All Things Beautiful in His Time

Well, good morning to you all. It's wonderful to have you back with us. We had just a great time last night. Pastor Borgman really delivered the word for us. It was very edifying. It's great to have you guys here.

I'm going to open up in prayer, then we'll begin singing. Oh, Father, we praise you for this morning you have given to us and your kindness. We're thankful, God, that although our lives are short, you are eternal. Father, you remain. You are the Alpha, the Omega, the beginning and the end. And you provided everything we needed in Jesus Christ our Lord.

And so, God, I pray that as your people right now, we would rejoice in you and rejoice in the truth that your spirit would work in us. And, Lord, that we would be able to not only understand the scriptures, but to live out the scriptures. So we're relying upon you now. I pray that you'd be with Pastor Borgman as well, that you would use him as a vessel to preach your word boldly and in truth so that it would be edifying to our souls.

We thank you and praise you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has done all things well, and he's completed everything we need for salvation. We praise you in his name. Amen. Amen. We'll be reading from Psalm 104. This is the word of the Lord.

Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord, my God, you are very great. You are clothed with splendor and majesty, covering yourself with lights as with a garment, stretching out the heavens like a tent. He lays the beams of his chambers on the waters. He makes the clouds his chariot. He rides on the wings of the wind.

He makes his messengers winds, his ministers a flaming fire. He set the earth on its foundation so that it should never be moved. You covered it with the deeps as with a garment. The water stood above the mountains. At your rebuke they fled. At the sound of your thunder they took to flight.

The mountains rose. The valleys sank down to the place that you appointed for them. You set a boundary that they may not pass so that they might not again cover the earth. You make springs gush forth in the valleys. They flow between the hills. They give drink to every beast of the field.

The wild donkeys quench their thirst. Beside them the birds of the heavens dwell. they sing among the branches. From your lofty abode you water the mountains. The earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work. You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate, that they may bring forth food from the earth and wine to gladden the heart of man, oil to make his face shine, and bread to strengthen man's heart.

The trees of the Lord are watered abundantly. The cedars of Lebanon that he planted, in them the birds build their nests. The stork has her home in the fir trees. The high mountains are for the wild goats. The rocks are a refuge for the rock badgers. He made the moon to mark the seasons.

The sun knows it's time from setting. You make darkness and it's night when all the beasts of the forest creep about. The young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God. When the sun rises, they steal away and lie down in their dens. Man goes out to his work and to his labor until the evening. O Lord, how manifold are your works!

In wisdom you've made them all. The earth is full of your creatures. Here is the sea, great and wide, which teems with creatures innumerable, living things both small and great. There goes the ships and Leviathan, which you formed to play in it. These all look to you to give them their food in due season. When you give it to them, they gather it up.

When you open their hand, they are filled with good things. When you hide your face, they are dismayed. When you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust. When you send forth your spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground. May the glory of the Lord endure forever. May the Lord rejoice in his works.

Who looks on the earth and it trembles. Who touches the mountains, then they smoke. I will sing to the Lord as long as I live. I will sing to praise my God while I have been. May my meditation be pleasing to him, for I rejoice in the Lord. Let sinners be consumed from the earth.

Let the wicked be no more. Bless the Lord, O my soul. Praise the Lord. You may be seated. Well, I think we're all looking forward to hear from Pastor Borgman as he blesses us with the words. So, brother, why don't you come and bless us?

To the... oh, let's see here. They put one around my head so I can wander around. We'll see if it works. So, to the great grief of the treasurer of our church, I prefer to give books away as opposed to sell them. So, I just want to give some away this morning. So, who drove the farthest?

Anybody drive more than three miles away? Okay. All right. So, who came the farthest? Anybody from, well, I don't even, I'm in Ohio. I couldn't tell you.

What's that? Cleveland. Anybody from Cleveland? Okay, is Cleveland the farthest? Okay, I don't want to cause a church split here. Oh, well, you can give it to your friend.

Alright, anybody from Michigan? Did you drive from Michigan or are you just from Michigan? She from Michigan Oh wow Okay Right so go Wolverines Oh, just teasing. Buckeyes. All right, and let's see. Oh, who has been here at LaRue the longest?

Andy's not here. Pam? All right. So, congratulations. Have you been here longer than Pastor Pasma? Yes.

Okay. All right, and one last one. Who likes Jonathan Edwards? Who likes Jonathan Edwards? Yeah. Okay.

Well, and what time am I supposed to be done? When I'm done? Brother, I love you. Well, let us take our Bibles and turn to Ecclesiastes chapter 2. So I said last night that Ecclesiastes is like a jigsaw puzzle, and you have to look for the corner pieces. I'm going to read a corner piece to you, and then we're going to move into our text.

And so, Ecclesiastes chapter 2, starting at verse 24, There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and tell himself that his labor is good. This also I have seen that it is from the hand of God. For who can eat and who can have enjoyment without Him? For to a person who is good in his sight, he is given wisdom and knowledge and joy, while to the sinner he is given the task of gathering and collecting so that he may give to the one who is good in God's sight.

This too is Havel and striving after wind. There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven. A time to give birth and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted. A time to kill and a time to heal.

A time to tear 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 throw stones and a time to gather stones. A time to embrace and a time to shun embracing. A time to search and a time to give up as lost.

A time to keep and a time to throw away. A time to tear apart and a time to sew together. A time to be silent and a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate. A time for war and a time for peace. What profit is there to the worker from that in which he toils?

I have seen the task which God has given the sons of men, with which to occupy themselves. He's made everything appropriate or beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good in one's lifetime.

Moreover, that every man who eats and drinks sees good in all his labor. It is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will remain forever and there is nothing to add to it and there is nothing to take away from it. For God has so worked that men should fear Him. that which is has been already and that which will be has been already been for God seeks what has passed by.

Well, the grass withers and the flower fades but the Word of our God abides forever. Father, we thank You for Your Holy Word forever settled in heaven. And Father, we pray this morning that You would give us eyes to see, ears to hear, hearts ready and eager to receive. We pray that you would sanctify us in the truth. Your word is truth. In Jesus' name, amen.

So we were visiting family not that long ago, sometime last year, and Ariel's family and one of her family members was talking to another and they were talking about a tragedy that had happened in one of the family members' lives. And he says, I know that God allowed it for a reason. That God has a purpose in it. Now, the amazing thing is that the person that said that is not a Christian.

He's not even a churchgoer. But there's actually something innate in us that knows things happen for a reason. And I would argue that Ecclesiastes chapter 3 gives us the answer as to why we know things happen for a reason. Now chapter 3, if you are nostalgic like me, you realize that Ecclesiastes 3 is a chart topper at least twice. And basically only the old people are nodding their heads.

The Birds in 1965, turn, turn, turn. And then Ray Stevens Everything is Beautiful By the way the exegesis of those songs is not altogether accurate Now, when you get to Ecclesiastes 2, so last night we laid the foundation of Havel, that is the word commonly translated vanity, actually we should translate it breath, vapor, right? So what Solomon's agonizing over is not the vanity of life, but the brevity of life.

You get to chapter 2, and of course chapter 2 is pretty famous because of all the things that Solomon does. He, in a sense, goes on a mission to, in a sense, try to mitigate Havel, try to mitigate the anguish of a short life. And what he does is he seeks success, he seeks achievement, he seeks even wisdom and pleasure. And at the end of the day, what he realizes is that none of those things actually mitigate the pain of a brief life.

In fact, as he thinks about those things, there's a moment at the end of chapter 2 where he believes that he's finally found the advantage, the benefit. it, but then he immediately realizes that all of those things are a bust. All of those things actually don't mitigate Havel, because at the end of the day, they are Havel. And so then his amazing conclusion is, and so I hated life.

He ends up saying it twice, I hated life. But what did he hate about it? Well, in a very real sense, you and I as image bearers, we are wired, as we'll see in a little bit, for eternity. And the idea that the things that we do in this life end up just being a breath themselves can actually bring a sense of pain and angst, as we saw last night. And so then what Solomon does is at the end of chapter 2, he gives us the first corner piece of the puzzle. and it is in that section, chapter 2, verses 24 to 26, where Solomon actually makes this critical observation.

As one Old Testament commentator puts it, he says, the possibility of enjoyment returns significantly only when the quest for profit is given up altogether and replaced by the notion of the gift. opportunities to eat, drink and find satisfaction in one's work when they come are not human achievements but divine gifts and are to be enjoyed as such they are only, he uses the word palliative they are only, gives us some relief to be sure for they too are hevel and they will slip from our grip like everything else but that's no reason to enjoy them So in other words, the idea that life is short, life is brief, it's a vapor, and then you spend the best of your years working hard, laboring, toiling, and then you start to feel this sense of anxiety over the reality that this short life is going to be used up mostly for you doing your work. At the end of the day, Solomon's conclusion is this. In a sense, don't hate life.

Accept it as the gift that it is. It's a short gift, but it's a gift nevertheless. And so it is in that context that then we get to chapter 3. And the reality is that Solomon throughout this, I likened the book of Ecclesiastes to the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland. Solomon is going to give a conclusion as he does in 2, 24-26, but he's not going to let us off the hook.

He gives the conclusion, but he wants the journey to keep going because, after all, how many of us learn important life lessons after just hearing it once? Well, none of us learn important life lessons just hearing them once. What do we need? We need the school of hard knocks to teach us again and again and again. And that's what Solomon is going to do.

And so he is exploring this nagging question about Hevel, and he's going to explore it from all possible angles. And as he moves into chapter 3, what he does for us is he gives us a poem. And so chapter 3, the poem on time, 1 through 8, is absolutely marvelous. But what it is, make no mistake about it, What it is, is it is a poem that is affirming unwaveringly the sovereignty of God.

That's what the poem is doing. And I'm going to argue that the poem right here fits a very significant purpose. When Solomon says there is an appointed time for everything, and there is a time for every event under heaven, it is a profound statement about the sovereignty of God. In fact, it is God Himself who appoints the times and brings about the events in their appointed time.

He is absolutely sovereign over all of life. Now, the poem itself is made up of 28 items, 14 couplets. So you have the pairs, time to be born, time to die, etc. The multiples of seven, and I would argue that's not accidental, it's actually intentional to underscore that this poem is, in a sense, dealing with the completeness or the totality of life. The couplets underscore, in a sense, that the totality of life is in view.

And so, for Kohelet, for Solomon, the couplets capture both the universality and the comprehensiveness of God control And so the point of the poem is this is that in a very real sense God is sovereign over every event from cradle to grave. He's sovereign over every detail of life. Now it's important to understand too that the poem on time is not a prescription.

It's not telling us that we should do something. There's a time for you to do this. There's a time for you to do that. Rather, as one commentator points out, he says, this famous passage does not contain marching orders for us. It's no agenda. Rather, this is a description of God's determinations.

We're under the authority of these repetitions and have been placed under that authority by the hand and purpose of God. So he begins with this. There's a time to give birth and a time to die. So this is simply the totality of life. from the cradle to the grave. You know what? We gave away a free book to somebody from Michigan, but you weren't here.

Oh man. Bummer. We'll have to catch you next time. So the totality of life from cradle to grave, or as we sing in the Getty song, from life's first breath to life's final cry. Right? Final breath.

And so, life's first cry to life's final breath. From the cradle to the grave. God appoints the day that you're born. You didn't appoint it. You didn't pick it. Nobody says, oh, you know what, I think July 1st, 1967 would be a great day to be born.

Nobody does that. God appoints the day to be born. In fact, the Scriptures tell us this in other places. Job chapter 14, Job tells us, since His days are determined, the number of His months is with you, and His limits you have set and they cannot pass. In other words, God sets the day of our birth, but He also sets the day of our death. In your book were written all of the days that were ordained for me.

Psalm 139 and verse 16. So here's something for all of us to take to heart and that is, just as sure as God sovereignly ordained the day in which you enter this world, God has sovereignly ordained the day in which you will leave this world. You will not live one day past your appointed time, nor will you die one day before your appointed time. That day is fixed on God's calendar, and it is God alone who knows it.

And so yes, take care of yourself. Yes, if I'm up here and I start to grab my heart and I keel over, don't just sit there and say, well, I guess today was His day. I want somebody to say, is there a doctor here? And then come give me CPR and try to keep me going a little longer. So we're not fatalists about it, but here's the reality. God appoints the day that you come into this world.

God appoints the day you go out. And then He says there's a time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted. And so, as you well know, in this area, sowing and reaping is hard work from beginning to end, but the farmer sows and the farmer reaps under the hand of a sovereign God. In fact, I've often thought that those who do farming have a tremendous sense of being dependent upon the providence of God in a way that most people simply are not.

It's God who sends the rain. It's God who withholds the rain. And so we do the work, but God is the one who actually brings about the end. There's a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build up. And so again, here you have the events that could happen in the context of war or in the context of capital punishment or even in the context of self-defense.

There's a time to kill, but there's also a time to heal. That is, there's a time to seek to repair the ruins and there's a time to, in a sense, build up and tear down. That is the destructive and the constructive are all parts of God's sovereign plan and purpose. A time to weep and a time to laugh. A time to mourn and a time to dance. And you can see how some of these couplets are actually grouped together.

And so, a time to weep, a time to laugh, a time to mourn, a time to dance. These would be the emotional vicissitudes of life. Just the emotional up and downs of life. Nobody actually wakes up and says, you know, it's time for a good hearty belly laugh right now. That's not the way that it works. Nor does somebody say, oh, it's 8.30, it's time for me to cry.

Right? Laughing and crying, weeping and mourning and dancing, All of those things simply are the result of unforeseen events in life. When your three-year-old says something that's absolutely hilarious, it's just a spontaneous thing and there's a laughter. And then when the sadness or the sorrow comes and the tears flow, those are things that are outside of our control. those are things that happen to us in the course of God's sovereign purpose.

And so there's a time to... Oh, by the way, I should say something about a time to dance since we're Baptists. There's never a time to dance. at Grace Community Church in Minden we are an incredibly fun bunch we have great weddings and then we have great receptions and there's always dancing and I don't dance. I took a vow when I was at Biola University that I would not use tobacco, alcohol, or dance.

And so, even though that was 1987, I have kept that vow. And there's a young girl in our church that grew up in our church and she says to me at one of the receptions, she says, Pastor, when I get married, I want you to dance with me at the reception. And I said to her, of course, Tori, I'll dance with you at your reception. And I, of course, thought she'd never get married.

So the wedding is coming up and guess what? She says, Pastor, remember you promised you would dance with me at my reception. I said, are you sure? She pulls out her cell phone, pulls up a recording and has me. She recorded it. And so I broke my vow.

That recording is not available for public consumption. Solomon then says there's a time to throw stones and there's a time to gather stones. There's a time to embrace and a time to shun embracing. And so the idea of stones is vague. It's actually, I think, intentionally vague. Stones could be used as weapons of war.

They could be used as building materials. They could be used actually to prevent a conquered enemy from being able to grow crops by casting stones throughout fields. The rabbis actually took this idea as being marital intimacy, either engaging or abstaining. And the fact is that it just simply tells us that there are times when an embrace is appropriate and a time when it's inappropriate.

There's a time to search and a time to give up is lost. A time to keep and a time to throw away. So the next two couplets actually just sort of are succinctly summarized by one commentator who says, nothing in this world is ours forever. Things get lost. Things get accumulated. Don't you ever wonder why in God's world the things that get lost get lost and the things that get accumulated are the things that get accumulated?

Pack rats are accumulators, right? But, repent. Don't do that to your kids, right? All right? Okay, if you hate your kids, be a pack rat. Make them go through all your stuff when you're dead. but the idea of accumulating and losing often times what you lose is outside of your control too.

And so here are these pictures that are just telling us things get thrown away, things get hoarded and there's no sense to it to us. There's a time to tear apart and there's a time to sew together a time to be silent and a time to speak and these actually go well together because tear apart may be the idea of rending your garments in sadness or in grief. Sewing together may refer to the repairing of garments after the grief.

Time to be silent and time to speak. I mean, stop and think about Job's friends. By the way, I think we should offer ACBC classes on how to be silent. Sometimes, right brother? Sometimes being silent is the most effective way to minister to somebody. And so when to say silent and when to speak is a matter of wisdom.

And oftentimes things just come out of our mouths that shouldn't. A time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. So human relationships then come into view, both on a personal level and on a national or even international level. And there are things that happen that stir people to love. There are things that happen that actually stir people, moving them to hate.

And of course, oftentimes, these things are also outside of our control. They are things that happen to us, but they are a part of the appointed events under heaven. Now here's the thing about the poem, is that the exact nature of each one of these couplets could be debated indefinitely. but the point ends up being clear is that whatever the event it is actually a divine appointment it takes place under the sun but it takes place as an appointed event under the sun so every birth, every death, every word every event is an appointed event even constructive and destructive good and evil, happy, sad it all actually comes from the hand of God I hope that you actually believe that.

That the good and the bad and the happy and the sad are all events that come from the hand of Almighty God. Kohelet will assert this again later in chapter 7. He will assert the sovereignty of God over our good days and over our bad days. Here's what you're to consider. In the good, be in the good. But in the bad, consider this.

God's made both of them. And so that truth is a comforting truth. That there is a sovereign God whose hand of providence is over every event of our lives. And that truth can bring us tremendous comfort in times of despair. And it can bring us tremendous comfort in times of sadness. and the reality is that a belief in the sovereignty of God is an anchor to our faith and it keeps our soul in a sense buoyant or it keeps our faith buoyant even in the most difficult of times and yet there something that Solomon going to say that we need to hear and we need to hear it clearly he asks this nagging question right after this glorious poem on the sovereignty of God he says in verse 9 what profit is there to the worker from that in which he toils now I think that the reason that verse 9 follows verse 8 is because Solomon is thinking something like this.

In light of God's comprehensive sovereignty, that causes Solomon to go back to that initial question from 1.3, what is the advantage? What is the profit? What is left over? In other words, maybe, just maybe, the knowledge of God's purposes will bring about some benefit to actually me being able to understand the advantage of why I toil in this life. In other words, maybe the sovereignty of God is going to give me some wonderful insight and key into understanding the things that drive me crazy, that I don't understand.

Solomon then says in verse 10, I've seen the task which God has given to the sons of men with which to occupy themselves. Now, of course, the big question is, well, what's the task that he's talking about? Well, with the background of 2 through 8, I think that the task that God's given to men is, on the one hand, you have an innate sense of a God who's sovereign over all the details of life, and then the task that He's given us is the task of wanting to know how it fits together.

Making sense of the details of my life. Giving me an understanding of how this fits in to the sovereign tapestry of the cosmic artist who's actually weaving my life together. And in fact, I would also argue that even as image bearers, those who have been made in the image and the likeness of God, that there is an innate sense that we have that we know the pieces fit together and therefore we want to understand why and how they fit together.

I'll remind you again that the sovereignty of God actually is given for your comfort, not for supernatural insight into the events of life. And so that task that God has given us is this task of wanting to know how the pieces fit together. I believe in the divine artistry of the Almighty and I know that the things fit together. I know that there's a purpose.

I know there's a reason why. And that task that He's given us is to want to know and here's why we know that. Solomon's going to say two things that are absolutely profound. Here's what we know. He's made everything beautiful in its time or his time and he's put eternity in our hearts. So I'm going to argue that those two things are the reason why you know that there's a reason for everything that happens.

First of all, he's made everything beautiful in his time. some translations will say appropriate, others apt. I think that those are inadequate. I think the idea of beautiful is actually there. So what God is doing is He's making something beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. The New English translation gets both in here. everything fits beautifully in its appropriate time.

And so we know we know inherently that the times and events of life happen for a reason. And we know inherently that the reasons must be good. We know inherently that each piece is a part of God's beautiful plan. And because we know that, because we believe that, we have an innate sense of wanting to understand how the pieces fit. We want to be able to look at the cover of the box of the jigsaw puzzle and say, oh, that's what it's supposed to look like.

That's what God is doing. That's woven into our hearts. The second thing that Solomon says is that he has set eternity on their heart or in their heart, and so there's this innate, inherent sense of eternity, i.e. of the Eternal One, but the details and issues of life then also fit together. So it only makes sense if you have an eternal One who's actually in control over all the events of your life and He's put eternity in your heart, you have an innate sense that the eternal One is working out this eternal tapestry that's going to be beautiful and everything's going to be appropriate in its time, then there's this innate sense of wanting to know Lord how did this loss how did this disappointment how did this grief how did this seeming tragedy how does it fit into your perfect plan How?

Have you ever just stopped at some event in life that has just knocked the wind right out of you, taken your breath away, and you ask yourself in light of Romans 8.28, or you ask yourself in light of the sovereignty of God, how in the world, God, can you be working this out for good? How in the world, God, is this a part of a good, wise, holy God's purpose for my life? Have you ever asked yourself that?

You ask yourself that because you know that it does fit. But here's the letdown. So Ecclesiastes, as I told you, starts, stops, jerks, jolts. Here's the big letdown, at least for right now, and that is, notice, 11b, yet, so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning to the end. I want to say this is sucking the oxygen out of the room. this is letting all the air out of the tires Solomon you've just told me God's sovereign over every event under heaven you've just told me that He is sovereign from cradle to grave you've just told me that He's given us this task of wanting to know how the pieces fit you've just told me that we have this innate sense of He's making everything beautiful in His time I have an innate sense of eternity and now you've told me that the very task that He's given to me, He's not given me the ability to fulfill.

That's exactly what Solomon is saying. So the letdown is that God has not given us the capacity to figure out, to see the reasons. God's not given us the capacity to look at the canvas from the top side or the tapestry from the top side that's being painted or being woven together. and the fact is that we know that the pieces fit we don't know how and then the reality is that you and I do not have the capacity in this life to know how and God has ordained it to be that way and so when people come to me as a pastor and they say to me pastor why did my baby die I have to be able to say I don't know I know that God is good I know that God is wise I know that things fit according to His purpose but I can't tell you I don't have some special crystal ball that I can look into the divine plan of the Almighty and tell you that's how this is going to fit in your life one of my favorite theologians dirty Harry Callahan said it well when he said a man has got to know his limitations we have to know our limitations David Gibson in his great book on Ecclesiastes he says if we could see listen to this if we could see the end from the beginning and understand how a billion lives and a thousand generations and unspeakable sorrows and untold joys are all woven into a tapestry of perfect beauty, then we would be God.

Now, I said that Ecclesiastes was actually a positive book, not a pessimistic book. Solomon's taken us on that ride. is there a little pain and even disappointment in knowing that in this life I probably will never know why? In fact, maybe even in eternity, we won't know all the whys. Because one thing that's true about eternity, which is also true here is that God is always infinite and we're always finite.

And by the way, we'll be finite people in the age to come. Are you okay with being able to say I don't know why and in this life I may never know why. In fact, I probably won't know why. I don't have the ability. I don't have the capacity. Is that okay?

Well, Solomon wants to bring us to another conclusion. And that is in a sense to be rescued from our own inability. Not by making us able. So Solomon makes these observations and then he draws these tentative conclusions. Then he asks questions. And then he gives you a sucker punch in your solar plexus.

And then he says, yeah, God's sovereign. Amen and amen. And we want to know his plan. We want to know his purpose. We want to know how the details fit. And yet he's denied us the insight.

It's a burden with which we occupy ourselves. And so Solomon would say, take a breath. Take a breath and just listen to me for a second. Belief in the sovereignty of God is important. It's absolutely vital. but it doesn't give you any sort of special insight or understanding. So what is the counsel in light of that He says it this way there nothing better for them than to rejoice and do good in one lifetime You want to know what you do with living with the reality that you know the pieces fit, but you don't know how?

Solomon says here, here's what you should do. Rejoice! Be glad that you know God! be happy that you actually are anchored in the sovereignty of God be thankful for your life it's a gift rejoice and then devote yourself to doing God's good living a life of faithful obedience by the way there's no fatalism in Kohelet there is always a sense in which even when we're stumped by the mysteries of providence and sovereignty and the mysteries and the pains of life the reality is that we go back to God again and again, see our life as a gift, and then enjoy the ordinary gifts that we know are in fact gifts.

Eat, drink, see good in your labor. It's God's gift. And so in a sense, that first corner piece is repeated once again here. And so here's the remedy. Actually give up hope of comprehension of the incomprehensible God and simply rejoice and do good in your life. Can I do that after tragedy?

Yes. I can do it after tragedy. Can I do it after disappointment? Yes. Can I do it after the things I don't understand? Well, I would say we should do it especially after the things that we don't understand.

Jeffrey Myers in his book on Ecclesiastes says, the answer to an unhealthy preoccupation with finding the answers and reasons for all of one's troubles is to enjoy what you have to enjoy, including your toil, without trying to figure out some ultimate leverage or advantage from it. And so what do we know about the sovereignty of God? Well, here's what we know about the sovereignty of God.

Verse 14, notice Solomon's words, I know, I know that everything God does will remain forever. There's nothing to add to it. There's nothing to take away from it. For God is so worked that men should fear Him. And so here's what we know, is that whatever God does, there's an eternal value to it. It is forever.

In fact, God's work is not Havel. can you bank your hope in a life that's really brief that seems just like a breath on a cold morning that's here and then just immediately gone can you bank your hope on the fact that what God is doing will in fact last forever the answer is yes even if I don't understand what he's doing what God is doing is perfect if you can't add to something or take away from it it's because it's perfect and then he says God has so worked that we would fear Him and so it would seem that the frustration of which we're speaking is deliberately imposed by God so that we will always recognize the difference between Him and us. Everybody here knows this, but it's good to hear it once in a while. God is God and you are not. you say well that's obvious well it's not always obvious when we're trying to find reasons for why everything happens sometimes that preoccupation can be nothing other than us really at least just for a second wanting to sit on the throne and so Solomon says God's work is eternal, God's work is perfect, and He's worked in us in such a way that we'll fear Him.

That is, we'll have an awe of Him. A reverence for Him. Not the servile kind of cowering fear of a dog that's been kicked too much. But the kind of fear that just recognizes the majesty and the transcendence of an almighty God who's working out all things after the counsel of His will. It is that sense of fear that causes us to fall on our faces in light of the holiness of God and in light of for from Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to Him be the glory forever.

And so when we feel that frustration, when we feel that disappointment, it is as if there should be an echo in our soul that is reminding us that God is God. bow before Him as God He has a timetable He's working out the things of your life including the grief verse 15 is incredibly challenging what I would say about it is that it sets the table for what is to come but God's deeds are both beautiful and eternal. In a sense, God's deeds are very different than ours. Ours are a breath and off we go. spoiled by our sin.

And God won't forget the things that seem to be passed by. Let me just give you a... since I have time, of course. Let me just give you a little precursor of how verse 15 works. Verse 15 leads into... And note this, this is going to be a key exegetical insight. Verse 15 leads to verse 16.

Okay? Now, are there going to be things that happen in this life that seem to threaten the beauty of God's work? Yeah. will there be things in this life that seem to detract from the gift quality of this life? And the answer is yes. And so what Solomon's going to do is Solomon's going to deal with things like injustice and oppression and loneliness and money.

He's going to deal with the things that seem as if they could rob the beauty of God or the goodness of the gift. And so, are there things in this life that happen to us that are terrible? And the answer is yes, it's absolutely true. Terrible things happen to God's people and terrible things happen all the time. But the God who's sovereign won't forget.

The things that seem passed by, by others, will never be passed by. by God And so one of the things that we have to cling to in the midst of holding fast to the sovereignty of God is that God not only in control of my life but God actually holds people accountable for the things that they do. And that accountability is perfectly compatible with His divine sovereignty. And so for all of the objections that we might have to these things, Solomon is going to answer them.

And at the end of the day, here's what God calls us to do. God does not call us to actually unravel the mysteries. He does not call us into trying to decipher the events of this life. He doesn't call us to try to peer into the future, look through the corridors of time. actually what God calls us to do is simple, but not necessarily easy. He calls us to trust Him.

He calls us to fear Him as our sovereign God who is sovereign over every detail of my life, even when that doesn't make sense. And He calls me as I ache to actually find the purpose and reason for these things. God tells me that it is enough for you to know that I know. we had a man in our church was a deacon for many years he was a major in the Marine Corps and he used to remind us all the time he would say you know Brian in the Corps we say you're on a need to know basis your rank does not give you the privilege to know this information as Christians we're on a need to know basis and that which God deems we need to know for our good for our sanctification He tells us therefore that which He does not reveal to us we don need to know And you have to make your peace with that And so rather than trying to be engineers deciphering God's sovereign purpose, He calls us to enjoy this short life, live for Him, keep an eternal perspective, know that He won't forget, all things in fact will be made right, and hold fast to the truth that God's making all things beautiful in His time.

How can you be sure that God is making all things beautiful in His time? I will tell you how you can be absolutely sure that God's making all things beautiful in His time. How do you know? Why? Because in the fullness of time, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the curse of the law. God knows what time it is. and at just the right time Christ died for the ungodly and today is the acceptable time because today is the day of salvation do you not think that the God who's worked out all of His purposes in the fullness of time and at the right time and called us at the acceptable time is in fact making all things beautiful in His time and so if you're suffering here 1 Peter 5.6 humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God that He may exalt you when? at the proper time He's making all things beautiful in His time so trust Him trust Him as the one who has written you into His story and has a reason for all those details trust him because he given you his own Son He brought you to faith in His time Can you fully trust a God who would send His Son to die for you?

When you wonder whether you can trust God because you don't understand, you know what you need to do? You need to get your eyes off of that which you don't understand and fix your eyes on Calvary. Fix your eyes on the truth that God did not spare His own Son, but freely gave Him up for us all. How then will He not freely with Him give us all things? If you've trusted God with the biggest thing in your life, that is your salvation, certainly you can trust Him with all the stuff you don't understand, with confidence that He's making everything beautiful.

Let's pray. Father, we come to You, and Lord, we pray right now for those that really are, they're just in the midst of suffering, they're in the midst of struggling, and we pray that You would drive this truth home to their hearts today. And we pray for those whose faith and hope are growing dim. We pray that today, that by Your Spirit, You would blow life, breathe life into faith and hope.

May we trust You with all of our hearts. In Jesus' name, Amen. Thank you.