel Brooks:But at the same time, I don't understand the need to dance. There's a time for both. It's important to see as as the preacher is giving us these two ends of the spectrum here, a time to mourn and a time to dance, He's not just giving us 2 ends of the spectrum, but 2 ends that are actually intimately connected with one another. We might not see it, we might not understand it at the moment, but all of our dancing will lead to mourning. Because when we are dancing, yeah, at a wedding, we are actually creating memories with the people for whom we will more mourn one day.
Joel Brooks:And the greater the dancing, the greater the mourning will be. The greater the joy we have, the greater the sorrow. Sometimes the sorrow is just in knowing that the joyful moment cannot last. And so even as we're in the midst of dancing, we kinda feel the sorrow coming in because you wish it could last forever, but it won't. The hourglass is turned.
Joel Brooks:And in this life that we have, none of us get to enjoy only a life of dancing. For every positive, there is that negative. Verse 5 here, there's a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together. I have no idea what that means. None.
Joel Brooks:I have read probably close to 20 commentaries on that. Gotten 20 different interpretations. Most think it has to do something with agriculture, but maybe a person just likes gathering and scattering stones. I don't know. There was a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing.
Joel Brooks:You gotta know who needs a hug and who doesn't need a hug. Husbands, you need to know if your wife wants physical touch or when it is not the time. If she's been at home with a baby screaming all day, hasn't had a chance to shower, and is covered with spit up. Read the seasons. Next Sunday is Mother's Day.
Joel Brooks:It's not Valentine's Day. Make a gift that is appropriate for the season. Yield to the seasons, different seasons, different times. Verse 6, 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 sew. I had a running a pair of running shorts that I've had for, gosh, who knows, forever, Permanently covered with mildew.
Joel Brooks:Lauren's been wanting to throw them away for a while. I kept saying they're in their prime. And, I was at a class at our gym about 2 weeks ago or so, and I did a squat. And it made the sound. And the sound was not just of the outer layer tearing, but the inner lining tearing as well.
Joel Brooks:And so if any of you were at the class, I apologize. And so I came home. I mean, the whole thing is I mean, it's like a it's a huge rip. And I said, is it a time to sew? And she goes, a time to throw away.
Joel Brooks:For some of you, you you you're always discerning. Do I keep? Do I not? Are these genes still good or is it time for goodwill? There's a time for all of these things.
Joel Brooks:Verse 8, 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. You know when I was reading through the book of Job the last time, I realized Job's friends didn't know the time. They didn't know what time it was. They didn't know it was time to keep silent.
Joel Brooks:They thought it was a time to speak. I mean, Job, in a single day, lost, he lost his house. He lost all of his wealth. He lost all of his children, And then he loses his health. He's covered with with sores and boils.
Joel Brooks:And here comes his friends and they think it's time to have a theological debate on suffering. They they came as, you know, wanting to philosophize about it philosophize about it. And how does God work with suffering in this world? And they they came to Job really kinda like elders coming to somebody thinking he needed church discipline. But they didn't see that this wasn't the time to talk about suffering because before them was a sufferer.
Joel Brooks:They needed to sit, to be present, to be quiet. They didn't discern the time and they spoke out of season. The preacher here, he ends his poem in verse 8. But, of course, he could have listed a bunch more times because we go through endless times, many seasons in life. Some of you are in a season of school or a new career.
Joel Brooks:Some of you are in a season of waiting for a spouse. Some of you are in a season of parenting young children. If you have young children, you are in a season of exhaustion, physical exhaustion. When they grow up to become teenagers, you move on to a new season of emotional exhaustion. Having, you know, raised 3 teenage daughters, I could tell you this.
Joel Brooks:The one time you could be assured that they will never tell you about what's what's happened in their day is when you ask them, how was your day? Instead, they have this 6th sense, and they wait until, like, I think now my parents are completely and utterly exhausted. Now I'd like to talk. But it's just the season we're in. And they don't last forever.
Joel Brooks:These seasons come and they go. Some seasons are full of laughter. Others are full of weeping. Some are full of leisure. Other seasons are full of driving kids around everywhere in a minivan.
Joel Brooks:But you can't only keep the good ones and discard the bad ones. And actually, much of our frustrations in life, they rise from our blindness to recognize that there has been a change in season or that we're refusing to yield to the season we're actually in. You realize even Jesus had to yield to the seasons? That was part of His humanity. When He came here, He yielded to the seasons.
Joel Brooks:He had seasons where He, He grew and He learned. We read about this in Luke chapter 2. He grew in wisdom and stature. He had a season of being a child underneath His parents' authority. And then when He grew up, He's always talking about the time.
Joel Brooks:Notice that in the gospels. He would say things like the hour has not yet come or the time is at hand. He knew what time it was and His place in it. And some of these times were pleasant and some were full of pain, but He yielded to them because He trusted. He trusted that each of these moments were actually part of a greater plan that God had, that God was doing something great in his life.
Joel Brooks:This is something that Solomon is now about to teach us. Nothing in these first eight verses could not have been written by an atheist. Once again, heard this read at funerals of believers and unbelievers alike, but I've never heard verse 9 read at the funeral of anyone or what follows. But you cannot understand these first 8 verses apart from what follows. Verse 9, the preacher says this, what gain has the worker from all of his toil?
Joel Brooks:Now this is a rhetorical question, and it's a real punch in the gut after going through all of these times because the answer is nothing. Absolutely nothing. This poem just listed 28 times, 14 positive, 14 negative. You add them all together and you get a grand sum total of nothing. At the end of all these times, nothing was actually gained.
Joel Brooks:In the end, you just die. So you gotta wonder, what's the point of it all? We don't gain anything. What's the point of going through all of these times when in the end, the hourglass, the last grain of sand just goes through it and it that's it? Well, this isn't the final word.
Joel Brooks:You go on to read and you come to verse 11, we read that God has made everything beautiful in its time. So God is actually doing something through these times. He's making something beautiful. Now I have never known a Christian, who has not at one time in their life struggled with this verse. God has made everything beautiful in its time.
Joel Brooks:Everything beautiful in its time. Everything. Now it's easy to to see how something is beautiful when you're going through a really good time. You know, you're watching a sunset. You're enjoying a cold drink with friends after a long day.
Joel Brooks:Your first kiss. Perhaps a wedding day or birth of a child or times when you're just being silly with friends and and you can't stop laughing. It's a beautiful time. But what about those painful moments? What about the times where you've been deeply hurt by someone you love or the times you've been careless with your words and you've deeply hurt them?
Joel Brooks:Was that a beautiful moment? What about the time when you struggled with your body image and you had an eating disorder? Or the time you lost your business or you lost that close friendship? What about the time you had a miscarriage after trying for years to finally get pregnant? Are you ready to call that a beautiful moment?
Joel Brooks:So how in the world has God exactly made everything everything beautiful in its time? The word beautiful there has has the the idea of fitting together. It's appropriate. It's fitting together. And the picture is this, is is God is taking all of these moments, these painful moments, these joyful moments, and He's piecing them together and creating something beautiful.
Joel Brooks:Valerie just shared about that when she walked through all the times of her life and she said it's like a tapestry. On one side it just looks like an ugly mess of knots, but actually if you were to look at it from a different perspective, it's something beautiful. That's that's what the preacher here is saying to us. I like to think of it as pieces of stained glass. I mean, have you ever looked at a really beautiful stained glass window?
Joel Brooks:Not not these, these are okay. I mean, the the really beautiful ones don't have like, you know, the big rectangle pieces. They're made of thousands of pieces of like charred glass. And if you were to just hold up one of those little pieces, you're like, that that's just that's ugly. It's sharp, there's nothing beautiful about it, but in the hands of a master, it could be put together and it could become something gorgeous.
Joel Brooks:And it'll become even more gorgeous when God's glory shines through it. That's the image that we have here. God is making everything beautiful and it's time. Now the difficulty is we cannot see this. We can't see the big picture.
Joel Brooks:We can't see what God is creating here. Because we are stuck in our moment. We are bound by time, but God isn't. That's what, you know, when God's name is Yahweh, I Am. That's His name.
Joel Brooks:I Am. He is the one who lives in the present. Every moment is present tense with God. Our past and our future are present tense to Him. He sees the entirety of our lives.
Joel Brooks:And He can see how all of the joys, how all of the pains, all of the pleasurable moments, all the sorrows, he could see how it all pieces together into something beautiful. And so he's gonna take those little those little fragments of glass. He's gonna take, you know, the little bit of loneliness there. He's gonna take, you know, that little bit of abandonment there. He's gonna take maybe the the miscarriage there, the the child who's gone astray and your heart is broken over there.
Joel Brooks:He's gonna take all these little pieces and He's gonna make something beautiful or what Ephesians 2 would call a masterpiece. And someday, His eternal glory will shine through it. Once again, we have eternity in our hearts, which which means we know deep down, like, yes, we're made for eternity, but we live in time so we can't see the big picture. And it's frustrating. You know, when my children were younger, most of their frustrations looking back, I can understand this.
Joel Brooks:Most of their frustrations that they had in their parents was because we could see the big picture, but they could not. So we could do things like, we would tell them, hey, you need to go to bed at this time. You need to eat these foods. You are to follow these rules. We set them up boundaries, in which, they had to live within.
Joel Brooks:And all they saw was hurts and constraints to them. But we're trying to give them the best life and the best freedom that they could enjoy. They didn't see the big picture. They just thought we were telling them they had to eat broccoli. Just telling them they couldn't stay up late and watch another show.
Joel Brooks:Just saying telling them, no, you're not allowed to run across the street anytime you want. They thought those things were hurtful because they couldn't see the big picture. Some of us really struggle with this, that we cannot see the big picture. And so we're always asking God, why are you doing this? Why are you doing this?
Joel Brooks:Why are you doing this? Any of you as parents, are you in that stage where you have kids always asking why? Exhausting. This is an exhausting stage. Why are you doing this?
Joel Brooks:Why do I have to dress this way? Why do we have to leave it this time? Why can't I have my friends over now? Why can't I eat ice cream now? Why?
Joel Brooks:Why? Why? Why? Why? And if you're a really good patient parent, you try to answer most of them and finally you reach some point.
Joel Brooks:You say, why? I'll tell you why. Because I'm your dad. I'm your father. And I understand things that you just don't understand.
Joel Brooks:But some for some of us, even though we're we're older, we've we've never outgrown that stage. We keep asking our father, why? Why? Why? Why?
Joel Brooks:Why? He says because I'm your father. Can you trust me in this? I can see the picture that you cannot see. So can you just trust that you have a father who loves you, who's in control of your life, and is making something beautiful of it?
Joel Brooks:That's what's being asked of us in Ecclesiastes 3. Do you know even Solomon couldn't understand the wise? Wise Solomon couldn't understand the wise. You look at verse 3 again, and he says, you know, he has made everything beautiful in his time. He's also put eternity in man's heart.
Joel Brooks:Yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. And the rest of the chapter is all gonna be about a frustration about how he cannot figure things out. He doesn't know what God's doing. If you wanna read the message translation of verse 11, it reads this way. God made everything beautiful in itself and in its time, but He has left us in the dark.
Joel Brooks:So we can never know what God is up to. We can't know whether He is coming or going. Solomon's like, I don't know why. I've been completely left in the dark as to why these things are happening. But as Christians, we've not been completely left in the dark for the light of the world has come.
Joel Brooks:The eternal one, Jesus, stepped out of eternity and He stepped into time. And he experienced all of the tyranny of time. He experienced the highs and the lows, the pains and the joys. And one of the things we see is that through his death and his resurrection, God took the most painful evil event in all of history and he turned it into something beautiful. Even the cross became beautiful in its time.
Joel Brooks:And because of that, he can turn every event of our life into something beautiful. So the question is this, can you trust God with the broken pieces of your life? Can you trust him and say, I don't have to know why. I just know that you're my father and you love me, and you are in control. If you're not doing that, I plead with you to do so because it's only in Christ that he could take those broken pieces and he can make something beautiful out of them.
Joel Brooks:You pray with me, church? Father, you you told us through your prophet Isaiah that you are God and there is no other. You are God and there is none like you. Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times, things not yet done, saying my counsel will stand and I will accomplish all my purpose. You and you alone, because you're a god, looks at the beginning and the end of our lives, and you know what will be.
Joel Brooks:You know what will be because you have declared what shall be. And you are making a masterpiece. So, Lord, whether we are in a painful season or whether we are in a joyful season, we trust you in this season that you are our father and that you are good. We pray this in your name, Jesus. Amen.
