Ecclesiastes Part 4 The Meaning of Life: The Sovereignty of God

Ecclesiastes Sermon #4 - The Meaning of Life - Ecc. 3:1-15

82% of Americans believe in God and that number has been consistent for about the last 60 years.  Now, if you ask people what they believe about God, that is where the differences begin. 

Is God in control of World events?  Most people believe that He is.

Does God influence sporting events? 25% of Americans believe that he does.

Some actually believe that God rewards athletes who love him with good health and success.

But, if you ask people does God actually control Natural Disasters, most will say NO.

Does God Allow Cancer and Heart Disease and Pneumonia? We say allow to soften the blow of this, allow, but really He is All Powerful and All Knowing and completely Sovereign, so is allow the right word? Or is He behind it?

There was a scholar named Christian Smith, a sociologist at Notre Dame wrote a book back in 2005 where he coined a phrase to describe the religious beliefs of 20-30 something year olds in America.  It was moralistic therapeutic deism.  A working theology that says God created the world, God wants people to be good nice and fair, the central goal of life is to feel happy and feel good about yourself, God doesn’t necessarily need to be that involved in your life, he only needs to be involved in it when you have a problem and you need Him to like a therapist.  And, 15 years later, this is the prevalent belief in God in our age.  Most people treat God as practical Deists or as Atheists where God makes no difference in their life they just “believe in Him.”

This phrase is fairly new but this concept is not new, back in the days of Solomon described in the book of Ecclesiastes, he was living in a time where things were great, people were making fortunes and they felt God was blessing them and everything was wonderful and if anything bad happened then they would make a sacrifice at that point and fix it.

Solomon wants to pick up his pen and teach us in Ecclesiastes 3 that God is not only sovereign over the blessings and the things we like, but He is sovereign over EVERYTHING.  

Warning:  You might not like this.  You can get cut by this truth of the sovereignty of God.  And, you can end up at a place where you say “I don’t want to believe in a God like that.”

You want to believe that God can control who wins the SuperBowl but not who loses.  You want to believe that he can control capturing Bin Ladin but not control 911.

In previous sermons in this series we’ve developed an understanding of the book of Ecclesiastes where it is like we are under a loom where an enormous tapestry is being made with all of the seemingly random threads above us and it just looks meaningless from underneath and to try to understand it is like chasing after the wind and when I think I start to get it it is like a vapor or a waft of smoke or a soap bubble that is here for just a moment and then it’s gone the next moment.  It's frustrating to try to understand what is going on “under the sun.”

But God, who sees this from above sees the beauty of the tapestry that is being created and when we see through His eyes, even just for a moment, that precious moment of clarity  that only faith can bring, we see that there is a Plan and Purpose to this Life that is so far above the sun that we’ve been living under.  But then we go back to focusing on the threads and trying to figure them out ourselves instead of focusing on Him and His View of things.  So, today we are going to really try to move to that view of life, His View of Life from Above the Sun instead of under the Sun, and His view is a Sovereign All Powerful View.

Let’s walk through this chapter of Ecclesiastes together. 

Chapter 3, verse 1

 
A Time for Everything

3 There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every [a]event under heaven—

 

This is the theme of this chapter.  This is an incredible, mind blowing doctrine that was ruined by hippies in the 60s, “to every season, turn turn turn,”  They got it wrong, that song was saying you can’t have it all at once, or that our lives have seasons, and essentially our job is to focus on each season in its time, and don’t worry be happy, man. 

This is so common for us.  We keep thinking that we are the center of scripture and that everything is being written about us.  And, if your theology says that you are at the center of scripture then your theology is probably way off.

No, God is at the center of this.  He is the one deciding the appointed time.  Not you.  If we honestly look at what this is saying and try to figure it out then to us it will look like vanity and be meaningless but to HIM it is beautiful.  He is sovereign over the good and the bad.  If it’s good it came from God and if its bad and hardship and suffering, it also came from God.  THAT is what this passage is about, so buckle up.  

Let’s take this line by line:

 

2 A time to give birth and a time to die;

 

You had no choice in the time of your birth and you have NO choice in the time of your death.  In Job 14.5 Job says “Man’s days are determined, and the number of his months is with you, and you have appointed his limits that he cannot pass.”

Are you ok with that? You will not live one second longer than God says you will.  This is what we mean when we say God is sovereign.  You cannot build a time machine or a miracle cure unless that was His plan all along and He is behind it.  The great sin is thinking that you are in control!  He was in control orchestrating everything the whole time that you thought you were.

 

A time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted.

 

Nature’s equivalent to the first line, there are seasons that are determined for you by God.  I can’t just plant a tomato outside out of season, it’ll just die.  There are places in scripture where God tells the grass to grow.  God determines that.  He is sovereign over every seed and every seedling and every WILDFIRE.

 

3 A time to kill and a time to heal;

 

Really?  God determines when people are killed and when people get healed.  Listen, this is hard, if someone walks into an airport and opens fire God allowed that, we must NEVER SAY “God didn’t know.” We must NEVER SAY “he looked away when that happened.”  There is nothing more horrific than a God that is not in control of every arrow and every bullet that flies.  God is sovereign or He is not God.

There’s a story about king Ahab  [1st Kings 22]

King Ahab and King Jehoshaphat are going to go out to battle and they say hey aren’t there prophets that will tell us what’ll happen, and they come in and say yeah you’re gonna win and it’ll be great, but they say well they sound like yes men, is there another prophet, well there's Micah but he hates me he always predicts things against me.  Micah comes in and says you’re going to die.  And Ahab locks him up and says when I return you’ll know you were wrong, and Micah yells back when you don’t come back everyone will know that I’m right.  

1 Kings 22.34”But a certain man drew his bow at random and struck the King of Israel between the scale armor and the breastplate.”

That arrow finds this perfect path right into his heart.  That feels so random when you look at it from under the loom.  But, God took that arrow and picked it’s path and thrust it right where He needed it to go.  That’s the sovereignty of God.

In 2001, two missionaries are in a plane flying over the jungle in Peru in a Cesna 185 float plane, Jim and Ronnie Bowers and they are with their two children, their boy Corey and 7 month old Charity in her mother’s lap and their pilot Kevin Donaldson.

The Peruvian Air Force sees this plane flying over the jungle and thinks that it is a drug smuggling plane.  They decide to open fire.  One shot, from the side, goes through both legs of the pilot and he is really hurt and he immediately goes into a nose-dive to land the plane in a river, which he miraculously is able to land.  But, another bullet goes through the back of the plane and barely misses Cory and barely misses Jim, but a third bullet comes through the back of the plane and hits Ronnie and 7 month old Charity on her lap and they are killed instantly and the bullet stops inside charity sitting directly behind the pilot.  Jim and Cory, after the plane lands, are able to escape before it sinks and he and his son survive.  Now, you’re beneath the loom, these are two missionaries who serve God, who love God, now surely this is random surely this is meaningless, in the papers they write stupid headlines like “Why didn’t God stop this sensless tragedy?”

Jim Bowers didn’t see it as senseless, Here’s what Jim said at the memorial service, I want you to listen to how he processed what had happened as a man of the bible who understood what God was up to.  

“Most of all, in this moment, I want to thank my God, He’s a sovereign God, I’m finding that out more now.  Could this really be His Plan?  I want to tell you why I believe it is …..… Ronnie and Charity were instantly killed by a bullet, by the same bullet, would you call that a stray bullet?  I call it a sovereign bullet.  The people who did that were simply used by God to accomplish His purpose, maybe similar to the Roman soldiers used to put Christ on the Cross.”  

God is Sovereign.  You can say Andy, I don’t like this, I don’t want to believe that.  But, you will have a very difficult time understanding your bible.

    

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

 

There’s times when we break down things, even nations, and times when they are built up.  When a nation is broken down the people that did it brag about it, Hey we did this, we’re so powerful, in the Bible, Assyria is this super-power of a nation and they come in and they are decimating Israel and they boast about it see look how strong we are even the God of the Universe can’t stand up to us, and God looks down at them and says don’t you understand you are are the rod of my anger against My people.  He says, should the ax boast over him who hews with it?  God is doing the wielding of the rod and the ax he is wielding the good people, the evil people, maniacs, presidents, economies.  He’s doing the wielding.  The ax can’t boast over what its done.

 

4 A time to weep and a time to laugh;

 

If you cry it’s from God, if you laugh it’s from God.

Job says, “Shall we receive good things from God, and shall we not receive evil. In all this Job did not sin with his lips.” Job 2.15

What have you said Job?  You just said the evil, the dying, the horrible things around you you RECEIVED those from God?  And the author of the book, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit makes sure to add, he did not sin with his lips.

 

Isaiah 45,6 “I am the Lord, and there is no other.  I form the light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the Lord who does all these things.”

Does  your theology allow for a God who creates calamity?

Amos 3.6 “Does disaster come to a city unless the Lord has done it?”

God is behind it, when calamity comes, God is in it, He is still in control of the loom, it seems like meaningless random threads to us, we don’t see where all this leads.  Does your reading the bible lead you there?  You can say Andy, I don’t like this, but you're not liking this won’t remove darkness and light, it won’t remove calamity, but it will remove meaning and solace for your soul.

 

A time to mourn and a time to dance.

 

Everybody is going to die, we talked about this alot in the previous chapters of Ecclesiastes.  We are going to have many opportunities to Mourn, and when we get to chapter 7 someday, we’ll see it’s a good thing to Mourn, God is behind it all.  It’s gonna produce something in you to mourn.  If you don’t mourn, you are really missing out.  But, also there is a time to dance, our lives won’t be consumed with mourning, he sends us celebrations and times to be happy and dancing and ecstatic!!!  But, WE DON’T CHOOSE THOSE TIMES LIKE WE THINK WE DO.  HE IS IN CONTROL OVER OUR DANCING!!!!

 

5 A time to throw stones and a time to gather stones;

 

I read that in ancient Israel it was a very rocky land and you would really have to clear the land of stones thoroughly to plant crops.  So, they would throw stones in warfare with slings, like DAVID and GOLIATH,  but also they would throw stones in preparation of the land, but then they would gather stones to build their buildings so the stones were a bad thing that needed to be removed, they could be a dangerous thing in warfare, but then also a good thing that was used to build.  And God ordains it all!  He is Sovereign.

 

A time to embrace and a time to shun [or refrain from] embracing.

 

This is talking about sex.  There is a time and a place for intimacy inside marriage and outside of that, it is not the time to embrace!  We didn’t come up with that.  The church didn’t come up with that.  We are not Sovereign.  God came up with that.  God has a plan for intimacy and embracing in your life and has appointed a time and a place for it.  

I read a while back that 87% if men struggle with pornography.  They are not shunning or refraining as they should.  You can push against God in this all you want but it is still there.  You know what? church can be a place for people who struggle sexually.  Is it a sin? Yes, it’s a sin.  But can we be a place that doesn’t kick people to the curb and brings people in and struggles along side them?  Can we help them struggle and help them heal?  What about people that struggle with same sex attraction?  Can we struggle with them?  Can they come here and we want to help them?  Can they come to Abundant Life? YES!  You are welcome here!  Is it a sin? YES!  Come on in and struggle here with us!  We want to be a part of that struggle with you.

 

6 A time to search and a time to give up as lost;

A time to keep and a time to throw away.

 

You can say this about finances.  Prosperity is a gift from God! AMEN?

SO IS DISTRESS.  AMEN?

So are stock market crashes.  If God wants something to happen economically in the US then it will happen.  God is Sovereign.  WE don’t get to choose what He’s doing with the tapestry!  WE are not in charge!

 

7 A time to tear apart and a time to sew together;

A time to be silent and a time to speak.

 

God controls our mouths.  He enables you to speak and he prevents you from speaking and He gives you the wisdom to know what to do when.  We think we are so smart and we come up with such great things to say.

Psalms 139.4 “Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.”

Proverbs 16.1 “The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord.”

 

8 A time to love and a time to hate;

A time for war and a time for peace.

 

There are times when God brings friction between people and between nations, times when God brings bonds between nations and people.  God stands behind them all.  God was not surprised! He ordained the split between Paul and Barnabas in the book of Acts.  The bible says this about dice! The lot is cast and every decision is from God.  That means there is not one winner or loser in Vegas this weekend that God has not ordained.  Jonah says that God caused a worm to come out of the ground and eat a plant.  He is Sovereign OVER EVERYTHING!!!!

 

Andy!  If God is this sovereign, then I must be a robot, 

no, this is the crazy thing.  

Every person here chose to come here, you came of your own free will, and God also knew it and ordained it before you did it.  We need to stretch our understanding around both the absolute mind-blowing sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man so that no man can ever stand before God and say “I had no choice.”  Somehow, I make real choices,  and I will be held responsible for those choices if I don’t give everything over to the saving Grace of Jesus dying on the cross and rising on the third day, and yet God is totally sovereign, I understand it doesn’t make sense, but that’s the loom that we live under.  And, that is the Faith that we have.  

Paul in Romans chapter 9:

People say to Paul: Wait a minute, if God is so sovereign, then how can he still find fault with people that carry out his will?  You know what Paul says, he says, “Who are you oh man, to talk back to God, can the clay say to the potter who made it, I don’t like what you’ve done to me.”  

You’ll be held responsible.

 

His ways are not my ways, his thoughts are not my thoughts, as far as the heavens are above the earth, his knowledge is that much farther.  This is the God that we serve.

 

 

9 What profit is there to the worker from that in which he toils? 10 I have seen the task which God has given the sons of men with which to occupy themselves.

 

What’s the business that God has given us, well verses 2-8.  That pretty-much encompasses all of our lives, He is sovereign over every moment of it.  He gives us every single task, every single challenge, every win, and every defeat.  He is Sovereign.

 

God Set Eternity in the Heart of Man

11 He has made everything [b]appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, [c]yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end.

 

He says all of this thread in the tapestry of God is appropriate or beautiful in its time.  It’s unbelievable how he wove all these things together to happen in the end.  Every now and then we can see above the loom for a moment and it’s amazing as we see His Plan.  He has put eternity in our hearts longing for the ability to see above the loom.  But, you are not the starting point here, you can only see it through Him. and someday you will rise above the loom and you will see it all in all its Glory.  And, you’ll say about all that suffering and all that calamity, wow, I didn’t know what he was doing at the time, but I wouldn’t change a thing.

God wielded, like an ax. Harod, Pilate, and the Jews, and the Roman soldiers to kill Jesus.

He wove Judas into the tapestry to betray Jesus to bring about what had been promised.

He used Absolom to sleep with David’s concubine.

He used Satan to entice David.

He bends everything to His sovereign beautiful rule.  We can’t add to it and we can’t take away from it.

What do we do?  He says, we get to be happy.

 

12 I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good in one’s lifetime; 13 moreover, that every man who eats and drinks sees good in all his labor—it is the gift of God.

 

In light of all this, go out and enjoy life.  Enjoy your work.  Your placement in this time is a gift.  We can trust Him.  Even your suffering has meaning.  It’s not meaningless, it’s not vanity.  But, you say, well but not everything is good, of course not, but you can have joy and solace in the midst of ANYTHING.  

Because He is totally sovereign there is meaning to what you are going through.

Psalm 139, “If I ascend to the heavens, he’s there but also if I descend to Sheol He is there too.”

If you come home from work and your spouse says Go to Hell.  You know what God is there.

Pray: Give me a glimpse of the beautiful things all happening in its time.  I don’t want your theology to be weak and only rejoice in the good things that you want. Calamity will come and it will be from God and you can rejoice and see that God is sovereign.  This is a truth that has always been understood by the greatest saints that have lived.  It is a wimpy faith that can see God in prosperity but not in hardship.  

Job, Joseph “You meant it for evil brothers but God meant it for good.”, Paul”all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose”, Elizabeth Elliot “God never makes a mistake, he knows exactly what he is doing and its never for nothing  ”, Martha Snell Nickelson “He never gives a thorn without this added grace, He takes the thorn to pin aside the veil which hides His face.” 

 

14 I know that everything God does will remain forever; there is nothing to add to it and there is nothing to take from it, for God has so worked that men should [d]fear Him. 15 That which is has been already and that which will be has already been, for God seeks what has passed by.

It was the will of God to crush Jesus so that we would not be crushed by sin.

If it takes a thorn to pin aside the veil then Lord let it come, so that we can see above the Loom.

There is beauty in the suffering.  God is Sovereign.

Pray.