Been There. Done That. Now What?
02/19/2006 - Turn! Turn! Turn!
That song Turn! Turn! Turn! was written by Pete Seeger and recorded by a group called the Byrd's back in 1965. It reached number one on Billboard's top 40 chart and stayed there for three weeks becoming the biggest hit of the Byrd's career. But the lyrics weren't the original idea of Pete Seeger. They were lifted right out of King Solomon's journal in Ecclesiastes 3. He deserves the royalties for that song. If you have your Bible turn with me to Ecclesiastes 3.
This morning we continue our series called Been There. Done That. Now What? It's a series that's taking us through the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes which contains the musings of the richest, wisest, most powerful man on earth who's frustrated with life. He's tried everything to satisfy his soul, but like the Rolling Stones he can't get no satisfaction.
In his book, Living on the Ragged Edge, Chuck Swindoll tells the story of a high school teacher who was constantly frustrated by a class of students that just wouldn't pay attention. They wouldn't listen and didn't respond at all to his teaching. So one day he walked into the classroom and wrote on the blackboard in big, bold letters “A – P – A – T – H – Y.” Then he underlined it for effect and made a gesture so wide that his hand hit the board and he broke his piece of chalk in half.
And when he did that a boy in the back row woke up and squinted at the word written on the board in the front of the room. “A-p-a-t-h-y? What does that mean?” He elbowed his buddy sitting next to him who cracked open one eye, shrugged his shoulders and said, “Who cares,” and went back to sleep!
Apathy! That's what King Solomon is feeling. Meaningless! Meaningless! Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless!
Who cares? That's the recurring theme of the book.
And in Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, Solomon looks at time and reflects on how much of life is beyond our control. Look at Ecclesiastes 3:1, There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: 2a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, 3a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, 4a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, 5a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain, 6a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, 7a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, 8a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 is a beautiful passage that I've often read at funeral gatherings to emphasize how much of life is out of our control. None of us can determine our time to be born or our time to die. That's in God's hands. And we only have limited control over the other things that Solomon mentions and the circumstances that cause them too.
He repeats the word “time” 29 times in these verses and composes a poem of fourteen polar opposites using a Hebrew literary device called a merism that suggests totality, both ends of the spectrum and everything in between. In other words, he looks at all the common experiences of life in the world around him and everything is turning and spinning and moving and he feels like a powerless victim of time.
“Stop the world, I want to get off!” he screams. He's suffering from what some have called the paralysis of analysis. He's over analyzing everything and it's driving him nuts. And we can do that too. We can over analyze the circumstances of our life and past mistakes and wrong choices that we've made and that can drive us crazy too. But at some point we need to stop and trust that God knows what he's doing with our lives. And that his ways are higher than our ways. Our days are numbered and our time is in his hands.
Solomon's father, David, once again had a very different perspective on time. He wrote this in Psalm 139:16, Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. David was convinced of the absolute sovereignty of God over his life and that was a great comfort to him. And it's meant to be a comfort to us as well. I may not know what the future holds, but I know who holds the future. And the one who holds the future holds my hand because he loves me!
In Romans 8:28, the apostle Paul concluded this when he looked at the events of life, And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, for those who have been called according to his purpose.
Time is the great equalizer. Whether you're the president of the United States or living under a bridge in Washington, D.C., we all have the same 1,440 minutes deposited into our “time account” every single day. And those minutes have to be spent because they can't be saved up, stashed away, or rolled over like some unused minutes on a cell phone plan. At the end of the day they're gone.
Time is a slippery substance. Someone has said, “Time is a wonderful healer, but a terrible beautician.” It's hard to get a handle on time and like Solomon we too often feel like we're at the mercy of time. When we're doing something we love, time seems to go by so fast. And when we're in the midst of a struggle time seems to pass by so slowly. It was a long football season wasn't it?
The great Albert Einstein who gave a lot of thought to time once said something very profound, “When a young man sits on a hot stove, a minute seems like an hour. But when a beautiful girl sits on that young man's lap, an hour seems like a minute.” I think that's how Einstein came up with his theory of relativity!
This week I was reminded again of the elusiveness of time when I received a phone call from a friend of mine that I went to seminary with. He called to tell me that he was retiring from the one church that he's pastored for the last 25 years. And I was shocked! Not so much that he was retiring, but that it had been that long since we graduated from seminary. Where did those 25 years go? They just evaporated. Of course, you have to understand that he was 27 years old when he graduated from seminary and I was ten!
One of my favorite perspectives on time and why it's so hard for us to live in time comes from C. S. Lewis who once said, “Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? No, because they were created to live in the sea. But we complain about time because we were not created to live in time. We were created for eternity. Not only are we harried by time, we seem unable, despite a thousand generations, even to get used to it. We are amazed at it. How fast it goes, how slowly it goes, how much of it is gone. Where, we cry, has the time gone? We aren't adapted to it and not at home in it. If that is so, it may appear as a proof, or at least as a powerful suggestion, that eternity exists and it is our home.”
We were not created for time. We were created for eternity. And Solomon reaches that same conclusion in verses 9-11, What do workers gain from their toil? 10I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. 11He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet people cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
He has made everything beautiful in its time. Diane Ball wrote a song based on verse 11 called “In His Time” that we had sung at our wedding.
In his time, in his time
He makes all things beautiful
In his time
Lord, please show me everyday
As you're teaching me your way
That you'll do just what you say
In your time
(“In His Time,” Maranatha! Singers, written by Diane Ball, 1978)
Solomon should get the royalties for that one too!
God has set eternity in the human heart. That's one of the ways we're very different than the animals. Inside all of us God has written the question, “Why?” There's a universal longing in every human heart to understand the big picture. Its factory installed. We have an innate desire to know and to see how all the parts fit into place. We have eternity in our hearts in that we want to know the grand and wonderful scheme of things. I not sure our dog Cuddles does. I think she could care less as long as we feed her and play sock. But we know deep in our hearts that there must be more to life than this life.
We're like people addicted to filling out crossword puzzles, but we're hampered by a first grade vocabulary. We're like people putting together a jigsaw puzzle, but there are too many pieces missing. Some how in every human heart there is a craving to see the whole. That's what's driving Solomon. Yet people cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
A number of years ago a missionary anthropologist named Don Richardson wrote a book called “Eternity in Their Hearts.” After studying hundreds of different cultures around the world Richardson concluded that not only has God placed a desire in the human heart to know the big picture, but he has also given us an innate desire to know him. Everywhere he went he discovered a yearning in people's hearts to know God. God, in his own way, has prepared every culture to receive the good news of the gospel. It's part of our DNA.
French philosopher Blaise Pascal put it this way, “There is a God shaped vacuum in every human heart.” So given all of these observations about time and life Solomon draws some conclusions. Look at verse 12, I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and do good while they live. 13That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God.
The fact that we can't figure everything out doesn't mean that we can't be happy and enjoy life. That's a gift that God wants everyone to receive. This is the second time he's drawn this conclusion. The first time was in Ecclesiastes 2:24 when he wrote, People can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God. In fact, as we said last week, he'll draw this conclusion at least six times in his journal. Be content with your lot in life.
But he draws some other conclusions as well. In a rare moment of above the sun insight he sticks his head above clouds and writes in verse 14, I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will revere him. 15Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before; and God will call the past to account.
In this journal entry Solomon affirms that God's work is eternal and perfect and unchangeable. He acknowledges that the sovereign God is in control and he will one day bring all things into account. That's true!
The New Testament equivalent of this is found in Hebrews 4:13 where the writer says, Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
But when he sticks his head back under the clouds and looks again at life “under the sun” he sees exactly what we see, all kinds of injustice and oppression. All of us have been treated unfairly at one time or another, wronged, violated, even abused. And in verse 16 Solomon is expressing our voice, And I saw something else under the sun: In the place of judgment—wickedness was there, in the place of justice—wickedness was there. 17I thought in my heart, “God will bring to judgment both the righteous and the wicked, for there will be a time for every activity, a time for every deed.”
The guy is conflicted, just like we are. We see and experience so much inequity and injustice in the world. And it drives us crazy. Life is not fair! But God will have the final word. One day he will make all things right. Yet once again it will come in his time, not in our time. In his way, not in our way.
We may not understand all the reasons why injustice reigns in this world, but one reason God allows it is to expose our selfish, sometimes animalistic nature. In that sense we all act like brute beasts at times. Look at verse 18, I also thought, “As for human beings, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. 19Surely the fate of a human being is like that of an animal; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; the human race has no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless. 20All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. 21Who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?” 22So I saw that there is nothing better for people than to enjoy their work, because that is their lot. For who can bring them to see what will happen after them?
Not only do we act like animals sometimes, but when you look at animals and humans “under the sun” there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of difference. Animals are born. Humans are born. Animals fight. Humans fight. Animals have babies. Humans have babies. Animals get sick. Humans get sick. Animals die. Humans die. And in the end who knows where they go? A dead dog doesn't look a whole lot different than a dead person. And that's true if we take God out of the equation and only look at life “under the sun.”
But thank God that's not the only way to look at life. For who can bring them to see what will happen after them? Jesus can. The one person who was wiser than Solomon said this in John 11:25-26, I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me will live, even though they die. And whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?
Do you believe this? Do you believe there is more to life than this life? I do. We're not just a higher form of animal. Solomon's dad, David, said we're just a little lower than the angels.
So what injustice are you wrestling with today? How has life beat you up? What's not fair in your life? We all have something we can gripe about? We all have something in our lives that has the power to eat us up and rob us of any joy that we might experience. And we can either choose to go to our grave angry, and bitter, and resentful, eaten up by the paralysis of analysis. Or we can choose to trust in a God who loves us and is in control and will one day make all things right. It's not what happens to us that determines who we are. It's how we respond to what happens to us. And it's never too late to develop an attitude of gratitude. But the choice is ours.
I'm told that there's a sign on the Alaskan highway that reads, “Choose your rut carefully. You'll be in it for the next two hundred miles.” The choice is ours. Which rut do you want?